Welcome to the website of Elizabeth Klarich, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Smith College. This site also features the research of many other members of the Pukara Archaeological Project, which is co-directed by David Oshige Adams and Bárbara Carbajal Salazar. If you would like to visit our bilingual, public-facing website, check out Pukapedia.org. For updates check out the News & Updates section of this website. Thank you!
Archaeological Research
The Pukara Archaeological Project is a multi-year effort directed towards unraveling issues related to urbanism, uses of monumental space, alternative leadership strategies, and the institutionalization of inequality in complex societies. The site is located in the town of Pucará in the northern Lake Titicaca Basin of Peru and reached its largest extent from approximately 200 BC- AD 200. Pukara has a long occupational history, complex architecture and site organization, and covers a vast area (over 1km2). We look forward to many years of fieldwork and artifact analysis to help us begin to understand the founding, growth, and decline of this key site within local and regional contexts.
This research has been generously funded through the National Science Foundation, Fulbright Hays, University of California-Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, the Heinz Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Anthropological Foundation, Smith College, and also supported by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture. We also frequently collaborate with the administration, students and anthropology faculty from the Universidad Nacional del Altiplano-Puno.
The Pukara Archaeological Project is one of many projects active in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Peru that operates with the logistical support of the Collasuyo Archaeological Research Institute (CARI).
Economic Development
Outside of research and teaching, Elizabeth Klarich serves as the Co-President of the Chijnaya Foundation, a registered 501c3 non-profit organization that works in partnership with rural communities in Southern Peru to design and implement self-sustaining projects in health, education, and economic development. In collaboration with our Peruvian partner organization Asociación Pro-DIA (Association for Integral Development of the Altiplano), the Chijnaya Foundation works with a network of nearly 50 communities in six districts of Puno: Pucará, Choquehuanca, Taraco, Paratía, Capachica, and Amantaní.
Thank you to the many people who provided photos for this website— Nathan Craig, Matty Wilhelm, Barbara Carbajal, David Oshige & many others.