2018-01-06 A.Guenerich (Vanderbilt) Chachapoyas
Channel: Archaeological Research Facility, UC Berkeley
Date: 23/01/2020

This Lecture was presented on Jan 6, 2018 as the Institute of Andean Studies Public Lecture in Berkeley, CA.
ANNA GUENGERICH (Vanderbilt University)
Where mountain and forest meet: Toward a history of people and landscape in the Eastern Andes of Chachapoyas
The Eastern Andean cloud forest has long been seen as a place where humans and landscapes have an uneasy relationship. In the environmental sciences, any human presence was long seen as a potential risk to one of the most fragile ecosystems on earth, while archaeology held that the tropical forests and mountainous terrain of this area prevented the development of large and complex societies. Emerging research in areas such as Chachapoyas, however, challenges these environmentally determinist paradigms and demonstrates the need to re-evaluate the long-term relationships between humans and landscapes in the Eastern Andes. Initial results of survey, excavation, and digital modeling from the Proyecto Arqueológico Tambillo reveal a complex system of mountaintop towns, mortuary spaces, and agricultural terraces inhabited between the Early Intermediate Period and the early 16th century. At its largest, the site complex of Tambillo may have been home to some seven to ten thousand people. These data demonstrate that indigenous groups developed large, complex, and potentially sustainable patterns of settlement, and they invite further study of how a series of different political formations shaped local cloud forest landscapes over time.
http://instituteofandeanstudies.org