A Lesson in Applied Archaeology
Table of Contents- Part I: Introduction
- Part 2: Recreating Raised Field Agriculture
- Local and Extralocal Researchers
- A Bottom Up Perspective
- The First Experiments
- Part 3: Implications of the Research
- The Politics of Agriculture
- The Future of Applied Archaeology
- The Downside of Applied Archaeology
- Future Projects
- Spanish Language Version, Alvaro Higueras
The First Experiments
Did it involve much fast-talking to get the first experimental field planted?Since we were gringo outsiders, the communities were originally suspicious of our intentions. I had all the necessary permits from Peruvian government to my archaeological investigations of raised field agriculture and various letters of introduction from regional authorities, but I soon found out that it would take more than official papers to obtain local permission to do the project. The best move that we made was to establish a permanent residence in the community by renting a room with a family. I spent a lot of time doing public relations during the first 2 years. This involved drinking and socializing with Huatta authorities, the local police, and schoolteachers. I carried a bag of coca leaves and a small bottle of cane alcohol with me during fieldwork that I shared in the traditional social fashion with anyone we met. My wife, Kay Candler, is an cultural anthropologist whose knowledge of the native language Quechua came in handy. Everyone was appreciative of her effort to communicate in their native tongue. Kay, Dan, Ignacio, and I participated in many local religious and secular festivals, sponsored volleyball and soccer teams, gave public talks on our research results, and became "patrinos" (Godparents) to many of the kids of our neighbors and friends in the community. The real key to becoming integrated in the community was the raised field experiments themselves. Our first small scale attempt to farm raised fields in 1981 working with a single family was a small scale success and had been seen by many families trekking from their rural homes to the town of Huatta. Although the experimental fields were on the private property of a friend, our "farming" of land in the community symbolically gave us local roots.
The success of the first season of experiments during 1981-2 became the talk of the town. Many farmers thought that we had applied some super fertilizer to the fields or planted high yield potatoes to make the fields more productive, even though we had not used any fertilizers and planted only local varieties of potatoes. I approached one of the better-organized communities in 1982 about building a large block of experimental fields. They owned a large section of lake plain that was covered by well-preserved raised fields. Because the land was flooded every year during the rainy season, it had little value except for grazing a few sheep and cattle. I was able to obtain a ton of seed potatoes from CARE that we offered to the community in return for their building experimental raised fields on their land. They would receive all the harvest from the fields. In return, we would get the opportunity to collect the data on labor, find out how raised fields worked, and determine potential harvests.
