Chavín de Huántar, in the Andes of north-central Peru, was the religious center of the Chavín culture, which flourished in the first millennium BCE, long before the Inca. Its stone temple is riddled with underground galleries, and at the heart of the oldest of them stands the Lanzón, a carved granite monolith that was the temple's principal cult image. Pilgrims are thought to have traveled long distances to consult the oracle here, and the temple's carved stone sculpture spread the Chavín style across much of Peru. The site became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985.
A project team from the University of California, Berkeley traveled to Chavín to digitally preserve the site. The goal was to support and supplement archaeological research being conducted by Stanford University, with the new data becoming the foundation for an on-site conservation plan.
