An Ancient Irrigation Canal in the Pampa Tamarugal (Chile)

ABSTRACT

Southwest of Tarapacá Valley, in the Pampa Tamarugal of northern Chile, the remains of a canal were discovered running south for more than 6 km. Mapping and excavations indicated that this narrow (about 3 m) and shallow (about 0.5 m) construction was intended to divert water from the perennial Tarapacá River, combine this with occasional run-off from the mountains to the east, and irrigate a system of agricultural fields in a depression on the pampa. Several piles of rocks (cairns) and cleared lines (geoglyphs) were seen in the vicinity of the canal. The recovered pottery sherds were identified as belonging to the Pica-Charcollo tradition (800–1500 c.e.), while four radiocarbon dates from excavated wood and charcoal clustered around 1400–1600 c.e. This places the canal around the time of the colonization of the area by the Inka Empire, which made Tarapacá Valley into a regional center for mining and marine resources. The rationale behind its construction is likely a combination of the need to mitigate fluctuations in the availability of water for agriculture and the production of a larger food surplus.

KEYWORDS:

• Chile
• hydrology
• Inka Empire
• irrigation
• Late Horizon

Acknowledgments

The main conclusions of this chapter were previously presented within Symposium 157, “Identity and Ideology at the Frontier: Perspectives from Tarapacá, Northern Chile,” during the 73rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (Vancouver, March 2008). Sincere thanks are due to field school staff Ran Boytner, Maria Cecilia Lozada, Ioanna Kakoulli, and Mauricio Uribe. Thanks are also due to Charles Stanish, Kym Faull, and Ben Nigra, for their help during the survey, and to field school students James Balzano, Crystal Batrez, Jacob Bongers, Hannah Bracken, George Groh, Sarah Hawley, and Cassidy Hsieh, for their help with the excavation. We would also like to thank Brian Damiata, for preparing our samples for radiocarbon analysis and interpreted the resulting data, as well as Ran Boytner, Ben Nigra, and four anonymous reviewers, for their substantial contributions to the text.

Notes on Contributors

Hans Barnard (Ph.D. 2008, Leiden University) is Associate Adjunct Professor at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and Associate Researcher at the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). As an archaeological surveyor, photographer, and ceramic analyst he has worked on sites in Armenia, Chile, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iceland, Panama, Peru, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen. With W.Z. Wendrich he has published The Archaeology of Mobility (Los Angeles, 2008) and with K. Duistermaat The History of the Peoples of the Eastern Desert (Los Angeles, 2012).

Alek. N. Dooley (BSc. 2001, UCLA) is an application support chemist for SCIEX, based in Dubai. Throughout the Middle East and Europe, he works with customers to realize their experimental goals employing various analytical techniques, including liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry. He has participated as a volunteer in archaeological expeditions at sites in Chile and Ethiopia. With Kym F. Faull and Hans Barnard he has published several articles on organic residues in archaeological ceramics.

ORCID

Hans Barnard http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7356-1632

Alek N. Dooley http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9351-725X