Walter Alva

In 1987, Alva was called by police to investigate a site at Sipán, where huaqueros (grave robbers) had stolen artifacts from an archaeological site. Despite being ill with bronchitis, he made the trip. The robbers had discovered a crypt of a lord, filled with jewels and gold, and Alva knew it was significant.^[2] Alva did most of the excavating without delay, as he was concerned that robbers might come back and cause more damage. As a result, he started digging without any funding or the support of the area police, with matters made worse as the result of the primary robber being killed by police.^[2]

After further digging, Alva found, among other things, the undamaged body of a Moche lord.^[3] From these finds, he and other scholars were able to determine that Huaca Rajada, a group of three pyramids once thought to belong to the later Chimú culture, were a part of Moche culture.^[3] The findings were later described by the National Geographic Society as the richest intact pre-Columbian tomb in the Western Hemisphere.^[4]

During many of these years, Alva was the director of the Bruning Archaeological Museum in Lambayeque, Peru.

In 2007, Alva discovered murals at a 4,000-year-old Peruvian temple in Ventarron. The murals, showing a deer caught in a net, are considered the oldest murals in the Americas.^[3] Alva determined their age by the process of carbon dating.^[5] The construction material that was used at the temple was not primitive.^[6] As a result, Alva was able to show that the civilization was able to spread farther than originally thought.^[3] He worked on the dig with his son Ignacio, who is also an archaeologist.^[7]

• 1990, the Orden El Sol del Peru was awarded to Alva.^[1]
• 2015, Alva won the Esteban Campodónico Prize in the area of outstanding professional activity in service to Peruvian society.^[8]