Ari Caramanica’s research while affiliated with Vanderbilt University and other places

As arid lands expand across the globe, scholars increasingly turn to the archaeological record for examples of sustainable farming in extreme environments. The arid north coast of Peru was the setting of early and intensive irrigation-based farming; it is also periodically impacted by sudden, heavy rainfall related to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon. While the sociopolitical effects, technologies, and engineering expertise of these irrigation systems have been thoroughly examined and theorized, little is known about how farmers managed periods of water stress. The aim of this study is to test whether arid zone farming was supported by hybrid, intermittent flood and perennial water source systems in the prehispanic past. An arroyo in the Chicama Valley was selected for preliminary data collection, and these data are presented here: (1) drone photography of the arroyo capturing the aftermath of a recent (2023) rain event; and (2) potassium (K) soil test kit results from samples collected near suspected prehispanic check dam features in the same area. The paper combines these data with comparative examples from the literature to suggest that the prehispanic features functioned as water-harvesting infrastructure. The paper concludes that sustainable, arid zone farming can be supported by hybrid, intermittent flood and perennial water source systems.

Scholarship on human–environment interactions tends to fall under two headings: collapse or resilience. While both offer valid explanatory frameworks for human–environment dynamics, both view stress as a net negative that, if unchecked, disrupts systems in equilibrium. Societies either succumb to stress (and collapse) or overcome stress and persist (demonstrate resilience). We re-evaluate the role of stress and advocate for a non-equilibrium approach to the study of past human–environment interactions. We draw inspiration from Nasim Taleb’s concept of ‘antifragility’, which posits a positive role of stress for increasingly complex systems. We apply antifragility as an explanatory framework to pre-Hispanic coastal Peru, where indigenous farmers adapted to the stresses of highly variable El Niño events through a variety of water management systems. Finally, we note that an antifragility approach highlights the beneficial role of stressors, and that avoiding stress altogether makes a system more fragile.

The arid desert coast of northern Peru has traditionally been viewed either as existing in stasis, or as experiencing punctuated change from sudden flood events, followed by a return to system equilibrium. Despite these environmental extremes, the region was home to agriculture-based societies for millennia, and the success of these farming systems is considered an early example of irrigation technology transforming marginal landscapes. However, a closer examination of the long-term human-environment history of the Chicama Valley, one of the largest valleys in the coastal region, demonstrates that this landscape is the product of protracted interactions across at least three systems: the local environment, El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and farming. Here, El Niño floods, typically considered high-risk events, are fundamental to local biodiversity and renewal, resulting in a desert ecosystem that is both robust and elastic. The prehispanic farmland known as the Pampa de Mocan (1100BC–AD1460), is presented as a case study to observe the co-evolution of agricultural technology and an ENSO-hyper-arid environment. This ancient farming system developed the capacity to toggle between sudden floodwater inputs and periods of water scarcity. Alongside water and soil conservation practices, prehispanic agriculturalists implemented technologies that were designed to mitigate El Niño flooding and incorporate its byproducts to supplement available resources. The convergence of these interacting systems on the Pampa de Mocan offers new insights into the role of risk in building resilience.

Animals were central elements in many early state political economies. Yet the roles of livestock in building and financing the state generally remain under-theorized, particularly in comparison with other major elements such as crop intensification and bureaucratic technologies. We compare the political economies of two highly centralized and expansive states—the Inca in the central Andes and Ur III in southern Mesopotamia—through a deliberately animal-focused perspective that draws attention to the unique social and economic roles of the livestock that underpinned both imperial financing and household resilience. Despite important differences in the trajectories of the two case studies, attention to the roles played by animals in early states highlights several underlying dynamics of broader interest including the translation between modes of production and accumulation, the interplay between animal-based mobilities and territorial integration, and the functions of livestock in state regimes of value and political subjectivity.

Significance Disaster management policies are aimed at system resistance: Maintaining or quickly returning to operations established during normal periods. The Peruvian approach to El Niño follows this model, but the cost of reconstruction rises with each event. Meanwhile, archaeological evidence demonstrates that El Niño events were successfully managed by prehispanic farmers, who developed resilient hybrid canal systems that utilized both river water and floodwater for agricultural production. Ancient farmers treated the El Niño phenomenon as part of the norm, and likewise accounted for floodwaters in their irrigation technology. This study calls for a conceptual shift as effective disaster management policy is developed in the context of the global climate crisis.

The transition from the Middle Preceramic (8000–4500 cal BP) to the Late Preceramic Period (4450–3800 cal BP) in coastal Perú witnessed a dramatic change in both resource management and subsistence practices: lomas environments were abandoned in favor of riparian and littoral ecozones, while hunting and gathering was increasingly replaced by agriculture. The reason behind this transition remains a subject of debate; it has been attributed to population pressure, the development of domesticates, especially maize, environmental degradation or climate change. A recent regional study (Beresford-Jones et al., 2015) supports the 1960s Edward Lanning hypothesis that a combination of environmental and climate change forced Middle Preceramic occupants to move toward the river estuaries on the South Coast. Here, microbotanical data from the Late Preceramic site of El Paraíso on the Central Coast of Peru tests the Lanning hypothesis at the site-scale. The data demonstrate that inhabitants practiced a seasonal, Broad-Spectrum strategy by taking advantage of an ENSO-related florescence. Meanwhile, a trend toward increased salinity of nearby marshlands impacted the continued occupation of the site.

Here we present the first ¹⁴C ages for the Ascope Canal System (ACS), a large prehispanic hydraulic network in the Chicama Valley on the north coast of Peru. Composed of multiple alignments that irrigated areas north of the river, our results indicate that the ACS was constructed and operated in the Late Intermediate Period, ca. a.d. 1000–1400. This overlaps in time with the Chicama-Moche Intervalley Canal that diverted water on the south side of the Chicama River and extended to the city of Chan Chan. Conservative estimates of discharge capacity indicate that the combined flow through the canals would have exceeded stream flow in the Chicama River during half of the year. The ACS appears to have functioned for several centuries and would have been in direct competition with the Intervalley Canal. There was, apparently, insufficient water for both systems and other Chicama Valley canals during most of the year. This study underscores the complexities of understanding the operations and histories of irrigation systems in complex societies.