Science, Huffington Post Report on Archaeology Research by Belknap, Sandweiss

Science magazine and Past Horizons: Adventures in Archaeology reported on research by University of Maine researchers Daniel Belknap, a professor of Earth sciences, and Daniel Sandweiss, a professor of anthropology and Quaternary and climate studies. The researchers studied how demographic and economic effects of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire altered landscape development on the Chira beach-ridge plain in northern coastal Peru. They found human activity resulting from the conquest had a profound effect on coastal change in the region. Archaeologist Torben Rick of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., told Science the study is an important reminder “of the very blurry divide between the natural world and the cultural world.” Huffington Post also carried the Science article.