Lands in south-central Chile, long thought to have been marginal until the Spanish conquest, are here shown to have been developing complex societies between at least AD 1000 and 1500. Part of the motor was provided by coastland cultivation on raised platforms, here identified and surveyed for the first time. The authors date the field systems and suggest that they were introduced by farmers from the north seeking wetlands in the face of increasing aridity in the central Andes and southern Amazon.

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In this study, we analyze extensive segmented and standardized agricultural fields in the marginally productive terrain of the Pampa de Guereque in the Jequetepeque Valley on the north coast of Peru. Although portions of the associated canal system were constructed continuously from late Formative to Chimú times, the segmented fields date to the late Chimú–Inka period and were only partially finished, apparently never fully used, and ultimately abandoned. We provide description of field plots and irrigation canals and discuss the implications of state-level construction and labor management of the fields, as well as the probable reasons for their abandonment.