The Sama Valley is located in the far southern Peru in the department of Tacna. Originating in the Cordillera Barroso at 4600 meters above sea level, the Sama River traverses the western slopes of the Andes and the coastal plain of the northern Atacama Desert, draining into the Pacific Ocean just south of the Morro de Sama headland. While the wider coastal plain is a hyperarid environment, the middle and lower valley form small yet productive pockets of fertile land where maize, cotton, and ají (chili pepper) have been grown since the late prehispanic era. In addition, there are several nearby areas beyond the valley itself that are seasonally covered with lomas plants fed by the camanchaca, a thick coastal fog that rolls in from the Pacific.
The oasis of the middle and lower valley formed an attractive location for coastal and highland communities alike. The valley is best known in the early colonial archive for its enduring connections to the highlands. In his famous 1567 report on the Lupaqa communities of Chucuito centered on the Lake Titicaca basin, the Spanish colonial official Garci Díez de San Miguel noted the historical presence of Lupaqa settlers in the Sama Valley. Writing eighty years later, Vasquez de Espinoza (1648) highlighted the valley’s persistent connections to the altiplano, with the fields of Sama providing vast amounts of ají for the markets of the silver mining city of Potosí.
Located between two major areas of archaeological and ethnohistoric investigation – Moquegua (Peru) and Arica (Chile) – the valley has seen comparatively little archaeological investigation. What we know of the valley and its long history of human occupation derives primarily from two pioneering projects: the investigations of Herman Trimborn and colleagues who focused on the Inca occupation at Sama La Antigua (1970-75) and the excavation program of Danièle Lavallée and colleagues at the coastal Archaic site of Quebrada de los Burros (1995-2009). Additional reconnaissance in the valley has been conducted over the past seven decades by Gary Vescelius, Universidad Católica de Santa María (Arequipa), Jesús Gordillo Begazo, and Carlos Vela, although much of these results remain unpublished.
At CIAAST, we’re excited to continue this tradition of research as we bring the study of the Sama Valley and its long history into the present.