Astounding GeoPACHA software is advancing Andean archaeology. The new and innovative web application is allowing researchers to map archaeological features in the Andes mountains of South America with heightened precision and on a larger scale than ever before.
The Geospatial Platform for Andean Culture, History and Archaeology, or GeoPACHA, collects and coordinates high-resolution satellite imagery covering broad swaths of mountainous territory in central, southern and coastal Peru. The GeoPACHA site can be accessed from anywhere by researchers who have the necessary training to spot archaeologically significant ruins and formations.
Within Andean archaeology there may be thousands of previously undiscovered features just waiting to be found. While the discovery of a single new archaeological site can be exciting, it is the opportunity to find many such sites in identifiable distribution patterns that is creating so much buzz around the new GeoPACHA application.
“One of the most substantial challenges in archaeology is aligning the scales of our datasets with those of the social worlds that we seek to study,” explained the developers of the GeoPACHA software, Dr. Steven Wernke from Vanderbilt University and Dr. Parker VanValkenburgh from Brown University in the United States.
“Archaeologists are often asked to solve large-scale problems — for example, to estimate the populations of ancient empires or to evaluate the effects of past climate change on settlement patterns across a continent…
