Proyecto Arqueológico Chavín

The Proyecto Arqueológico Chavín, directed by Professor of Anthropological Sciences John Rick since 1995, began as an effort to apply modern archaeological mapping techniques to the early monumental center of Chavín de Huántar, in the central highlands of Peru. This effort has expanded over the years and the digital data it has produced has been used in a variety of mapping and modeling techniques. In recent years Anthropological Sciences Ph.D. Candidate, Dan Contreras, has georeferenced the project's data to allow integration of site-based data with regional-scale data from a variety of sources.

Products have included more sophisticated visualizations of the site in its setting, analyses of agricultural potential around the site, and landscape reconstruction of the valley as it was before human occupation. The goal of this GIS-based integration of data from a variety of sources is to centralize multiscalar data in a spatially explicit and queryable form, in order to better understand the relationship of Chavín to its local and regional environment.

See the images below