Collaborative Research: Human-Environment Interactions in the Lower Jequetepeque Valley, Peru

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In this collaborative research project Drs. Alan Kolata and Thomas Dillehay will lead a scientific team to study the prehistory and paleoecology of the lower Jequetepeque Valley in northern Peru. Working in an arid coastal region which saw the rise of pre-Hispanic civilization, the group wishes to analyze long-term social processes of urbanization and economic diversification and to specify the pathways and mechanisms through which these transformative human processes interacted within a dynamic physical environment. To accomplish these goals the team will reconstruct how regional environmental conditions in the Jequetepeque Valley varied over time, how urbanized human populations responded to this environmental variation, and how, in turn, underlying ecological processes and regional environments were altered by large-scale human actions mediated through the urban system. In this first phase of the research a first principal objective will be a full-coverage archaeological survey of the lower valley followed by limited test excavations in domestic contexts of residential sites and in selected agricultural features. The group will analyze aerial photographs of the lower valley to identify natural microenvironmental zones, architectural complexes, irrigation networks, reservoirs, roads and other salient features. A fundamental objective of this aspect of the work will be to establish a site typology based on size, function and proximity to natural resources and it will serve to establish the basic characteristics of the settlement pattern. The simultaneous paleoenvironmental aspect of the project will focus on two goals: 1. a geomorphological and landscape analysis of the valley and 2. a paleolimnological analysis of lakes within the watershed and adjacent highlands. These data will permit reconstruction of spatial and temporal changes in the environments exploited by human populations over the past 1500 years. Early urban societies in Peru were locally based and did not transport foods and other agricultural projects over long distances. Thus they had no strong mechanisms for buffering local environmental effects and the ties between environmental change and social response were extremely tight. This northern region of Peru saw the rise of urban society and its subsequent decline. This phenomenon can only be understood in an environmental context and this project, through its focus on both human and natural variables should significantly increase understanding of the processes which underlie the rise, and in some cases subsequent declines, of civilization.