Ancient Indigenous people in Peru had a unique response to the looting and destruction of their ancestors’ graves during the European colonial period, an international team of archaeologists has discovered. A study found nearly 200 examples of human vertebrae threaded onto reed posts in the Chincha Valley, dating from AD 1450-1650. The period spanned the Inca rule and the start of the European colonization — a turbulent time of extensive famine and epidemics — that coincided with widespread desecration of Indigenous people’s graves by Europeans.