Exploring Andean prehistory

Sara Morrisset has been named a National Geographic explorer for her research into the Ica society of Peru.

A Gates Cambridge Scholar has become a National Geographic explorer after winning a National Geographic Early Career grant.

Sara Morrisset [2016] won the $5K grant for her archaeological fieldwork this summer. It covers excavation work she will do in Peru as part of her PhD in Archaeology as she seeks to better understand the origins and rise of Ica society of the Peruvian south coast.

Sara's project aims to fill a gap in the understanding of different cultures in Andean prehistory as well as changes in Ica society through time. This includes clarifying the crucial beginnings of the Ica people
following the collapse of the Wari empire and exploring the later connections between the Ica and the Inca empire.

Although archaeologist John Rowe established the widely used master sequence for all of Andean prehistory based on the ceramics from the Ica Valley on the south coast of Peru in 1945, Sara says little is actually known about the origins of the society that lies behind the region's rich material culture.

It has been widely thought that, after the collapse of the powerful Wari Empire, the following 200 years were characterised by the wide-scale abandonment of settlements. The exact causes of this period of
abandonment are not known, but changing environmental conditions, specifically drought, are thought to have played a role.

Sara says recent research suggests that many Ica people did remain in their settlements. Moreover, she says the beginning of the Late Intermediate Period [1000-1476 current era] served as the foundation for a period of flourishing craft production and trade for the Ica people which contributed to their rise to power on the Peruvian south coast.