Profile: Chip Stanish

Remembering Clem Meighan

In Memoriam: James N. Hill

Studying Chenopodium quinoa

In Memoriam:
Pat Campbell Healy


Director's Message: Maya Weekend

Paydirt

Paleoethnobotany Lab

Center for the Study of Regional Dress










Lake Titicaca, the highest large navigable lake in the world, lies on the Peru-Bolivia boundary. Much important archaeological work is being done on the lake and its environs, as shown by three articles in this issue: Jean Hudson describes a pilot study on diving the lake, Chip Stanish discusses his ongoing project there, and Phylissa Eisentraut reports on her research on Chenopodium quinoa.

Underwater Archaeology in Peru
AFTER ONLY TWO WEEKS OF DIVING, AN INTACT STONE WALL IS DISCOVERED SEVERAL METERS BELOW PRESENT WATER LEVEL

MOST ARCHAEOLOGISTS SEE shorelines as boundaries, the edges of a terrestrial landscape once occupied by a past society. Yet environmental reconstruction makes it clear that water levels in the world's oceans and lakes have changed many times in the past. It follows easily that some of the archaeological record we seek to study is now beneath the water and beyond the modern shoreline. Lake Titicaca, located in the Andean highlands on the border of Peru and Bolivia, is a case in point.
In September of 1996 a two-person team, consisting of myself and UCLA's Diving Safety Officer, Frank DiCrisi, studied the logistical and safety needs of diving the Peruvian side of this high-altitude lake, and were rewarded with the discovery of an intact stone wall several meters below the present water level. Funded by the Institute of Archaeology, this small pilot study was supported logistically by several archaeologists working in the area-including Mark Aldenderfer, Cindy Klink, Chip Stanish, and Edmundo de la Vega.
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