Background

The Era de Pando archaelogical site was declared National Cultural Heritage by National Director’s Resolution 258/INC, dated March 15, 2000.

In 1979, Carlos Williams and Manuel Merino presented the first general description of the components and buildings of Era de Pando, and highlighted the absence of pottery. In the eighties, Elzbieta Zechenter made small cuts in the Major Pyramid Building to find out what resources were used by the former settlers (Zechenter 1988).

In 1994, Ruth Shady and her team of researchers began exploring the low and medium-high valley of Supe, which included recording the shapes, volume and size of the Era de Pando buildings. Based on the results, they claimed that the explored settlements dated back to the Initial Formative period (then Late Archaic), that the first State of the Andean area originated and developed in the Supe Valley, and that Era de Pando was the last display of political power before the Caral civilization’s decline.

In February 2010, ZAC started an archaeological research on the site, then occupied by an association that had placed a water tank on one of the buildings, and planted cacti on top of them and around. After various efforts, the concession and sale of the land was repealed, and this cultural heritage was recovered for the benefit of the Peruvian nation.

The current research is dedicated to the definition of urban design, the sequence of occupation, its characteristics over time and its relationship with the other Caral Civilization settlements.