{"id":216,"date":"2014-06-01T03:10:08","date_gmt":"2014-06-01T03:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pukara.org\/wordpress\/?page_id=216"},"modified":"2017-10-16T10:31:58","modified_gmt":"2017-10-16T14:31:58","slug":"history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/pukara.org\/?page_id=216","title":{"rendered":"History"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although\u00a0Spanish chroniclers\u00a0such as Piedro Cieza de Le\u00f3n mentioned visiting the town of Pucar\u00e1 and noted the “ruins” of Pukara in the the 16th century, it was not until the 1920s that the site became of interest to\u00a0archaeologists. Both Julio C. Tello<\/a> and Luis Valc\u00e1rcel<\/a>\u00a0explored Pukara and published brief summaries of the ceramics and stone sculpture in the 1920’s and 1930’s, which brought the Cultura Pukara to the attention of scholars across the region.<\/p>\n

\"alfred-kidder-ii\"<\/a>
http:\/\/www.penn.museum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1939, the first formal investigation of the site was conducted by North American archaeologist\u00a0Alfred Kidder II<\/a> of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography<\/a> at Harvard\u00a0University and Peruvian archaeologist Jos\u00e9 Maria Franco Inojosa<\/a>. Over the course of six months– and during the rainy season!– they excavated six different areas of Pukara. In addition to fully excavating the central sunken court of the Qalasaya Complex, Kidder and his team found evidence of residential and production zones along the Pucara River.<\/p>\n

\"peabody_45-9-30_11823.1.13.18.4\"
Peabody Number: 45-9-30\/11823.1.13.18<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was clear from their extensive excavations both in the zone of monumental architecture and on the site periphery that Pukara had a long and diverse occupational history.\u00a0For a fascinating account of living and working in Pucar\u00e1 in the 1930’s\u00a0I highly recommend Mary Kidder’s\u00a0No Limits but the Sky: The Journal of an Archaeologist’s Wife in Peru<\/a><\/em>, which was published in 1942. In the 1940’s Peruvian archaeologist Manuel Ch\u00e1vez Ball\u00f3n<\/a> conducted limited excavations at Pukara and in 1955 he returned to the site with Kidder to collect the first samples for radiocarbon dating from the Lake Titicaca Basin (Ralph 1959). Kidder’s\u00a01939 excavations are detailed in Sergio Ch\u00e1vez’s dissertation,\u00a0The Conventionalized Rules in Pucara Pottery Technology & Iconography: Implications for Socio-Political Developments in the Northern Lake Titicaca Basin<\/em> <\/a>(1992) and his career is outlined in more detail in the late Karen Mohr Ch\u00e1vez’s\u00a0Alfred Kidder II in the Development of American Archaeology: A Biographical and Contextual View<\/em><\/a> (2005).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Restored Qalasaya terraces<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second major project at Pukara was executed by Plan COPESCO<\/a>\u00a0from the mid-1970s into the early 1980s. They focused their excavation and restoration efforts on the Qalasaya Complex, which was a massive undertaking for dozens of professional archaeologists, architects, and conservation personal over several years. They also constructed the building that\u00a0presently houses the\u00a0Pukara Lithic Museum <\/a>(or Museo L\u00edtico Pukara)\u00a0on the main plaza in\u00a0Pucar\u00e1, which functioned as a laboratory, residence, and small museum.\u00a0Publications by project directors\u00a0El\u00edas Mujica<\/a>\u00a0(archaeologist) and\u00a0Jane Wheeler<\/a>\u00a0 (zooarchaeologist), among others, provide information about the research results and site conservation efforts\u00a0of Plan COPESCO.<\/p>\n

\"2009_field_school_group\"<\/a>
Entering Pukara (2009)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since 2000, the Pukara Archaeological Project<\/a> has conducted\u00a0a number of\u00a0survey (2000, 2006) and excavation (2001, 2009 & 2010) projects in various areas of Pukara. Research findings are available in a variety of\u00a0publications<\/a> and informes<\/em>\u00a0(official reports) are available upon request. We are presently writing up the most recent excavations before returning to the field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although\u00a0Spanish chroniclers\u00a0such as Piedro Cieza de Le\u00f3n mentioned visiting the town of Pucar\u00e1 and noted the “ruins” of Pukara in the the 16th century, it was not until the 1920s that the site became of interest to\u00a0archaeologists. Both Julio C. Tello and Luis Valc\u00e1rcel\u00a0explored Pukara and published brief summaries of the ceramics and stone sculpture… <\/p>\n

Read more History<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":171,"menu_order":1,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pukara.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/216"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pukara.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pukara.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pukara.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pukara.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=216"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/pukara.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":694,"href":"https:\/\/pukara.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/216\/revisions\/694"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pukara.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pukara.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}