3.4.4. The Ilave Valley and Jiskairumoko

Located in the Department of Puno in the western Lake Titicaca Basin, the Ilave river valley is an open, terraced river valley and it forms the highest volume river drainage to flow into Lake Titicaca from the west. Jiskairumoko (95-189) is the largest multicomponent Archaic/Formative site identified during survey and it lies 200 km from the Chivay obsidian source or 44 hours travel time across the expansive puna grasslands. Mark Aldenderfer conducted research in the Ilave valley from 1994 to 2002 including a pedestrian survey, a testing program, and excavation work (Aldenderfer 1997;Aldenderfer 1998). In 1997 and 1998 Cindy Klink conducted research in the Huenque drainage, a principal tributary that joins the Ilave from the south (Klink 2005;Klink 2006;Klink and Aldenderfer 1996). Nathan Craig excavated at the site of Jiskairumoko and tested at numerous other sites between 1999 and 2002 (Craig 1999;Craig 2005;Craig and Aldenderfer 2002;Craig and Aldenderfer In Press). Tripcevich conducted a viewshed analysis of sites in the Ilave drainage using data from the 1994 and 1995 Ilave valley survey (Tripcevich 2002).