Daniela Maria Raillard

DANIELA RAILLARD, then a graduate student at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, was awarded a grant in April 2022 to aid research on “Ancestral Monuments and Human-Environment Relationships in the Chachapoya Region, Peru (900-1470 CE),” supervised by Dr. Mary Weismantel. This research investigated how ancestral places mediated the relationship between Chachapoya communities and the environment of the Amazonian Andes by investigating four cliff mausolea sites in Leymebamba, northeastern Peru. The grantee and a team of descendant collaborators used local spatial knowledge to document a separation of cliff mausolea from residential sites, a relationship of avoidance, but proximity to and visibility from agricultural terraces, road networks, and water bodies. Architecture evaluation coupled with radiocarbon dating revealed two distinct construction periods: approximately 700-1100 CE, and 1400-1600 CE, with a significant gap during the 13th and 14th centuries, pointing to a revitalization of ancestor practices despite imperial and colonial systems. Fieldwork identified a diversity of building techniques, such as masonry, friezes, and niches, across contemporaneous sites, illustrating Indigenous Andean ingenuity. Similar construction technologies for stone accessways and roofs with lashed beams were observable in structures from different periods, emphasizing the continuity of local knowledge. X-ray fluorescence of construction mortar, raman spectroscopy of painted plaster, and dendroarchaeology of wood cores from beams demonstrate relationships with surrounding ecologies of tropical montane cloud forests and alpine grasslands through use of clays, sediments, mineral pigments, botanical and other organic matter. Preliminary wood anatomy results identified a species of tree used in cliff mausolea, consistent with descendant ethnobotanical knowledge, while a refined chronology of construction wood provides the oldest known date for Chachapoya mausolea, evidence for Indigenous Andean recycling, and land conservation activities likely during periods when forests were vulnerable.