Landscapes encompass the natural environments of specific geographies and their geologic and ecological histories. Simultaneously, they are socially constituted and are not just passive backgrounds to historical events. People don't just ignore past traces of human activity on the landscape, such as archaeological ruins or desert trails, but reinterpret them through their contemporary present.

Infrastructure: A key component of Empires in Motion is the study of travel infrastructure such as formal roads, byways, and caravan waystations. Such a focus necessitates a landscape-scale approach, where attention is given to the spaces between known settlements. As continuous features of the landscape, roads structure the flow and movement of communication, goods, and people, and often serve as the direct conduits of an empire's influence outside its heartland.

Geoglyphs & Rock Art: Geoglyphs are made by arranging stones and removing the natural desert pavement to reveal lighter-colored sediments underneath. Geoglyphs and rock art sites, such as this depiction of a snake located in the Majes Valley of Peru, mark desert roads along caravan routes and depict various zoomorphic and geometric figures.  

Ritual: Powerful places, whether they be natural features such as mountain-top peaks or a roadway shrine, often required repeated ritual offerings. One such tradition from the study area is the offering of painted stone and ceramic tablets. This portable form of rock art used a variety of brightly colored pigments to depict human and zoomorphic figures among other designs (shown here with color enhancement). 

The painted tablets displayed here were deposited on the surface of long abandoned Wari and Inka centers, demonstrating how local peoples continued to incorporate ancient sites on the landscape within contemporary offering traditions. 

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Other Topics

Landscape Archaeology