PAST AND FUTURE RESPONSES TO ENSO IN PERU’S CHICAMA VALLEY: MAPPING DISASTER ANDMITIGATION
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2020-11-26

Episodic climatic perturbations like the el Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) have long been linked with disastrous environmental events and social collapse. Integrating archaeology with climatic and palaeoclimatic clarifies the relationships between environmental disasters and social responses, both to understand past events as well as to anticipate the impacts of future ones in increasingly unstable climates. During 2016 – 2017, a strong ENSO warm phase struck Peru’s north coast. Remote sensing combined reveals the extent of disasters associated with this event and their effect on modern communities. These effects were spatially-heterogeneous effects. Flash flooding and mass wasting occurred in the main portions of the Chicama Valley, affecting irrigation intakes, fields, and monumental sites. However, rainfall along the desert margins led to localized groundwater features. Comparison of these data with archaeological settlement patterns, however, reveals that different agricultural production strategies were used in various portions of the valley: large-systems infrastructure such as canal-fed irrigation agriculture was used in portions of the valley that were vulnerable to mass wasting. In contrast, small spring- and well-fed agriculture was practiced in the desert margins. Sites in the Pampa Mocan and similar areas indicate they were cultivated in the past. Ephemeral groundwater in the past may have enabled opportunistic but small scale agriculture, buffering risk to larger, centralized productive systems. This has important implications for environmental disaster not being an all-or-nothing proposition, but affecting different socio-economic elements variably. These results have implications not only for heritage preservation in the events of extreme climatic events, but suggest that past land use evidenced in archaeological sites can inform future mitigation strategies in response to climatic perturbations.


Author(s): Vining, Benjamin (University of Arkansas)