El Niño in Peru: Archaeological perspectives

Resumen

El Niño is a global climatic phenomenon that can affect human life. Consequences for the coast of Peru are particularly strong. Here, we discuss the most important varieties of El Niño, outline costs and benefits of each, and offer a summary of the role that El Niño has played in Peruvian archaeology based principally on our own research over four and a half decades. There are two research trends in the archaeology of El Niño in Peru: using archaeological remains to identify past events and frequencies of canonical El Niño events and trying to understand how humans have interacted with El Niño over the millennia of human presence on the Peruvian coast. Peruvian archaeological data were among the first indicators of variation in El Niño frequency over time and continue to shed light on El Niño behavior. Over the last half century of archaeological El Niño studies, archaeologists’ perspectives have shifted from seeing the phenomenon as a disaster to recognizing human agency – the ability of past Peruvians to show resilience in the face of El Niño stressors. We conclude with some suggestions for future research on the archaeology of El Niño in Peru.