Quitu culture

The bodies were accompanied by highly refined grave goods of textiles, shells and metals, as well as drink and food for the afterlife.

Both men and women were buried in a squatting position, wrapped in cloth and with decorated ponchos, some featuring refined, carved Spondylus shells, which were acquired by Quitu trade from the Manta culture along the Pacific coast.

The shells were highly valued by Native Americans and exported throughout the trading networks of South America, as they have been found in Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia and even present-day Mexico.

The museum includes constructed figures of a Quitu man and woman (the latter's face was created by forensic techniques from a skull excavated at the site.)

The woman wears clothing as found in the tombs: "a poncho covered with small buttons carved from Spondylus shell and snails, as well as silverware such as earrings, pins, necklaces, hunting darts and rattles".

This however does not confirm the existence of the semi-legendary kingdom of Quito and is only archeological evidence for an independent Quitu culture with no united political entity in the region.

[1] He cited three lost documents as his sources, the existence of which has not been confirmed: "Las dos líneas de los Incas y de los Scyris, señores del Cuzco, y del Quito," by Fray Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan who accompanied Sebastián Benalcázar's conquest of Quito in 1533; "Las antigüedades del Perú," by Melchor Bravo de Saravia, an oidor (judge) of Lima; and "Guerras civiles del Inca Atahualpa con su hermano Atoco, llamado comúnmente Huáscar-Inca," by Jacinto Collahuaso, an eighteenth-century cacique of Ibarra (north of Quito).

[5] Several historians such as Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño and Alfredo Pareja Diezcanseco contest that the Scyris existed and that they were related to the Inca.

There is no archeological evidence indicating any kind of cultural and political unity, the sites found rather hinting at regional states.