2017 Session 2: Maritime and Underwater Archaeology along the South American Pacific

2017 Session 2: Maritime and Underwater Archaeology along the South American Pacific

The Pacific has been a central feature in coastal – as well as continental – South Americans’ social lives since their arrival to the continent. Indeed, from early oceanic migrations to the present, the Pacific has served as the facilitator for human expansion, contact, and long distance trade; the rise of complex societies; a space for myth, ritual and contention; also as an important place for the exploitation of natural resources and fisheries; and the development of the modern world-system.

Despite this centrality, the study of human-ocean interactions and coastal ecological histories in Andean South America remains in a nascent phase. New research technologies, theoretical approaches and innovative research projects provide new opportunities to evaluate human-ocean interactions from a long-term perspective.

This session addresses the ways in which the ocean has been central to the manifold ways in which migration, social complexity, native sailing, economic activities, culture contact, colonialism, capitalism and modernity have insinuated themselves through the Pacific Maritime Cultural Landscapes of South America. With the presentation of recent researches conducted in the region, the purpose of this session is to have a better understanding of how the different societies and human maritime communities along South America incorporate the marine and maritime spaces of the Pacific Ocean as part of their Cultural Landscape and Seascape.

Carlos Ausejo Castillo, Ma.,
CPAMS – Peruvian Center of Maritime and Underwater Archaeology, Peru