Under the direction of Dr. Timothy Earle, Mr. Banks Leonard will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. Building on previous fieldwork in the region, he will conduct an intensive survey of the Chicama Valley in northern coastal Peru to locate and examine Chimu and Inka archaeological sites. The work has three phases. First, Mr. Leonard will employ air photographs to locate large formal sites. He will then study these on the ground through mapping and surface collection. Extant above-ground architecture will be carefully described and photographed. Secondly, an intensive surface survey of a 2 km. wide transect in each of three areas will be conducted to locate smaller sites. They will be dated and their functions determined. Finally, Mr. Leonard will trace and map major irrigation canal systems to reconstruct prehistoric agricultural practices and trace their development over time. The arid inhospitable coast of Peru saw the rise of several kingdoms before the arrival of the Spanish. The Chicama Valley documents two of these: the Chimu state which developed locally and a later Inka empire which was externally imposed and extended from Bolivia to Argentina. Archaeologists are interested in how states arise and are maintained and what types of variation among them may exist. Because environment and geography may be controlled, the Chicama Valley provides an excellent locale to examine this issue. Preliminary work by Leonard indicates that large numbers of sites (many unstudied by archaeologists) are present and that the dry desert environment has resulted in excellent preservation of cultural remains. Mr. Leonard posits a number of hypotheses about how control of this region may have been maintained and the archaeological data will allow him to test these. This research is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists. It will increase our understanding of how complex societies arise and are maintained. It will also further the training of an extremely promising young scientist.
