At the end of 2019, after an intense process of reorganizing its collections and establishing Collection Management Protocols, the El Brujo Archaeological Complex set the goal of inventorying all the movable cultural assets under its care. To achieve this, a digital collection management platform was designed, allowing specialists to document cultural assets directly from excavation, inventory, catalog, input technical information from conservation interventions, generate microclimatic reports, automatically create labels, among other functions that systematize and facilitate processes related to the collections.

However, in 2020, all work came to a halt due to the global pandemic which, among other things, forced the Wiese Foundation to develop new strategies for engaging with El Brujo’s audiences. This dark period for museums across the country highlighted the great importance of cultural heritage management and emergency protocols, the need for minimum organizational standards, as well as the value of digital inventories and catalogs freely accessible to the public.

In 2021, inventory work was resumed, though only partially, due to the need to continue monitoring and conserving the collections that had been reorganized in previous years. By 2022, the inventory was fully resumed under the leadership of Rubén Buitrón, head of the El Brujo Archaeological Complex laboratory.

A total of 39,415 cultural assets make up the collection safeguarded at El Brujo, including ceramics, textiles, botanical material, funerary bundles, and more than a dozen other evidence lines, among which are the mummy of the Lady of Cao and all the objects recovered from her funerary context. All of these cultural assets are the product of more than three decades of archaeological research at El Brujo. Today, a large part of the collections can be freely consulted at: https://www.elbrujo.pe/catalogo/.

In this way, the Wiese Foundation concludes a key stage in the preservation and management of the archaeological heritage under its care, establishing the foundations for democratizing access to the El Brujo collections, as well as for generating new projects in service of the community at large.

Archaeologists and Conservators

The Wiese Foundation thanks the excellent team of archaeologists and conservators who participated in this ambitious project, which was successfully completed on October 7.

Augusto Bazán | Director of Research, CAEB

Rubén Buitrón | Head of Laboratory, CAEB

José Alva | Field Archaeologist, CAEB

Merly Rosas | Laboratory Assistant, CAEB

Contracted professionals for the project

Carlos Fuentes | Archaeologist

Yuriko García | Archaeologist

Katherine Albornoz | Archaeologist

Helen Chavarría | Archaeologist

Edson Palomino | Archaeologist

Elio Pérez | Archaeologist

Eder Castro | Archaeologist

Abigaíl Paulino | Conservator

Leslie Zúñiga | Conservator