(CNN)Almost 200 examples of human spines threaded onto reed posts have been discovered in Peru, revealing a unique way of treating the dead that has never previously been documented in the region, according to a new study.
An international team of researchers working in the Chincha Valley, on Peru's southern coast, found the majority of the "vertebrae-on-posts" in large Indigenous graves known as "chullpas," which date back hundreds of years to around the time that European colonizers were present in the South American country.
Of the 192 spines found on posts in the region, archaeologists found that, in almost every case, they were made from the remains of a single individual, according to the study published Tuesday in the archaeology journal Antiquity.
