Ithaca College

Michael Malpass (Anthropology) presented a paper entitled "Incidences of Travel in the Preceramic: Site Preservation Issues" at the 29th Northeast Conference on Andean Archaeology and Ethnohistory, held at Drew University on October 22-24.

 

The paper discussed how recent visits to three regions of Peru show significant site destruction from different sources.  In Arequipa, urbanization is destroying sites through bulldozing and construction.  In Camana, garbage disposal and burning are destroying sites that could shed light on the earliest occupations of western South America.  In Casma, local people are taking grinding stones from sites and driving four wheel drive vehicles across the sites, damaging them. Discussion revolved around how extensive this problem is and possible means of stopping or slowing down the destruction.