In this spotlight, Parker VanValkenburgh delves into his work on the show "Lost Cities Revealed with Albert Lin" — now streaming on DisneyPlus! Here's what he told us:

"I worked on Episode 3, "The Cloud Warriors." Back in July and September 2022, the production team, Albert, and the amazing Joe Steel and Duncan Lees from Visualskies Studios came to the Area de Conservación Privada Huiquilla where we were hosted by José la Torre and the community of Choctamal. 

Joe and Duncan collected lidar data from most of the conservation area and showed that two sites that had long been known to local people, "El Corral" and "La Iglesia," where the Paisajes Arqueológicos de Chachapoyas also did survey work back in 2017 and 2018, extended over a much larger area than previously imagined — over 200 structures arrayed along a series of ridges, with a direct view of the Fortaleza of Kuelap.

This was a valuable finding that we can publish now that the episode is out. If you watch it, you'll see that the story takes some liberties, including in the reconstruction of the site at the end of the episode. However, I hope that this will get people more interested in the incredible Indigenous heritage of northeastern Peru!

To me, one of the things that's really exciting here is the diversity of "cities" and "civilization" in the past. Despite their impressive construction and differences in masonry and architectural adornment, Chachapoya structures are assiduously similar in their size and layout, in most sites. Excavations in houses show little evidence of the sort of entrenched class differences we expect of urban settlements. Yet it's also clear that there were political hierarchies in Chachapoya society, because Indigenous testimonies recorded in the colonial period describe them.

This is a radically different pattern than the standard historical narrative we're taught about ancient societies, which holds that political hierarchy and the entrenchment of social class tend to go hand-in-hand with one another. It's this sort of thing that keeps me going in archaeology and it's a true privilege to be able to work in Amazonas, with a series of amazing communities and great archaeologists."