Giving Form to Flow: Modeling Paleohydrology in North-Central Coastal Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In coastal Andean archaeology, long-standing interest in water and cultural dynamics is intensifying, especially with diminishing glacial water supplies in the coast’s headwater regions. However, archaeologists who have hinged their hypotheses on the availability or management of water resources have frequently overlooked or disregarded the non-linear ways that past variability in upstream climate, land use, and water management influenced coastal water flows. Developing this broader context requires grounding in hydrologic principles beyond the expertise of most archaeologists but is imperative as research increasingly turns to the complex dynamics between social and hydrologic systems. I present a conceptual model for coastal paleohydrology that is generalizable to north-central Peru. I incorporate spatial and hydrologic techniques to operationalize portions of the model that are suitable for analysis with commonly available data for these valleys and their headwater regions: terrain data, modern and paleo climate records, and archaeological settlement and land-use patterns. Using the Supe Valley in the Late Preceramic period as a case study, I test various scenarios to evaluate how well current hypotheses for the mid-valley intensification of agriculture during this period account for the broader hydrologic contexts generated from the model.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32997