Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T19:42:26.979Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Huaqueros and remote sensing imagery: assessing looting damage in the Virú Valley, Peru

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Daniel A. Contreras
Daniel A. Contreras*
Affiliation:
*Archaeology Center, Stanford University, P.O. Box 20446, Stanford, CA 94309, USA (Email: dcontre@stanford.edu)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article presents a new initiative in combating looting from the air, building on previous work in Iraq and Jordan. Looted sites in the Virú Valley, Peru, are visible as pit clusters on dated versions of Google Earth. Compare these with earlier air photographs and Gordon Willey's famous survey of the 1940s, and we have a dated chronicle of looting events. This makes it possible to demonstrate that modern looting is certainly taking place and linked to an upsurge in the antiquities trade. As well as being a new instrument for managing heritage, the author shows that the looting survey offers an important research dividend: the location of cemeteries not previously systematically documented, with potential for more thorough investigation even of already looted areas.

Keywords

PeruVirúlootingaerial surveyGoogle Earth
Type
Method
Information
Antiquity , Volume 84 , Issue 324 , June 2010 , pp. 544 - 555
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alva, W. 2001. The destruction, looting and traffic of the archaeological heritage of Peru, in Brodie, N., Doole, J. & Renfrew, C., (ed.) Trade in illicit antiquities: the destruction of the world's archaeological heritage (McDonald Institute Monographs): 89–96. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Atwood, R. 2003. Guardians of the dead. Archaeology 56: 42–49.Google Scholar
Atwood, R. 2004 Stealing history: tomb raiders, smugglers, and the looting of the ancient world. New York: St Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Atwood, R. 2007. The rape of Batán Grande. Archaeology 60: 29–33.Google Scholar
Beck, A. 2006. Google Earth and World Wind: remote sensing for the masses?Antiquity 80. Available at: http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/beck308/ (accessed on 19 February 2010).Google Scholar
Bennett, W.C. 1939. Archaeology of the north coast of Peru: an account of exploration and excavation in Virú and Lambayeque valleys. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 37(1): 1–153.Google Scholar
Billman, B.R. & Feinman, G.M..(ed.) 1999. Settlement pattern studies in the Americas: fifty years since Virú (Smithsonian Series in Archaeological Inquiry). Washington (DC); London: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Bowman, B. 2008. Transnational crimes against culture: looting at archaeological sites and the ‘grey’ market in antiquities. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 24(3): 225–242.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brodie, N. & Renfrew, C.. 2005. Looting and the world's archaeological heritage: the inadequate response. Annual Review of Anthropology 34(1): 343–361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brodie, N., Doole, J. & Renfrew, C., (ed.) 2001. Trade in illicit antiquities: the destruction of the world's archaeological heritage (McDonald Institute Monographs). Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.Google Scholar
Church, W.B. & Morales Gamarra, R.. 2004. Tomb raiders of El Dorado: conservation dilemmas on a ‘new’ archaeological frontier in Peru. The SAA Archaeological Record 4(1): 24–29.Google Scholar
Coe, M.C. 1993. From huaquero to connoisseur: the early market in pre-Columbian art, in Boone, E.H. (ed.) Collecting the pre-Columbian past: 271–290. Washington (DC): Dumbarton Oaks.Google Scholar
Collier, D. 1955. Cultural chronology and change as reflected in the ceramics of the Virú Valley, Peru (Chicago Natural History Museum Publications 779). Chicago (IL): Chicago Natural History Museum.Google Scholar
Contreras, D.A. & Brodie, N.. In press. Quantifying destruction: an evaluation of the utility of publicly-available satellite imagery for investigating looting of archaeological sites in Jordan. Journal of Field Archaeology.Google Scholar
Elia, R.J. 1997. Looting, collecting, and the destruction of archaeological resources. Nonrenewable Resources 6(2): 85–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernández Villegas, O. 1990. La Huaca Narihuala: un documento para la etnohistoria de la costa norte del Perú (1000-1200 d.c.). Bulletin Institut francés études andines 19(1): 103–127.Google Scholar
Ford, J.A. & Willey, G.. 1949. Surface survey of the Virú Valley. Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 43(1): 1–89.Google Scholar
Higueras, A. 2008. Cultural heritage management in Peru: current and future challenges, in Silverman, H. & Hisbell, W. (ed.) Handbook of South American archaeology: 1072–1088. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Hritz, C. 2008. Remote sensing of cultural heritage in Iraq: a case study of Isin. The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq Newsletter 3(1): 1–8.Google Scholar
Kirkpatrick, S.D. 1992. Lords of Sipan: a tale of pre-Inca tombs, archaeology, and crime. New York: Morrow.Google Scholar
Nagin, C. 1990. The Peruvian gold rush. Art and Antiques 7(5): 98–106.Google Scholar
Parcak, S. 2009. Satellite remote sensing for archaeology. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ramírez, S.E. 1996. The world upside down: cross-cultural contact and conflict in sixteenth-century Peru. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Scollar, I. & Palmer, R.. 2008. Using Google Earth imagery. AARGnews 37: 15–21.Google Scholar
Shimada, I. 1981. The Batán Grande-La Leche archaeological project: the first two seasons. Journal of Field Archaeology 8(4): 405–446.Google Scholar
Silverman, H. 2006. Cultural resource management and heritage stewardship in Peru. CRM 3(2): 57–72.Google Scholar
Smith, K.L. 2005. Looting and the politics of archaeological knowledge in northern Peru. Ethnos 70(2): 149–170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stone, E.C. 2008a. Archaeological site looting: the destruction of cultural heritage in southern Iraq, in Emberling, G. & Hanson, K. (ed.) Catastrophe! The looting and destruction of Iraq's past: 65–80. Chicago (IL): The Oriental Institute Museum of the University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Stone, E.C. 2008b. Patterns of looting in southern Iraq. Antiquity 82: 125–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strong, W.D. & Evans, C.. 1952. Cultural stratigraphy in the Virú Valley, northern Peru: the formative and florescent epochs. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ur, J. 2006. Google Earth and archaeology. The SAA Archaeological Record 6(3): 35–38.Google Scholar
Van Ess, M., Becker, H., Fassbinder, J., Kiefl, R., Lingenfelder, I., Schreier, G. & Zevenbergen, A.. 2006. Detection of looting activities at archaeological sites in Iraq using Ikonos imagery. Angewandte Geoinformatik; Beitraäge zum 18: 668–678. Heidelberg: Wiechmann-Verlag.Google Scholar
Willey, G.R. 1953. Prehistoric settlement patterns in the Virú Valley, Peru (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 155). Washington (DC): Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Zevallos Quiñones, J. 1994. Huacas y huaqueros en Trujillo durante el Virreinato (1535-1835). Trujillo: Editora Normas Legales S.A.Google Scholar