Tales from the Field: Doing Research in Peru in a Time of Terrorism, Cholera, and Hyper-Inflation

Photo of ancient Peruvian mountain side stone houses.
Tales from the Field: Doing Research in Peru in a Time of Terrorism, Cholera, and Hyper-Inflation

Tales from the Field: Doing Research in Peru in a Time of Terrorism, Cholera, and Hyper-Inflation

When

October 12, 2022    
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
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Where

Alumni Building, room 308
207 E. Cameron Avenue, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 27514
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About the Speaker

Portrait of Brian Billman.Brian Billman
Associate Professor

Area of Interest:
Archaeology of Chiefdoms and States, Political Economy, Human Violence, the Evolution of Human Behavior, Heritage Preservation, Settlement Pattern Analysis, the prehistory of the Andes and the American Southwest.

In the fall of 1990, Brian Billman and Laurie King-Billman arrived in Peru, where Brian was going to do fieldwork for a PhD dissertation on the origins of the Moche State (AD 200-800). Although the PhD proposal did not survive the first week of fieldwork, they managed to survive 13 months of economic chaos caused by “Fujishock”, strikes, protests, the guerilla insurgency, a close encounter with the Peruvian army in the field, and a cholera epidemic.

They returned home with enough data to eventually complete the dissertation and with their daughter, Sara, born by Laurie during the epidemic.