This special symposium celebrates the opening of the National Museum of the American Indian’s landmark exhibition, The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire, with a fascinating look at the material, political, economic, and religious structures that integrated more than one hundred Native nations and millions of people in the powerful Andean Empire known as the Tawantinsuyu. In this segment, José Alejandro Beltrán-Caballero, Universitat Rovira i Virgili; Ricardo Mar, Universitat Rovira i Virgili; and Crayla Alfaro, Architect, Cusco, Perú speak on “Cusco: A New Vision of the Ancient City.”
José Alejandro Beltrán-Caballero is an architect and an associate researcher at the Seminary of Ancient Topography at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, Spain. He received his PhD in architecture from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya–Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura, Barcelona. His work focuses on the study of ancient settlements in relation to water management and the interpretation of the landscape in ancient cities. He has also worked on virtual reconstruction projects in Europe and South America.
Ricardo Mar is a professor of archaeology at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain. He is an archaeological architect with a PhD from Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona. He has been a guest professor at universities in England, Italy, the United States, Colombia, and Perú. Mar has worked and managed projects in Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Morocco, Tunisia, Colombia, and Perú.
Crayla Alfaro is an architect, with a graduate degree in Management of Cultural Heritage. Her research focuses on the historical evolution of the city of Cusco. Professionally, she has served as Coordinator of the Master Plan for the Historic Center of Cusco in the National Institute of Culture and as Manager of Historical City Center of the Provincial Municipality of Cusco. Alfaro has promoted developing research projects and dissemination of cultural heritage of the historic city of Cusco. She has also participated in the management and renovation of public spaces and housing in the historical perimeter. She is the author and co-author of numerous publications and books related to the research and asset recovery space of Cusco.
The symposium was recorded at the Rasmuson Theater of the National Museum of the American Indian on June 25-26, 2015.
