Books By Robert A. Benfer, Edward E. Brent, Louanna Furbee - Author

Retired, my wife and I divide much of the year between Mexico and Perú. My research programs should be winding down, but a series of unexpected discoveries has them expanding with each field trip. They are in an area of archaeological investigation new to me in 2004, archaeoastronomy. In that year we excavated the first temple with astronomical alignments at the site of Buena Vista, Perú. The excavations were designed to test a political-economic hypothesis of coastal/mid-valley interactions at the time, 2,000 BC, when monumental architecture and large sites first developed in the Chillón Valley. In 2005 we excavated a second temple, in 2007 a third, both with additional astronomical alignments. Since then, pedestrian survey has revealed a large number of complex alignments, many with multiple reference points, some reference points themselves describing another alignment. Continuing this work at two other sites on the ground, we found rich sets of alignments in two other sites of similar age. Google Earth r