The Cusichaca Archive: History, Contents and Research Potential

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Legacies of Archaeologists in the Andes: Second Symposium, the Institutionalization and Internationalization of Andean Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In 1977, Dr Ann Kendall established the Cusichaca Trust, registered in the UK, to oversee her archaeological project work. Today the Cusichaca Archive documents forty continuous years of one of the largest multi-disciplinary projects ever mounted in the Peruvian Andes. Beginning with archaeological excavation in the Cusichaca valley near Machu Picchu, the Trust’s involvement expanded to include ethnography, ethno-history, and environmental studies. The Trust pioneered ‘Applied Archaeology’–initial archaeological investigation leading to collaboration with local farming communities in the restoration and re-use of pre-Hispanic systems of irrigation canals and agricultural terraces. Success here led to similar commitments across a wider area. The paper will summarize Cusichaca’s history and the work of London University’s Senate House Library to accession, describe, digitize and secure the long-term legacy of the Trust’s work. Most of the manuscripts, typescripts, maps, thousands of photographs, and extensive primary field records remain unexplored and unpublished. The Library has pioneered an approach involving student archivists from Ann Kendall’s alma mater University College London, to process and accession the archive, using the records as teaching material and completing the structuring and cataloging using a dedicated Project Archivist before running a competition to provide the records in digital form.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• The Legacies of Archaeologists in the Andes: Second Symposium, the Institutionalization and Internationalization of Andean Archaeology

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23640