Archaeology, Water and Agents in the Ancash Highlands, north-central Andes, Peru

KEVIN LANE

Denver

Simposio; 6th Annual Rocky Mountain Pre-Columbian Association Research Colloquium - Current Research in the Ancient Americas; 2021

Ensuring water availability in a world with increasing scarcity is becoming a major theme involving local/indigenous communities, NGOs (non-governmental organizations)/ governments, and academia. This is especially true for the highlands of the central Andes, where water is seen as a particularly threatened natural resource in the face of climate change, and the retreat of tropical glaciers. This region also contains cultural, archaeological and historical assets with few parallels in the world. As archaeologists, we are frequently in the line-of-fire between the need for the preservation of this cultural resource and an emerging social and economic discourse that places development over concerns about heritage management. This is a paradigm accepted by local groups, which tend to view archaeology and heritage management, more from the angle of potential tourism than as a means of self-identification, or even self-sufficiency.Here we raise a complex issue, the relationship between archaeology and heritage to economic development and perceived local needs in developing countries. In this, we emphasise how the answers to the issues raised above reflect the actions of the various actors involved. Our case study involves prehispanic dams the Ancash highlands, Peru. In so doing, we study possible alternative forms of water resource development, taking into consideration our role as academic researchers and the political ecology of development and heritage in the context of identity and economy in the modern Andes.