Looking Back at Proyecto Paraiso: Why It Still Matters

Dr. Elizabeth M. Zechenter is a former student of the Archaeology Institute at the Jagiellonian University who as a doctoral student at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) directed a large multidisciplinary research project dealing with the economic foundations of the Peruvian Late Preceramic and Initial Periods, known as Proyecto PARAISO. The Proyecto PARAISO was conducted between 1985 and 1987 with majority of the field work concentrated in the Supe Valley of the Peruvian Central Coast. The Proyecto was funded by numerous grants and involved multiple institutions and researchers as well as student volunteers from the US, Holland, and Peru. This article looks back at the Proyecto PARAISO and evaluates its methodology and its contributions, and reviews various testable hypothesis that were generated by this research, but which still remain largely untested. Volume 17 of the Contributions to New World Archaeology contains also an independent commentary dealing with the Proyecto PARAISO by the two archaeologists - Plinio L. Guillen Alarcon and Lukasz Majchrzak - who are currently working in the Supe valley.