West of Eden: Adams visits the Andes

Although Robert McC. Adams never conducted field research in Andean South America, his theoretical perspectives, methods, and empirical studies have profoundly shaped how the region's researchers have approached explanations of history before the Spanish invasion of 1532 AD. In particular, we may cite his studies of the deep history of human experience on a natural landscape, the emergence of sociopolitical complexity, and the developing study of settlement patterns and early urbanism. The relationship between the emergence of political power and the construction of irrigation infrastructure has received special attention. In recent years, Andean scholars have engaged in an alternative framing of the relationship between humanity and the natural landscape, from the perspective of indigenous understandings of cosmic order and causality. This new viewpoint is encouraging novel ways of thinking about the nature of the archaeological record on the landscape and how to record it during survey.