Life on the Edge: Investigations in the Department of Piura, the “Extreme North” of the Central Andes, Peru

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Life on the Edge: Investigations in the Department of Piura, the “Extreme North” of the Central Andes, Peru" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the Central Andes, the extreme northern department of Piura remains one of the least-known archaeologically. Until the 1990s, the unresolved conflict between the modern nations of Peru and Ecuador made research in the borderland departments difficult. This further encouraged interpretation of the area as a zone of cultural differentiation with roots deep into prehistory. Due to the general lack of projects in the region, scholars have characterized Piura as an “artificial buffer zone of ignorance” and “[un espacio] aún desconocido”. Fortunately, with the implementation of a peace treaty between Peru and Ecuador, Peruvian and international archaeologists have started new projects in the past decade, covering a wide variety of temporal and spatial zones within the department. This symposium aims to re-evaluate our understanding of prehistoric Piuran societies in light of this new data. By bringing together active researchers in this borderland region, this symposium will assess the spatial and temporal (dis)continuities in cultural materials and lifeways necessary for the creation of relative chronologies and deep history of the “edge” of the Central Andes while emphasizing the understanding of Piura as a region of study in its own right.