About the Project
Agricultural terrace field systems formed the infrastructure of food security central to the development and sustainability of complex society in the south-central Andean highlands of Peru in a region known as the altiplano. Terrace systems are the most viable and widely-used farming strategy in the present day. Despite their importance, terrace agriculture has been largely overlooked as a primary subject of research by archaeologists and historians in the region. The goals of this project are to create an online geographic information system to pinpoint, map, classify, and assess the viability of terrace systems throughout the Peruvian altiplano. With these data we will be able to pinpoint how agriculture systems underpinned changes in social complexity in the region through time.
