Following the Ancient Nasca Puquios from Space

Precious information to reconstruct ancient environmental changes, still fossilized in the present landscape, may be captured from multispectral satellite images from medium to high spatial resolution. In particular, satellite derived moisture content may facilitate the identification of areas involved in early environmental manipulation mainly addressed to set up irrigation and artificial wet agro-ecosystems where the natural rainfall was insufficient to support agriculture. Up to now, only a few number of archaeological studies on spatial patterns of moisture have been carried out through the world using satellite optical data. In this chapter, Landsat and ASTER data were analyzed for some areas near Nasca river within the drainage basin of the Rio Grande, densely settled over the centuries and millennia even if the physical environment presented serious obstacles to human occupation. This region is one of the most arid areas of the world, so that the pluvial precipitations are so scarce that they can not be measured. To face this critical and extreme environmental conditions, ancient populations of the Nasca River valley, devised an underground aqueducts called puquios, some of which are still used today. Archaeologists suggest that during the Nasca flourishing period, certainly the number and spatial distribution of puquios was larger than today. We used satellite data to identify areas to be further investigated to assess if and where therein puquios were constructed for water control and retrieval.