Advancing the Study of Alto Piura’s Past: New Perspectives on the Archaeology of the Cerro Vicus Region

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Life on the Edge: Investigations in the Department of Piura, the “Extreme North” of the Central Andes, Peru" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Piura region in far northern Peru burst into the spotlight with the looting of sites that produced a dazzling new ceramic style and intricate metalwork that set the art market abuzz. These artifacts, later dubbed Vicus and Frîas, were named after the regions they were believed to originate from.

A geographical and cultural frontier zone, initial archaeological efforts in the Upper/Alto Piura valley around Cerro Vicus were limited, yet they uncovered tantalizing evidence of at least 2,000 years of continuous occupation. Excitingly, these discoveries suggest a temporal overlap in Vicus and Moche material culture in the area in the first millennium.

Embarking on new fieldwork in the area, we quickly encountered complex challenges in documenting and describing these sites. This paper dives into our journey of crafting a research program that builds on collecting histories, looting histories, and previous archaeological studies while tackling the intricate issues of terminology and chronology that have long confounded the region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Life on the Edge: Investigations in the Department of Piura, the “Extreme North” of the Central Andes, Peru

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52088