From the Highlands to the Coast: Preliminary Results of the PERU LNG Archaeological Project

Abstract

The PERU LNG Archaeological Project is one of the largest archaeological projects in the history of Peru. As a result, a full description of the results of the Project is obviously beyond the scope of this paper. This task is further complicated by the fact that although the fieldwork is complete, the artifact analyses are only just beginning. Although the data that will eventually result from the Project are far from complete, adequate data now exist to summarize the settlement pattern of the Pipeline Project Area. Settlement pattern studies have been an integral part of archaeological investigations into the past lifeways of Andean societies ever since Gordon Willey published the results of his survey of the Viru Valley in 1953. Most of these settlement pattern investigations, however, only cover an environmentally circumscribed area such as a coastal river valley or intermontane valley. Andean archaeologists have been interested in comparing the settlement patterns of different elevation zones since at least 1968, when John Murra first presented his vertical archipelago model (see also Murra 1972). Few archaeological surveys, however, cover more than one or two of the Peru's eight "natural regions" as defined on the basis of elevation by Peruvian geographer Javier Pulgar Vidal in 1940 (see also Pulgar Vidal 1946). The Archaeological Project, on the other hand, has resulted in the investigation of every identifiable archaeological site, regardless of size and type, within a 50-meter-wide and 408-kilometer-long transect that crosses six of these natural regions (Figure 1). The Project will therefore result in unprecedented comparative data concerning the settlement pattern of Peru's various regions.