prospects: archaeological research and practice in peru

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Prospects: archaeological research andpractice in PeruKevin Lane∗

The following comments reect on the present state of Peruvian-led research archaeology and its prospects for the future, from the viewpoint of a friend, colleague but notably asan outsider. As such this piece is informed by both personal experience and the informedopinions of local Peruvian investigators who, for reasons that will become apparent, haveopted for anonymity. The essential premise here is that the intellectual and nancial basis of archaeology in Peru is at a critical stage, and a major part of this article is to see how the nextgeneration can negotiate this quagmire; and believe me for all the myriad problems there

are important rays of light that could signicantly and positively alter the state of Peruvianarchaeology. With this in mind, in this brief essay I consider the research environment,the theoretical basis, and the means by which research projects and resource mitigation arecarried out, and summarise some of the challenges that archaeologists living and working inPeru now face. A recent, thorough treatise of the history and state of Peruvian archaeology can be found in Shimada and Vega-Centeno (2011).

Research environment

Institutionally, there are four state-funded universities that provide a grounding inarchaeology, these being the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo (UNT), the UniversidadNacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (UNSAAC), the Universidad Nacional FedericoVillareal (UNFV) and the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM); theselast two are based in Lima. Other public universities exist that purport to teach archaeology but really these programmes are geared towards incentivising tourism and the tourist-driven heritage sector. State universities are very poorly funded adding signicantly to theirinability to compete at an international research level. The other principal player is theprivate university, Ponticia Universidad Catolica del Peru (PUCP) which is funded moregenerously than its state counterparts, has the resources to compete in some way at aninternational level, and has assumed the mantle of elite university, long-since discarded by the UNMSM (Burga 2003).

The parlous state of publically-funded universities has already been commented uponin an earlier article (Matos Mendieta & Bonavia1992) and matters do not seem to haveadvanced much since then. An existential problem for Peruvian scholars at state universitiesseems to be their inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to emerge from under the shadow of the great post-1950s generation of archaeologists. These stalwarts came archaeologically of age in the 1960s and 1970s bringing New Archaeology, Marxist perspectives and a more

∗ Institut f¨ ur Pr¨ ahistorische Arch¨ aologie, Freie Universit¨ at Berlin, Altensteinstrasse 15, Berlin 14195, Germany (Email: [email protected])

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Prospects: archaeological research and practice in Peru

rigorous eld methodology to bear. Although entirely commendable, during the subsequentpolitical, economic and cultural crisis of the 1980s and 1990s Peru stied much discourseat state universities. These institutions became the targets for a repressive governmentalapparatus and were themselves riven by internal strife (Sandoval Lopez 2002), the socialsciences and humanities suffered particularly. In this climate of fear it is not surprising that a whole generation of archaeologists was quite patently lost; army-occupied universities withcowered academics discouraged intellectual foment, whilst the wholesale abandonment of foreign-led and nanced archaeological excavations shut an important avenue for aspiringnew researchers to grind their intellectual nous.

Whilst state universities experienced state repression, the PUCP carried on regardless.The PUCP naturally attracts a different prole of student to that of the state universities,these being middle- to upper-class students, privately funded and generally more socially and politically conservative. Therefore, although the cost of an education at the PUCP canbe prohibitive for many of Peru’s poorer social strata, it does provide a much more thorough

grounding in archaeology. A more open selection system for lecturers and professors providesfor a more vibrant and informed approach to archaeology that is aided by a wider network of links with international bodies and universities. As a negative corollary, it does meanthat money rather than intellect (the UNMSM still maintains a strict exam driven entry requirement) is a primary admittance factor in most cases, although subsidised students doexist. It is also a harrowing premonition of the inequalities that a pay-as-you-go educationcan create within a society and serves as a timely caveat to what is happening in the UK with the move towards creeping privatisation of the education sector. However, it is mainly,though not exclusively, from the ranks of the PUCP that Peru’s research archaeologists areemerging to challenge the status quo.

Theoretical background Beholden, in the past, to the United States for its theoretical and methodological compass,Peruvian archaeology has continued as an adjunct, mostly replicating a barely concealedcolonial submissiveness within its research agenda. There was a brief urry of post-colonialactivity and theoretical posturing in the form of Latin American Social Archaeology in the1960s and 1970s, aimed largely at engendering social betterment through an applicationof Marxist teachings; but this has generally lapsed back to a client relationship in which to

get ahead one has to ape the intellectual diktats of export-brand United States archaeology (Patterson 1994; Benavides2001; Politis 2003). Attempts at reviving social archaeology are lacklustre and derivative, yet some Peruvians are still waiting, most probably in vain,for a consolidation and re-engagement with this wholly Latin American theoretical trend(Tantalean 2006). Others meanwhile just lament the general lack of dened theoreticalperspectives in Peruvian archaeological research articles (Monteverde Sotil 2008–2009).

