Nazca Lines of Ancient Peru Topic of UWs Frison Lecture Sept. 28

“New Insights on the Nazca Lines of Ancient Peru” is the topic of the 19th annual George C. Frison Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology Lecture Thursday, Sept. 28, at the University of Wyoming.

Charles Stanish, director emeritus of the Cotsen Institute at UCLA, will give the Wyoming Archaeology Awareness Month-sponsored lecture at 4 p.m. in the UW College of Agriculture Building auditorium. A reception will follow in the Anthropology Building foyer. Both the lecture and reception are free and open to the public.

Stanish will discuss the famous geoglyphs of Nazca in Peru, which were carved into the desert more than 1,500 years ago. But, for almost 75 years, these enigmatic drawings have fascinated people from around the world.

The last five years, Stanish has been working in a valley north of Nazca called Chincha. He and his colleagues discovered a new set of lines in the valley that predate the Nazca ones by several centuries. Their excavations and analyses of the sites and lines in Chincha provide new insights into the social, political and economic function of the geoglyph complexes.

His talk will highlight the new discoveries and demonstrate the ingenious ways in which people in ancient Peru structured their social, economic and religious world.