Paleoclimate, Landscape Evolution, and the Transformations of Prehistoric Agricultural Technology in the Western Lake Titicaca Basin, Peru

University Of Arizona, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Working at the intersection of three disciplines-paleoclimatology, which attempts to understand the causal forces of climate change, fluvial geomorphology, which seeks to understand how landscapes change and evolve under different climatic conditions, and archaeology, which places humans into this dynamic environment and searches for patterns of how humans respond to climatic variability, Dr. Mark Aldenderfer and his colleagues will conduct two seasons of archaeological research in the Rio Ramis drainage of the Lake Titicaca basin of southwestern Peru investigating how agricultural systems in this harsh, high elevation environment developed through time. The project will examine in detail three specific research questions on this general theme: 1) the timing of the origins of plant cultivation and its location; 2) the timing of the origins and the initial scale of raised field/q'ocha agricultural systems; and 3) the resilience of raised field systems to draught and increasingly arid conditions. Within each of these questions, his research team has posed a set of competing hypotheses that can be evaluated with archeological data generated by an intensive program of full-coverage survey, surface collection, and an extensive testing program of sites and landscape features directed by geophysical survey. One of the most important and exciting features of this project is the close interaction of scholars from different scientific disciplines who have crafted detailed research questions of broad importance and who will work together closely in both the field and laboratory seeking answers to them. The kinds of data to be created by this interaction include a high-resolution, well-dated, record of paleoclimatic change in the western Lake Titicaca basin for the past 12,000 years. The implications of these data go far beyond the Titicaca basin, because they will necessarily involve consideration of regional and global-scale forces that give rise to climatic change. It will also generate new sedimentological and geomorphological data that can be used to create a basin-wide model of fluvial evolution in the context of regional climate change. This model will be valuable as a case study of landscape evolution in a complex, arid, high elevation environment, one that may be extended to similar environments in other regions of the world, such as the Tibetan plateau. Finally, it will provide archaeologists with a fuller understanding of the natural forces that shaped landscape evolution and with new archaeological data that will begin to fill the very serious gaps in our knowledge of the prehistory of the western Lake Titicaca basin on the origins and transformations of agricultural technologies. Among its broader impacts are its promotion of teaching, training and learning by building new partnerships among universities and disciplines. It will promote the integration of research and education by involving both undergraduate and graduate students in research. Each member of the research team will encourage participating students to work directly with every aspect of the project, enabling them to obtain a richer experience than would be possible by working only within a single discipline. Finally, the problems this project addresses and the data that will be produced are directly relevant to research initiatives sponsored by the National Science Foundation and other granting agencies worldwide that seek to understand both natural climate variability and the human impact of global climatic change using the combined paleoclimatological and archaeological record--goals with direct societal relevance.