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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Peru

Daniel A. Contreras

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Huaqueros And Remote Sensing Imagery: Assessing Looting Damage In The Virú Valley, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras Dec 2009

Huaqueros And Remote Sensing Imagery: Assessing Looting Damage In The Virú Valley, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras

Daniel A. Contreras

This article presents a new initiative in combating looting from the air, building on previous work in Iraq and Jordan. Looted sites in the Virú Valley, Peru, are visible as pit clusters on dated versions of Google Earth. Compare these with earlier air photographs and Gordon Willey's famous survey of the 1940s, and we have a dated chronicle of looting events. This makes it possible to demonstrate that modern looting is certainly taking place and linked to an upsurge in the antiquities trade. As well as being a new instrument for managing heritage, the author shows that the looting survey …


Reconstructing Landscape At Chavin De Huantar, Peru : A Gis-Based Approach, Daniel A. Contreras Dec 2008

Reconstructing Landscape At Chavin De Huantar, Peru : A Gis-Based Approach, Daniel A. Contreras

Daniel A. Contreras

The landscape around the prehistoric Peruvian ceremonial center of Chavin de Huantar has undergone extensive geomorphic and anthropogenic change since the beginning of monumental construction at the site in approximately 1200 BCE. Archaeological and geomorphic stratigraphy from the site and its near periphery provide the data necessary to characterize these changes in detail. This paper reports on the use of GIS-based interpolation tools to approximate a complex prehistoric land surface using unevenly scattered point data. Such an interpolated surface serves as the basis for the reconstruction of the pre- Chavin landscape and assessment of landscape change contemporary with the site.


Sociopolitical And Geomorphologic Dynamics At Chavín De Huántar, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras Aug 2007

Sociopolitical And Geomorphologic Dynamics At Chavín De Huántar, Peru, Daniel A. Contreras

Daniel A. Contreras

The research presented here links questions of human-environment interaction and emergent sociopolitical complexity in the context of the Central Andean Formative Period, at the early monumental center of Chavín de Huántar. Recent work in the monumental core of Chavín has focused more on architecture than environment, leading to the development of a model of “built authority” at Chavín—a vision of monumental construction and ritual practice at the site as part of a carefully designed elite project of naturalizing social inequality and elite authority. My work links this local approach to sociopolitical dynamics at Chavín with broad-based approaches to Andean human-environment …