The Tacahuay Legacy: Landscape Modification and Reuse on the South Coast of Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments " session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Tacahuay Quebrada has a long geologic history of flood events, as well as human occupation. Around 12,000 years ago, early inhabitants lived along the coastline of this landscape. Through time, people moved away from the ocean to settle along the channel, floodplain, and elevated terraces of the quebrada. In 2022, the IMEND archaeological project investigated the fourteenth-century Miraflores Event at Tacahuay Tambo. This presentation will discuss the history of use and reuse of the floodplain through time. Survey and excavations conducted in the main and northern channel of the Tacahuay Tambo drainage recovered artifacts from precontact to colonial periods. Additionally, excavations of the fields and remote sensing data uncovered a history of reshaping the landscape by both geological events (like El Niño floods) and humans. These changes have turned the Tacahuay landscape into a complex record of human history. Ultimately, this research addresses how dynamic landscapes become legacy landscapes through human modification and memory.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Living Landscapes: Disaster, Memory, and Change in Dynamic Environments   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36925.0