Archaeological Heritage in a Modern Urban Landscape (eBook)

Archaeological Heritage in a Modern Urban Landscape evaluates issues about the preservation, social role and management of archaeological sites in the Trujillo area, north coast of Peru, specifically those of the Moche culture (100-800 AD). Moche was one of the great civilizations of ancient Peru, with spectacular ceremonial adobe architecture and settlements distributed across a landscape formed by coastal valleys and one of the largest deserts of South America. In the last decades political and economic changes have brought rural migrations to the city of Trujillo and nearby zones, causing the emergence of extensive new communities in the margins of the metropolis. And although Trujillo's Moche heritage has become a symbol of regional identity, most local Moche sites are under siege because of urban development. This book offers a new perspective on the development of modern communities settled beside archaeological sites and contributes to improving best practices in the management of archaeological sites and preservation in an urban setting.

Jorge A. Gamboa Velasquez obtained his B.A. and Licenciatura at the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo in 1999. During the course of his undergraduate degree he conducted excavations at Huacas de Moche, one of the most important sites of the Moche culture. Upon graduation he continued his research on Pre-Columbian Andean societies, conducting fieldwork in the Santa Valley, Puruchuco, the early monumental highland site of Chavín de Huantar and at Pañamarca, a settlement famous for its Moche polychrome murals. In 2009 he received a Summer Fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC, which permitted him to finish a peer-reviewed article on Moche termination rituals. This paper will be published in Latin American Antiquity, the famous journal of Pre-Columbian studies published by the Society of American Archaeology. He has presented papers at national and international meetings, most recently the 2012 meeting of the ICOMOS International Committee on Archaeological Heritage Management and the SAA Conference in 2014. Currently, Jorge Gamboa is Assistant Professor at the Archaeology School of the Universidad Nacional Santiago Antúnez de Mayolo in Huaraz, Peru.