Now 26, she recalls treasure hunting as a child — hiding away pieces of ceramic pots, textile scraps and even human bones.

“Lima is full of places like this,” she said.

The pyramid is just one of thousands of historic sites, or “huacas,” that are being crowded out or destroyed as roads, schools, residential neighborhoods and stadiums are built to meet the population’s growing demands.

High-rise apartment buildings tower around one site. Highway traffic barrels through a pair of tunnels newly burrowed under an adobe palace at a 900-year-old cemetery.