MacEwan University professor plans to explore doomed Incan site before city engulfs it

It's not uncommon for developments to pop up over places of historic significance.

But for MacEwan University anthropology professor Lidio Valdez Cardenas, the expansion of a small Peruvian city is hitting close to home.

Acari, located in southern Peru, continues to grow, but is surrounded by desert on all sides, meaning that an old excavation site, formerly part of the Incan Empire, is one of the few remaining places it can develop.

According to Cardenas, who was born in Peru, the site will soon be no more.

Cardenas cut his teeth as an archeologist at the site, having been shown the ropes by esteemed California-based archeologist Francis Riddell, who died in 2002.

"He was like a father to me, and his dream was to work outside and if possible die there," he said. "It's some kind of tribute to him."

Cardenas spent the summer on a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council mapping out the site in anticipation for next summer, when he will bring four MacEwan students and four Peruvian students to the town in the hopes of gleaning new information about the old ruins.

The site was the Incan administrative centre of the area.

All artifacts found on the site are property of the Peruvian government, he said.

Overall, Canada lacks a healthy interest in the history of what is now Latin America, Cardenas said, adding that there are few academics in the country who look into it.

"In Canada especially, we don't have many archeologists writing about the Inca. I think it's an important issue," he said.

Pre-Incan imbibing

On a lighter note, Cardenas is also something of an expert on the historic beers of Peru.

In 2001, at a different excavation site, Cardenas found a large stone slab that he assumed was the entrance to a burial site.

Contrary to any macabre expectations, as he and his colleagues dug beneath the stone, they found dozens more just like it, along with crescent-shaped rocks - used to crush maize, beans, berries, etc. - and large ceramic jugs used to boil, cool and ferment a kind of local beer called chicha.

"The fact that we came across the stones on a larger scale, and so many vessels, makes me believe that this was more likely a place that, long before the Incas, people have been producing beer on a large scale," he said.

Cardenas found that there was an abundance of research in North America about the more common corn-based chicha recipes, but almost nothing on the brews made from the berries of the molle tree, which he grew up making, though hasn't in many years.

Additionally, he found that the practice of making chicha, of all kinds, has fallen out of favour in Peru, having been replaced by mass-produced commercial brews, though the recipes still live on among many of the locals.

"About 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you could still find the beer everywhere," he said, adding this is becoming increasingly rare.