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SEPG 2112 - Date Awarded 2003
Understanding the dispersal range of Polylepis pollen as a tool for reconstructing past vegetation in the Peruvian and Bolivian Andes
Alex Chepstow-Lusty
Abstract
This is a preliminary report of the fieldwork that the BES grant allowed us to accomplish in the Cuzco region of Peru during August 2003. Besides transects through two Polylepis woodlands in the Cuzco area, we collected numerous modern lake sediment samples. We also investigated the water chemistry of a suite of lakes, which were cored in 1998, and were initially identified as the result of a BES grant to Peru in 1996. In conjunction with a Dutch team, new cores were taken from the Lucre Basin to understand the possible role of drought in the collapse of the Huari civilization c. AD 1000.
There are also observations on: the effects of eutrophication in high altitude lakes surrounded by Polylepis woodland; the possibility of using Escallonia myrtilloides for dendrochronology; individuals of Escallonia resinosa that may predate the Spanish Conquest; and possible evidence of high altitude bat predation. This fieldwork also contributed to our ongoing investigation of whether oribatid mites can be used as indicators of livestock densities today and in the past. Further details are set out below. The moss polsters from the transects are still waiting to be analysed for pollen.
Publications
Sterken, M., Sabbe, K., Chepstow-Lusty, A., Frogley, M., Vanhoutte, K., Verleyen, E., Cundy, A. and Vyerman, W. (2006). Climate and land-use changes in the Cuzco region (Cordillera Oriental, South East Peru) during the last 1200 years: a diatom based reconstruction. Archiv fur Hydrobiologie 165 (3), 289-312
Kendall, A. and Chepstow-Lusty, A. (2006). Cultural and environmental change in the Cuzco region of Peru: The rural development implications of combined archaeological and palaeological evidence. In Kay Pacha: Cultivating Earth and Water in the Andes, Dransart, P (ed.), British Archaeological Reports International Series 1478, 185-197, Oxford.
Chepstow-Lusty, A., Frogley, M. R., Bauer, B. S., Bush, M. B. and Tupayachi Herrera, A. (2003). A late Holocene record of arid events from the Cuzco region, Peru. Journal of Quaternary Science. 18 (6), 491-502.
Chepstow-Lusty, A. & Winfield, M. (2000). Agroforestry by the Inca: Lessons from the past. Ambio, 29 (6) 322-328
Chepstow-Lusty, A., Bennett, K., Switsur, V. & Kendall, A. (1996). 4000 years of human impact and vegetation change in the central Peruvian Andes - with events parelleling the Maya record? Antiquity, 70 (270): 824-833.
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