UMaine Team investigates Ancient Peruvian Temple Mound
An interdisciplinary team of faculty and students from the Department of Earth Sciences, Department of Anthropology, and Climate Change Institute were funded by the National Geographic Society to use ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to investigate the interior structure of a Preceramic period mound near Chao, in the northern coastal desert of Peru. Named Los Moreros (The Mortars), the site had been identified by earlier archaeological excavations as a garbage pile on top of an ancient sand dune. Preliminary GPR work by the UMaine team in 2006 identified walls and floors within the deposit, indicating that the feature was a human construction, rather than a natural landform. Garbage deposits at the surface of the mound date to as old as 5500 BP, suggesting that older, buried features may be some of the oldest remains of monumental structures in South America. The returning team collected approximately 25 km of GPR profiles that will be processed to produce a 3-D image of structures in the mound’s interior. This approach provides archaeologists with a nondestructive way to analyze the placement of walls, floors, and potential building episodes.
The research team included Department of Earth Sciences faculty,Dr. Joseph Kelley, Dr. Daniel Belknap, Dr. Alice Kelley, and ERS undergrad student, Owen McGlamery. Owen is a 2nd year student in the department from Vinalhaven, Maine, and was selected to work as part of the team based on his interest in geoarchaeology, geophysics, and Andean archaeology.