Building Resilience: Archaeological Landscapes, Climate Anomalies, and Risk Mitigation on the North Coast of Peru, 1100 BCE-present.

FAIN: RFW-299388-24

Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN 37203-2416)
Ari Caramanica (Project Director: September 2023 to present)

Archaeological and ethnographic research investigating pre-Columbian flood management features, and how small-scale Peruvian farmers today use these relic landscapes, especially during severe floods associated with El Niño years. (36 months) 

Climate change is placing more communities in the direct paths of natural hazards, but archaeological landscapes may be able to help mitigate these risks. The farming communities of the north coast of Peru are periodically impacted by destructive floods, known as El Niño events. In response to inundated crops, some smallholder farmers have been observed moving into the dry, marginal drainages outside of the irrigated valley floor to set up temporary fields. However, these are not empty landscapes: prehispanic forms of floodwater management infrastructure traverse these drainages. This Project will investigate how archaeological dams, diversion canals, and reservoirs create refugia on the landscape during flood events and how local farmers from nearby towns come to know how to utilize such landscapes as a form of climate resilience. An imminent El Niño season in spring 2024, provides the rare opportunity to directly observe both landscape and smallholder responses to these flood events.