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Combating Illegal Excavations in Cahuachi: Ancient Problems and Modern Technologies

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The Ancient Nasca World

Abstract

Illegal excavations represent one of the main risk factors which affect the archaeological heritage in Peru, in general, and in Nasca region, in particular. Looting in Peru has an ancient “tradition”, starting from the Spanish Conquistadors (and before); but since the 1960s, it has been strongly intensifying to supply the growing national and international markets. After the famous plundering of Sipán, an agreement was reached with the United States in 1997 to restrict the import of Pre-Columbian and ethnographic material from Peru. But, unfortunately, since the signing of the bilateral agreements with the United States, the traffic has shifted and been directed more towards Northern and Central Europe. Steps were taken to prevent illegal excavations through the forced return of looted archaeological objects; but this only partially addressed the problem because, even if the objects have been returned, the archaeological context from which they were stolen cannot be recovered. To stop, or at least limit, the illicit trade, it would be necessary to improve the present national and international laws and make available the resources necessary for their enforcement and for a wider understanding and systematic monitoring of the archaeological areas by using effective techniques of surveillance, including remote sensing. This chapter deals with the results obtained by using an automatic procedure applied to multitemporal satellite images of some areas in the Río Grande de Nasca Drainage for the detection of looted areas. The rate of success in detecting changes related to the archaeological looting has been successfully tested in significant selected areas using complementary tools such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV ), a Global Positioning System (GPS ), Ground-penetrating radar (GPR ), and field surveys . Satellite technologies can provide reliable information: (i) to quantify the looting phenomenon even if it is on an “industrial scale” over large areas, and (ii) to set up a systematic monitoring tool to trace the illicit trade in antiquities. This study has implications for the protection of archaeological sites, not only in Nasca but also across the world.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Summarizing, the current legislation on the protection of cultural heritage, it “expresses an interest superior to private property rights” (Karlzén 2010; Martorell-Carreño 2006). However the Constitution assures the right of private ownership over movable objects, belonging to cultural heritage, which can be traded domestically. Unauthorized excavation, extraction, and export are forbidden and criminalized by the Penal Code. Excavations can made only by archaeologists if authorized, following a complex procedure. New findings belong to the state and never can come legally into the hands of a private person.

  2. 2.

    About Cahuachi, the reader is referred to Chaps. 14, 15, and 19 by Orefici (2016a, b, c).

  3. 3.

    According to the derogatory comments of witness to some “looters of finesse” interviewed by Helaine Silverman.

  4. 4.

    Soil generally characterized by angles of friction ranging 28–32° and cohesion of 5–10 kPa (Cestelli Guidi 1987).

  5. 5.

    With horizontal, vertical and rotation speed ranging from 0.1 to 15 m/s, 0.1 to 6 m/s and 200 °/s, respectively.

  6. 6.

    The photogrammetric processing of digital images for generating 3D spatial data was performed by using Photoscan software (Agisoft PhotoScan User Manual 2014). The processing includes the following steps: (i) the selection and loading of photos, captured with correct overlap requirement (60 % of side overlap +80 % of forward overlap) aimed at minimizing blind-zones; (ii) computation of camera position and orientation for each photo, alignment of photos and building of a sparse point cloud; (iii) generation of a dense-point cloud model which enables calculating the depth information for each camera position; (iv) building 3d model polygonal mesh; and (v) and, finally, building model texture.

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Acknowledgments

The DEM in Fig. 25.11 has been processed by Antonio Pecci of CNR/IBAM. The GPR prospections have been performed and processed by Luigi Capozzoli, Enzo Rizzo of CNR-IMAA and Gerardo Romano of University of Bari (Fig. 25.14c–e). The 3d visualization of GPR iso-amplitude in Fig. 25.14f has been made by Giovanni Leucci of CNR-IBAM. GNSS kinematic surveys have been performed by Gabriele Bitelli and Emanuele Mandanici of University of Bologna.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Research Council (CNR) - Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis (IMAA), C. da S. Loya, 85050, Tito Scalo, Potenza, Italy

    Rosa Lasaponara

  2. National Research Council (CNR) - Institute of Archaeological and Monumental Heritage (IBAM), C. da S. Loya, 85050, Tito Scalo, Potenza, Italy

    Nicola Masini

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  1. Rosa Lasaponara
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Correspondence to Rosa Lasaponara .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. National Research Council (CNR), Institute of Archaeological and Monumental Heritage (IBAM), Potenza, Italy

    Rosa Lasaponara

  2. National Research Council (CNR), Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis (IMAA), Potenza, Italy

    Nicola Masini

  3. Centro Italiano Studi e Ricerche Archeologiche Precolombiane (CISRAP), Brescia, Italy

    Giuseppe Orefici

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Lasaponara, R., Masini, N. (2016). Combating Illegal Excavations in Cahuachi: Ancient Problems and Modern Technologies. In: Lasaponara, R., Masini, N., Orefici, G. (eds) The Ancient Nasca World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47052-8_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47052-8_25

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