Peru’s intellectual introversion therefore has two singular aspects to it: on the one handan isolationist approach to its own archaeology centred around the simple fact of its richheritage; and on the other a reluctance to advance beyond the academic achievements of thepost-1950s generation of Peruvian archaeologists specically and the US inspired theoreticalparadigms of the 1960s and 1970s generally. Although previously the studied cultures wereC Antiquity Publications Ltd.

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those that could be felt to properly reect an assumed national ethos or ethnogenesis of being quintessentially Peruvian (Tantalean 2008), nowadays these blinkers inhibit the study of cultures that in the past transcended the present-day national borders.

Research projectsGiven this, it is not surprising that Peruvians concentrate their archaeological efforts onthe Inka, increasingly the Moche, and to a much lesser extent Chav ın, Nasca, Wari, Ichmaand Chimu. The prevalence of these cultures in the extant Peruvian written literature canbe gauged by a quick perusal of journals such asArqueologıa y Sociedad, Arqueol´ ogicas andthe French-backed Bolet ´ ın del Instituto Franc ´ es de Estudios Andinos . Also, interestingly, themajority of these cultures existed or occupied areas along, or near, the coast, which hasled some to bemoan the prevalence of so-called ‘Panamericana Highway archaeology’ (thePanamericana is the major coastal motorway along the western edge of Peru from the Chilean

to the Ecuadorian frontier). Work along the Panamericana and other easily accessible areassuch as the circum-Titicaca basin betrays a certain reluctance to engage in research inlogistically difcult areas such as the jungle and more remote areas of the highlands. Thesituation has thus matured into a state in which we know a considerable amount about asmall number of places and cultures in Peru.

Money, or lack of it, is the single issue inhibiting the development of home-grown researchprojects. Unlike in Mexico or Argentina, state-backed research is very limited in Peru, and when available it is restricted to a few high value projects. In Argentina, for instance,the CONICET is a state administered body that allocates research funding, making fora thriving scientic environment. There is nothing comparable in Peru. Although Peru’sThird World status would seem to preclude state funding, it is important to note that thecountry is fth within South American GDP scales and ftieth overall in the world (CIA World Factbook 2011). Taking into consideration the immensity and value of Peru’s culturalheritage, it seems a serious lapse.

Most major research projects are funded by overseas organisations, either through eldschools or foreign bodies such as the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Ford Foundation or theNationalGeographic Conservation Trust. TheInstitute of NationalCulture (INC) stipulatesthat all foreign archaeological missions have an INC approved Peruvian co-director (INC2000: Article 30). Although laudable, this can have the effect of reducing Peruvians to a

subservient technical role. These projects though have the advantage of scientic nancialbacking. For instance, absolute dating is still prohibitively expensive to the majority of Peruvian and South American scholars, which has a schismatic effect on interpretation. Academic discourse undertaken on the basis of solely radiometric data runs the real risk of even more effectively marginalising local academic discourse (contra Silverman2004). At the same time, in our wish to see absolute dating as a Holy Grail, we should be wary of the inherent problems of an over-reliance on absolute dating without consideration of archaeological context (Bayliss2009: 129; see also Figini2007).

For students and young researchers, other than those able to secure a postgraduate place inthe United States or elsewhere (and with it access to external funding opportunities), backingfor autochthonous research in Peru is severely restricted. Some research, mostlynon-intrusive

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survey, is undertaken by students for their nal graduation thesis but this is of a limitednature. Otherwise the most that young researchers can aspire to is to work as freelancers in,usually foreign-led, archaeological missions to Peru, or as employees in professional rescuearchaeology or culture resource management (CRM), a eld traditionally low on publishedresearch potential (see below).

Cultural resource management The dominance of CRM archaeological work is one of the determinant factors in the stateof Peruvian archaeology as a whole, and of research in particular. Mitigation eld projectsprovide employment for an ever-increasing number of qualied Peruvianarchaeologists. TheINC, although backed by admirable and wide-ranging legislation, is patently too under-resourced, both regionally andnationally, to oversee anddirect thehuge swatheof CRMwork currently underway in Peru. Unchecked competition for the lowest archaeological eldwork bid, inexperienced archaeologists given free-reign over huge projects coupled to theunendingpressure towards faster work and archaeological ‘cleansing’ of a given region by unscrupulousbuilding and mining companies (the main sectors requiring archaeological assessment work)contrive to produce a eld archaeology and concomitant report production racing towardsthe lowest common denominator, featuring substandard eldwork, inadequate recordingand the patent destruction of the national heritage.

