The South: Introduction

The contributions to this section on The South represent four key areas of current interest and research intensity. There is a truly extraordinary amount of fieldwork being conducted in the Titicaca Basin on both the Peruvian and Bolivian sides of the lake and its culturally affiliated areas in far south coastal Peru and neighboring Chile (e.g., Uribe and Agüero 2002; Goldstein 2003, 2005; Williams and Nash 2002). There is also a resurgence of interest in Wari now that Ayacucho is again safe for fieldwork (e.g., Cook and Glowacki 2003; Isbell 2004c; Isbell and Cook 2002; Isbell and Knobloch this volume; Leoni this volume; Ochatoma and Cabrera 2002; Perez 2002). Nasca culture of the south coast of Peru, one of the first of the ancient Peruvian civilizations to be identified by late 19th and early 20th century archaeologists (see, e.g., Uhle 1914), has seen consistent attention since the mid-1980s, although in the form of small projects (e.g., Carmichael 1988; Massey 1986; Proulx 1999; Reindel and Isla 2001, this volume; Schreiber 1999; Schreiber and Lancho Rojas 2003; Silverman 1993, 2002; Vaughn 2004) that nevertheless have achieved important breakthroughs and a new synthesis (Silverman and Proulx 2002). Arguably, Inca archaeology offers the greatest interpretive opportunities because of the huge areal extent of this empire, generally good preservation of its sites, and availability of ethnohistorical source material (see, e.g., Bray 2003a, b; Bauer 1992, 1998, 2004; Bauer and Stanish 2001; D'Altroy 1992, 2002; Kaulicke et al. 2002; Malpass 1993).