Mapping Pre Incan Peruvian Cultures

Peru

By Morgane Borzee
culture, history, anthropology, education, heritage

This map aims to provide an interactive learning experience visualizing ancient Peruvian cultures and their archeological sites.

Peru has an extremely rich culture in regards to its ancient and pre-columbian history. Even before the Incan empire we already had developed over the territory more than 15 different cultures each of them with very particular traditions and art forms. We had cultures over 4000 years old like Caral and although we are known for famous ruins like Machu Picchu there are very little resources been allocated for cultural research and diffusion of our so vast art and cultural history.

That is why I chose to create an interactive map especially focusing on Pre Incan cultures and mapping all the archeological sites related. Having learned this through books when I was a high school student I wanted to build something more engaging and taking advantage of the existing technologies.

The methodology I have used to create the database has been the following, first I located archeological sites names from specific cultures in history books, then I searched those names in different archeological databases to locate the exact coordinates, lastly I checked that the coordinates coincided with the book map. This information was then reviews by a historian for validation.

In terms of the design I went through an iteration process with usability testing on each of the sprint phases. In the final prototype a color-scheme was used to emphasize the different cultures and improve the user experience and navigation through the different areas of the map.

My goal with this project is specially educational, creating a learning experience on Peruvian cultures that is interactive and engaging for students and people interested in both history and tourism. I hope that this project serves as a tool to better value our heritage and cultural diversity.