This short paper reports the unexpected destruction and violation of an important rock art site – El Vagón – in the Moche Drainage of northern Peru. In 2019 I published a full account of this site, based on several surveys by my wife and me. In 2017 there was no destruction visible, but in August 2024 I found (via Google Earth) out that the site had been destroyed by heavy machinery. This short paper discusses the damage, often referring to my earlier publication. It is sad that the site survived from the Formative Period (2000-500 B.C.) up to at least 2022, and was then recklessly and shamefully violated and destroyed in a few days, apparently without any warning or any official archaeological survey. Permission should never have been granted!
By Maarten van Hoek
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El Vagón Violated
Ongoing Destruction of Rock Art Sites in Peru
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Maarten van Hoek
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Introduction
Rock art sites all over the world are often in a very vulnerable position. Many sites experienced (partial) destruction or are being threatened by projected demolition. The major reasons are the construction or the improvement of infrastructure and/or mining activities like quarrying. Peru is no exception. My wife and I have surveyed many sites in coastal Peru and found that several sites were damaged. For instance, the highway from Tacna in southern Peru to La Paz in Bolivia cuts right through the very important rock art site of Miculla. In the north of Peru the rock art site of Huaca Blanca was violated by the construction of a new access road and by quarrying activities. There are many more instances, but to my unpleasant surprise I found out – in August 2024 – that also the petroglyph site of El Vagón in the Moche Valley of northern Peru had been violated again, probably somewhere between 2019 and 2022. My wife Elles and I visited El Vagón several times and in 2017 we fully surveyed the site in order to create a provisional inventory, which I published two years later (Van Hoek 2019; with all known boulders at El Vagón have been discussed and illustrated). However, in 2017 the damage was only minimal.
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The Location of El Vagón
El Vagón is located on the west bank of the wide, dry valley of the Quebrada de las Guitarras (blue arrows in Figure 2) and is found 3 km SE of the Río Moche; a major river which empties its waters into the Pacific Ocean further west (Figure 1). The site is found about 20 km NW inland from the Pacific Coastline at an altitude ranging from 270 m in the NNW to 335 m at its southern edge. The site (yellow frame in Figure 2) actually comprises two different sections. The northern part is formed by a long ridge called Cerro del Vagón (stretching 850 m from NW to SE), while the southern section is an adjacent, flat, slightly undulating area (actually a thick alluvial deposit crossed by shallow gullies) located between the ridge and the confluence of the Quebrada El Vagón (light-brown arrow in Figure 2; see also Figure 3) and the Quebrada de las Guitarras (blue arrows in Figure 2). The Quebrada de las Guitarras is not the same as Quebrada Alto de las Guitarras, which is located 6 km to the SSE at the major rock art site of Alto de la Guitarra. The petroglyph boulders are found in both sections (Figure 3). Most likely culturally related to at least some of the petroglyphs are the remains of an ancient (Cupisnique) road (1 in Figure 2; Figure 3; not an Inca Road as is suggested by archaeologist Renzo Ventura: URL) that are an essential part of the Huacapongo Corridor (an ancient route-system, linking several coastal river valleys). The Cupisnique road and the line of rock art sites lead to the most important rock art site of Alto de la Guitarra, further SE (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Map showing the locations of El Vagón (green square), Alto de la Guitarra (yellow square) and three more Virú rock art complexes (red squares), all surveyed by my wife and me. Drawing © by Maarten van Hoek; map © by OpenStreetMap – Contributors.
Click any illustration to see an enlargement
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The Violations
When – in 2006 – my wife Elles and I arrived in the dry valley of the Quebrada de las Guitarras for the first time, the area had already been violated by the numerous chicken-farms that desecrated the Sacred Landscape (see Figure 2). The most northerly decorated boulder at El Vagón was already almost completely enclosed by those chicken-farms. Moreover, in order to protect the chicken-farms (thus not to protect the Sacred Site of El Vagón!) a low dam was constructed in the centre of the valley (2 in Figure 2), which diverts the flows of water of the intermittently flooded valley away from the farms, which proved to be only partially successful during the El Niño of early 2017, when parts of the lower valley were flooded and destroyed. What is invisible in the maps, is that the view from the site of El Vagón to the east is spoiled by several high electricity-pylons that were once constructed on top of the hills (before 2017?).
