DR. GREGORY ZARO

My interests broadly relate to the interplay between humans and the environment, primarily conceptualized through historical ecology, subsistence economies, agriculture, and cosmology. My area of specialization is Andean South America with strong secondary interests in Mesoamerica. My research focuses on long-term human-environment dynamics along the Peruvian south coast, with a principal interest in agricultural landscape evolution in arid environments. I am particularly interested in assessing the role human groups over the past several thousand years may have played in shaping the environmental conditions experienced today. My research follows the perspective of historical ecology, which treats landscapes as physical expressions of long, historical processes of human-environment interactions.

Representative Publications:

Zaro, Gregory, Heather Builth, Claudia Rivera, Jimena Roldán, and Graciela Suvires (in review). Landscape Evolution in the Southern Deserts: Environmental Change, Human Agency, and Sustainability. Chungará Revista de Antropología Chilena, in review.

Zaro, Gregory (in press). Diversity Specialists: Coastal Resource Management and Historical Contingency in the Osmore Desert of Southern Peru. Latin American Antiquity, in press.

Zaro, Gregory and Adán Umire-Alvarez (2005). Late Chiribaya Agriculture and Risk Management along the Arid Andean Coast of Southern Perú, AD 1200-1400. Geoarchaeology: An International Journal 20(7):717-737.

Zaro, Gregory and Jon C. Lohse (2005). Agricultural Rhythms and Rituals: Ancient Maya Solar Observation in Hinterland Blue Creek, Northwestern Belize. Latin American Antiquity 16(1):81-98.

Telephone: (207) 581-1857
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