interesting connection the Ezekiel 37 " Valley of the Dry Bones" and Nasca artefacts & the lost city of Cahuachi? the Nasca lines with the lost city of Cahuachi? The site was first excavated in the 1950s and was thought to be the centre of an expansionist military empire, but in the 1980s archaeologists like Giuseppe Orefici began to overturn these ideas. They could find no evidence for a bustling urban centre and certainly no sign of military activity. Instead, the city seemed to have been dedicated solely to ritual and ceremony.

What connected the Nasca lines with the lost city of Cahuachi? The site was first excavated in the 1950s and was thought to be the centre of an expansionist military empire, but in the 1980s archaeologists like Giuseppe Orefici began to overturn these ideas. They could find no evidence for a bustling urban centre and certainly no sign of military activity. Instead, the city seemed to have been dedicated solely to ritual and ceremony.

This year Orefici and his team plan to test the theory against the archaeological evidence. All these finds are clues to the kind of place Cahuachi was in ancient times, but Orefici and his team face bitter competition - from tomb-robbers. Nasca artefacts fetch fabulous prices and Cahuachi has become one of the most looted sites in the world. Everywhere the bones of the people who once lived here lie scattered. The tomb-robbers have stripped them of anything of value. For the archaeologists it's a disaster. The Cahuachi dead have been robbed of their identities.

GIUSEPPE OREFICI: It's the material left behind by the tomb robbers - pieces of cloth and cord, more textiles. There are hundreds and hundreds of these. All the material that is left here is material that, for archaeologists, would be essential when reconstructing this people's history and everything is destroyed. The tomb-robbers will never stop. Look at this, for example. It's very nice - a multicoloured ceremonial sling but the tomb-robbers aren't interested in it. They're interested in pottery and good pieces of cloth which they can sell internationally

NARRATOR: It's been estimated that 5,000 tombs have been looted at Cahuachi. The site is potmarked by the tomb-robbers' work.

GIUSEPPE OREFICI: Information is lost every day. A page of history is lost every day which can never be reconstructed. But the place is so vast that our work is still useful in recovering at least some information and we hope to be able to continue working in this way recovering pages and pages of the history of Nasca.

NARRATOR: At the end of each day Orefici's team bring their finds back to his museum in the local town. Here they are safely stored in a treasure house of the Nasca culture. The pots are decorated with mythological creatures, animals and geometric shapes. Many of these images turn up on a much bigger scale, on the pampa. Nasca pottery styles change over time and archaeologists have been able to link the different styles to different periods, called simply Nasca 1 to 5. Pottery has been found broken and scattered on the Nasca lines and this has given archaeologists a way of dating their construction.

On the basis of the ceramic evidence the animal figures were found to be the oldest, dating to around 200AD. The straight lines and geometric designs were constructed later. The Nasca were building lines on the pampa for more than 500 years. Two weeks into the season Orefici was called to inspect a section of the dig. His team had found a well-like structure and it seemed to be clogged with fabric bundles. In many South American cultures fabrics like these are associated with burials…

GIUSEPPE OREFICI: There is an awful lot of cloth here.

NARRATOR: …so this could be an important discovery and Orefici extracted the delicate fabrics himself. They had been buried for nearly 2,000 years and were miraculously preserved.

GIUSEPPE OREFICI: Was it joined to something? There are feathers on this side but there are none on the other side. It's probably not a tomb. If there is one, it's lower down.

(ACTUALITY CHAT)

NARRATOR: This time there was no sign of a human burial beneath the fabrics, but the discovery was almost as exciting.

MAN: Look how lovely this is.