But that is not all. Between 2019 and 2022 the Sacred Site of El Vagón was desecrated further by what probably are (gravel?) mining activities at the southern section of the site (framed in red in Figure 2). I discovered this destruction in Google Earth only in August 2024. El Vagón could be destroyed and violated even further, as well as several other sites in the valley.
On the 10th of August 2023 I informed Lic. Renzo Ventura Ayasta, the leading archaeologist of ASEARP, about my paper about El Vagón (which he said he already knew). Strangely, in his answer to me Ventura did not inform me that – on the 3rd of May! 2023 – he visited El Vagón and noticed the destruction, a short account of which was immediately published on a Peruvian internet webpage (MacroNorte.Pe). Fortunately, our surveys yielded a – hopefully – full account of the rock art at El Vagón (Van Hoek 2019), which – inexplicably – was ignored by Ventura. Yet I find it important to alert rock art communities by publishing this short report now. Hopefully it will put an end to further unwanted exploitation and destruction of the area.
Unfortunately, not having seen the damage in the field myself, I can only guess how many (and which) decorated boulders have either been damaged, displaced, disturbed or even completely destroyed. The boulders that possibly suffered this fate have been marked with red squares in Figure 3, while yellow-square-boulders most likely survived. If indeed a large number of boulders has been destroyed (see Figure 3), it is fortunate that we fully surveyed the site prior to this violation and compiled a provisional inventory, which was published two years later (full details and illustrations are available in Van Hoek 2019). This issue proves how important it is to survey any rock art site and make a detailed and fully illustrated inventory.
Figure 2: Maps showing the extent of the petroglyph boulder field of El Vagón as surveyed intermittently by us from 2006 to 2017 (#4 and yellow frame) and the extent of the violated area at the SE end of El Vagón (#5 and red frame). The blue arrows: Quebrada de las Guitarras; the light-brown arrow: Quebrada El Vagón. Further features include: #1 The ancient Cupisnique road indicating the route to Alto de La Guitarra; #2 The low, modern wall protecting the ugly chicken-farms; #3 The modern access road (#5) serving the violated area. Maps © by Maarten van Hoek, based on Google Earth.
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Figure 3: Map of the location of the decorated boulders (all locations approximated) at El Vagón (recorded by us up to 2017). Map © by Maarten van Hoek, based on Google Earth.
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Not only rock art will most likely have been damaged by the mining activities, also the so-called “geoglyph” (an [ancient?] construction of low boulders forming two concentric rings (Figure 4; its location indicated by a red ring in Figure 3 and a green arrow in Figure 2) was nearly destroyed, but seems to have survived (but only just) up to 2022. Its fate and the general situation after 2022 is unknown to me. Just north of the “geoglyph” is (was?) a group of four boulders with petroglyphs (VAG-011-014 in Figure 4), all described in Van Hoek 2019.
Figure 4. View from the southern tip of Cerro del Vagón across the purported “geoglyph” and the Alluvial Deposit (with petroglyph boulders VAG-015-020) towards the NE running Quebrada El Vagón beyond. Photograph © Elles van Hoek.
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The possibly very old tracks crossing the Alluvial Deposit (red arrows in Figure 3) no doubt will have been destroyed as well. Also a possibly ancient U-shaped construction (indicated with a yellow circle in Figure 3) seems to have been destroyed. I am pretty sure that no official archaeological survey has been carried out prior to the start of the mining activities. If such a survey had been carried out, permission would never have been granted. It is therefore essential to first check the damage, restore as much as possible (if possible), and to prevent further damaging activities at El Vagón and at the other rock art sites in this valley.
Figure 5. The petroglyph of Boulder VAG-006 at Cerro el Vagón, now most likely destroyed. Photograph and drawing © by Maarten van Hoek.
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Reference
Van Hoek, M. 2019. The Rock Art of El Vagón. Moche Drainage, Peru. In: TRACCE – Online Rock Art Bulletin, Italy.
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION
