El Niño Resilience Farming on the North Coast of Peru
El Niño resilience farming on the north coast of Peru Ari Caramanicaa,1, Luis Huaman Mesiab, Claudia R. Moralesb, Gary Huckleberryc, Luis Jaime Castillo B.d, and Jeffrey Quiltere aDepartamento Académico de Administración, Universidad del Pacífico, 15072 Lima, Peru; bLaboratorio de Palinología y Paleobotánica, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, 15102 San Martin de Porres, Peru; cDepartment of Geosciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721; dDepartamento Académico de Humanidades, Pontifica Universidad Católica del Perú, 15088 San Miguel, Peru; and ePeabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138 Edited by Daniel H. Sandweiss, University of Maine, Orono, ME, and accepted by Editorial Board Member Dolores R. Piperno July 31, 2020 (received for review April 8, 2020) El Niño–Southern Oscillation has been treated as a disruptor of The Moche, Chimu, and to a lesser-known extent the Cupis- environmental and socioeconomic equilibrium both in ancient nique (1100 to 500 BC), relied on irrigation for more than just times and in modern-day Peru. Recent work in the coastal desert subsistence. The kinetic properties of channeled water, the main- plain, known as the Pampa de Mocan, challenges this view by dem- tenance of canals, and maize (Zea mays), cotton (Gossypium bar- onstrating that prehispanic irrigation systems were designed to bardense), and other crops played central roles in ritual life (26–30). incorporate floods and convert them into productive waters. Archae- Social, economic, and ritual life on the north coast depended on ological investigations in this landscape reveal a 2,000-y history of water management, making the threat of aperiodic destructive floodwater farming embedded in conventional canal systems.
[Show full text]