It arranged burial of the head on 10 April 1964, together with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head.

A five-foot-long brocaded cloth, which was once wrapped around a Peruvian mummy, is decorated with six deities holding flutes.

The head was placed in a plywood box, along with a Peruvian mummy and a Māori head, and buried in Everton Cemetery's General Section 16, grave number 296.

Before this it was thought that Peruvian mummies were naturally preserved.

She'd been here countless times, assisting in examinations of everything from Peruvian mummies to Anasazi cliff dwellers, and the door had never been locked before.

Robert Rosenblum, an art historian who wrote one of the catalogue essays, says that the too-familiar head might have been inspired by a Peruvian mummy acquired in 1880 by Paris's ethnographic museum.

However the disease appeared, it had settled into the bodies of prehistoric Americans like the Peruvian mummy, sometimes damaging their bones and leaving scars on their lungs.

"It not only gives us an opportunity to show what is not normally on exhibit," said Ms. Bossolo, the public affairs director, who chose "a really funky Peruvian mummy."

The remains of coca leaves have been found with ancient Peruvian mummies, and pottery from the time period depicts humans with bulged cheeks, indicating the presence of something on which they are chewing.

A large wormian bone at lambda is often called an Inca bone (Os Incae), due to the relatively high frequency of occurrence in Peruvian mummies.