Huayuri, also called the Lost City of Huayuri, is a large

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, th ...

archaeological site which flourished from 1150 to 1450 CE in the Late Intermediate Period (1000 - 1476 CE) of

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...

. Huayuri is located in the Peruvian coastal desert in

Ica Region Ica (; qu, Ika) is a department and region of Peru. It borders the Pacific Ocean on the west; the Lima Region on the north; the Huancavelica and Ayacucho regions on the east; and the Arequipa Region on the south. Its capital is the city of Ic ...

. Its prominence was probably dependent upon an climatic phase in which the area received greater precipitation than at earlier and later periods. The site may have been abandoned in the 16th century because of water shortages, conflict with the expanding

Inca Empire The Inca Empire (also known as the Incan Empire and the Inka Empire), called ''Tawantinsuyu'' by its subjects, (Quechua for the "Realm of the Four Parts", "four parts together" ) was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The admin ...

, or epidemics of European diseases. The town (or city) of stone houses was located in a ravine between two mountain ridges, a location possibly dictated by a need for defense. Archaeological evidence indicates Huayari relied upon rainfall harvesting for its drinking water and some of the

irrigated agriculture Irrigation (also referred to as watering) is the practice of applying controlled amounts of water to land to help grow Crop, crops, Landscape plant, landscape plants, and Lawn, lawns. Irrigation has been a key aspect of agriculture for over 5,00 ...

the town needed for the subsistence of the inhabitants.

Description

Huayuri is located about from the

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at an elevation of in Santa Cruz District of

Palpa Province The Palpa Province is the smallest of five provinces of the Ica Region of Peru and the only landlocked province of the region. The capital of the province is the city of Palpa. Boundaries *North: Huancavelica Region *East: Ayacucho Region *South: ...

in the

. The nearby Santa Cruz River is a

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage ...

of the Rio Grande de Nazca River, the basin of which had been occupied for thousands of years by earlier cultures such as the Paracas and

Nazca Nazca (; sometimes spelled Nasca; qu, Naska) is a city and system of valleys on the southern coast of Peru. It is also the name of the largest existing town in the Nazca Province. The name is derived from the Nazca culture, which flourished in ...

. A successor to those earlier desert cultures, the culture of Huayuri is called the Poroma by archaeologists. The ruins of Huayuri extend along a ravine between two flanking ridges for about with a maximum width of the densely settled area of about . The ruins have an area of . The entire site, including the terraced slopes which flank the ravine, has an area of about . Among the ruins of dwellings are also enclosed compounds and storage facilities.. Downloaded from

Project MUSE Project MUSE, a non-profit collaboration between libraries and publishers, is an online database of peer-reviewed academic journals and electronic books. Project MUSE contains digital humanities and social science content from over 250 university ...

. The ruins of Huayuri overlook the valley of the Santa Cruz River at a distance of about . The river valley is narrow in the immediate vicinity of Huayuri, but about a kilometer wide a few upstream. The river is dry most of the year, partially due to the use of its water for irrigation. Downloaded from

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: 972234 From, ''New Technologies for Archaeology,'' ed. Markus Reindel and Guenther A. Wagner.

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The stone houses of Huayuri suggest that the inhabitants may have originated in the highlands because the coastal people of Peru customarily built in

adobe Adobe ( ; ) is a building material made from earth and organic materials. is Spanish for ''mudbrick''. In some English-speaking regions of Spanish heritage, such as the Southwestern United States, the term is used to refer to any kind of e ...

while highland peoples built in stone. From ''New Technologies for Archaeology,'' ed. Markus Reindel and Guenther A. Wagner. The location also suggests that the inhabitants wanted a defensible place to live and thus the settlement was located in a ravine, rather than in the nearby valley of the Santa Cruz River with its limited but more abundant water supply and cultivatable land. Huayuri was located along the north-south Inca road (which probably pre-dated the Incas) leading from the extensive irrigated lands of Ica to

. Archaeologists have found evidence that llama caravans visited Huayuri during Inca times, although the llama is better adapted to higher elevations than the coastal desert.

Climate change and rainfall harvesting

The desert coasts of southern Peru and northern Chile are extremely dry. Nazca, the nearest sizeable city to Huayuri, receives less than of precipitation annually and the region is nearly devoid of vegetation, except in river valleys and where irrigation is possible. Archaeologists, however, have found evidence that the climate was less arid in the Late Intermediate Period in which Huayuri flourished. Geoarchaeological evidence points to a climate of the Huayari region during the Late Intermediate Period, with annual precipitation between to . The higher precipitation permitted rainfall harvesting at Huayuri. For rainfall harvesting to be practical, there must be rainfall—which in later centuries is almost totally absent at Huayuri—and it must be fairly reliable. At Huayuri, a substantial infrastructure for harvesting rainfall is present. The water harvesting system at Huayuri was similar to the Khadin System used in the

Thar Desert The Thar Desert, also known as the Great Indian Desert, is an arid region in the north-western part of the Indian subcontinent, Subcontinent that covers an area of and forms a natural boundary between India and Pakistan. It is the world's Li ...

of India, as well as other locations around the world in dryland areas. The catchment area for water was the rocky upland around the settled area. Terraces were built into the hillsides and captured some rainfall. Additional water was captured and directed through channels and irrigation canals downhill onto a valley plain, enclosed at its bottom end by a bund or low dam. The captured water, its downhill path blocked by the bund, sank into the soil. Crops were planted in the area behind the bund without any additional irrigation. The soil was fertile because it was constantly renewed as the water deposited sediment and at the same time washed away harmful salts. Above and below the bund, rock-lined cisterns captured and preserved water which percolated down through the soil and was used for drinking and domestic use. The importance of rainfall harvesting at Huayuri indicates climate change in the Peruvian desert and that the Late Intermediate Period received greater precipitation than the historic era after the Spanish conquest beginning in 1532. However, rainfall harvesting could not create enough agricultural land to sustain a large population. The catchment area for rainfall harvesting is 15 to 25 times larger than the land that can be rendered suitable for agricultural areas. Rainfall harvesting provided only of agricultural land, plus drinking water, to the inhabitants of Huayuri. Assuming that the population of Huayuri was as large as the extensive ruins indicate, most of the food for the population came from irrigated agriculture in the adjacent valley of the Santa Clara River or was imported from elsewhere.

Abandonment

Huayuri reached its maximum population from 1150 CE to 1450 CE. Archaeological evidence indicates that rainfall harvesting began at Huayuri between 1260 and 1290 CE and became impractical in the 16th century, when the aridity of the region intensified and rainfall became extremely rare. Huayuri came under the influence or control of the

in the 1470s and possibly was still occupied when the Spanish conquest of Peru began.. JSTOR number 3628802. Epidemics of European diseases, beginning in the 1520s and killing a large percentage of the

Indigenous people of Peru The Indigenous peoples of Peru, or Native Peruvians, comprise a large number of ethnic groups who inhabit territory in present-day Peru. Indigenous cultures developed here for thousands of years before the arrival of the Spanish in 1532. In 201 ...

, may have contributed to the abandonment of the site.. JSTOR number 44446986.

Footnotes

{{reflist, 2 Archaeological sites in Peru Ruins in Peru Archaeological sites in Ica Region History of agriculture Prehistoric agriculture History of climate variability and change Rainwater harvesting