October 13, 2002	Sunday	Sha'aban 6, 1423

LIMA, Oct 12: Peruvian archeologists have discovered the first full Inca burial site at Machu Picchu since the famous mountaintop citadel was discovered 90 years ago, officials said on Saturday.

“It’s important because nothing like this — a burial site and all that goes with it — has been found since the Bingham era,” Machu Picchu’s administrator, Fernando Astete, told Reuters, referring to the U.S. explorer Hiram Bingham who rediscovered the Inca citadel in 1911.

“The find is significant because of the funeral objects, such as stone and clay pots and five metal objects accompanying the remains of bones of a person, probably a woman,” he added.

He said other excavations in recent years at the atmospheric gray stone site, perched at an altitude of 8,200 feet (2,500 meters) on top of a mountain near the edge of Peru’s southern jungle, had yielded some bone fragments but not Inca graves.

“Studies will confirm the sex and determine the age of the person who was buried, but the objects that were found around the body point to it having been a young woman,” he added.

Machu Picchu, which was built more than 500 years ago, is Peru’s top tourist attraction.—Reuters