Although CRM work can contribute to research, and has sometimes done so in Peru(e.g. Ponte 2000, 2006), this is rarely the case. More often than not, this grey literaturelies unconsulted by other archaeologists or quite simply disappears into the bureaucraticmachinery that is the INC. The negative effects of inadequately supervised CRM work (at

all levels from government management to eld directorship) are an increasing problemthroughout not only Peru, but also South America. Indeed CRM work is also seen as aseriously limiting research factor in the developed world (Biddle1994). But in a world of evermore archaeologists, CRM work seems to be the only means of securing employmentin a profession increasingly known for job instability, low pay and a depressing lack of research opportunities. In Peru, CRM increasingly constitutes the only viable employmentalternative for the erstwhile archaeologist.

The price of CRM work, which has risen steadily for the last 20 years (Higueras2008:1082), has also impacted on academics. Periodic work on large-scale CRM projects suchas the CAMISEA (2002) gas pipeline have naturally raised monetary expectations amongstPeruvian archaeologists, especially those from state universities, who are unwilling to work in remote areas without adequate provisioning or recompense, a problem for many grant-funded research-led excavations. In some cases, the situation has descended into the semi-open sale of signatures by PeruvianINCarchaeologists to foreign projects. With thesignaturecomes the blanket of legal compliance, minimal intrusion for the foreign archaeologists andthe promise of an equitable compensation for the absent Peruvian co-director.

ProspectsThe current ills aficting Peruvian archaeology range from an underfunded, centralisedregional INC service, byzantine heritage legislation under threat of ever higher levels of C Antiquity Publications Ltd.

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Figure 1. The aftermathof grave looting in the Ullujaya Basin, lowerIca Valley, Peru (photographcourtesy of Claudia L¨ uthi).

political interference (Ministerio de Cultura2010), the suspension ofa college ofprofessionalarchaeologists (COARPE) under accusations of graft, nepotism and fraud (COARPE2009),the collusion between business concerns such as mines, breweries, tourist agencies and localheritage institutions and sites to the detrimental conservation of these (e.g. Dangereld2007), the burgeoning rise of new/rediscovered indigenous identity and its implications forarchaeological research, as well as the ever endemic looting of the country’s cultural treasures(Carroll & Barker2011; Figure 1). The problems of the discipline in most contexts canbe summed up as intellectual introversion, a general deciency in the scholarly research

culture augmented by a chronically underfunded and research-poor academic environment,as well as a systemic dysfunction within the profession compounded by an ever increasingdependence on unchecked cultural resource management (CRM) work. These problemsare not of course conned to Peru but are perhaps particularly poignant given the wealth of central Andean archaeology and its pivotal role in human development as one of only sixhearths (cradles) of world civilization (Harlan1971).

Yet to paraphrase George Orwell, “If there is hope. . . it lies in the awqa camayoc”(‘young braves’ from Guaman Poma de Ayala1993 [1615]: ch. 10). Indeed alongside failedepistemologies, a widening educational breach, and amidst all the inequalities inherent inarchaeological work in Peru, a brave new world is straining at the seams. If the 1990srepresented the bitter harvest of all that was bad in the 1970s through to the 1980s it is also


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true that a new generation was being formed at that time, a generation that has started tobear fruit in the last ten years. Small groups and individuals have been willing, with gatheringconviction, to challenge the existing status quo. In this sense the internet and archaeologicalinformation globalisation have been instrumental in enabling a new generation of Peruvianarchaeologists to engage with a wider audience, whilst allowing for reective introspectionand critical awareness. As the deied scholars of the past nally retire and their obsequiouscohorts fail to inspire the new generation, it is indeed amongst this younger group that thegreatest change is being felt.

This generation also needs to come to grips with the inequities of CRM work, a hugeand ever increasing challenge. The money principle that CRM encapsulates in a working wage for the average archaeologist is obviously something that cannot be gainsaid, yet CRMand the companies engaged in it have to be made to conform more strictly to existing INCrules. CRM has to be brought in line with best-practice principles as in other countries.This requires not only more, and better, supervision by the INC but also root and branch

reform of its structure, more professionalism and indeed more ambition by those within it.This requires the whole body of Peruvian archaeologists to engage more fully with the moraland ethical aspects of their work, it requires a fully functioning and competent COARPEto regulate archaeological work and research alongside government and private institutions.It requires Peruvian archaeology to come of age.

If the new generation are the ones facing these great challenges, they are also seen to bemost willing to move with the times. There are new publishing companies such asAuqi Ediciones , supported by new journals, for instanceInka Llaqtaand Unay Runa.Most of theseare lead by young critical thinkers. So if the future does not appear exactly bright, there is amood of change, there is much foment. The way ahead may not be clear, but at least thereis a greater awareness of the problems. Change, if and when it comes will be slow. When itdoes come, let us hope it will not just ape what has been before, but rather set out to createand support a new archaeological environment. Peru needs it, and it would make the wholearchaeological world that much richer.

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