Videos - Greg Zaro Video
Greg Zaro, Assistant Professor of Anthropology: “Well, in a broad sense, what we are trying to do in southern Peru is understand how these desert environments have changed over time. And, if we look at the broader scale of our planet, about a third of terrestrial landscapes are either classified as arid or semi-arid, and these regions expand and they contract and we don’t really understand the full complexity of why these changes occur. And what we’re doing in southern Peru in sort of a micro-region, which is already a hyper-aired environment–and has likely been so for thousands of years. We are trying to understand how it’s changed over time and what role humans may have in those changes. What we can tell from our research over the last couple of years or so is that since about A.D.1200, the desert has expanded, it’s become more arid over time. Less biological potential over time and humans have been a component to these landscapes for a millennia. And so, as an archaeologist, what we are trying to do is focus on the human component and how it integrates with all these non-human processes–like a drying up of spring systems, tectonic uplift and these other processes that might lead to desertification. So, we’re really focused on the human component understanding how it articulates with these other processes.”
