My work demonstrates that understanding the geomorphologic setting of the Formative Period site of Chavín de Huántar, in the Central Andean highlands, is critical to archaeological interpretation of the site.  This is true both in the fairly obvious terms of archaeological methodology and in the more subtle context of human-environment interactions in prehistory.  Moreover, while postdepositional/taphonomic challenges posed by geomorphologic processes have been recognized previously, the true scope of those problems and the implications they have, have not previously been fully recognized nor explored.

Chavín de Huántar is set at 3150 m in a high valley on the eastern slope of the Central Andes’ Cordillera Blanca. The Middle Formative Period site is a sprawling complex of monumental stone construction, unique in the region in its scale and sophistication.  Archaeological investigation of the site began in earnest with Julio C. Tello’s visit in 1919, continued when Wendell Bennett carried out the first scientific excavations at Chavín in 1939, and has burgeoned in the near-century since.  The fundamental archaeological questions remain much the same today as they were when Tello and Bennett began to work at the site: understanding the sociopolitical dynamics that made Chavín’s construction possible and assessing Chavín’s place—chronologically and in systemic terms—in the larger panorama of Central Andean prehistory.

I argue that in order to address either of these questions adequately, the geomorphology of the area must be understood as a dynamic element of the Chavín-period landscape, and construction activity at Chavín must be understood as existing in a reciprocal relationship to the local environment.  That is, cultural activity in the valley was structured by the local environment, but also substantially altered that environment, changing the structuring conditions.

Home