Thermal analysis of Tiwanaku raised field systems in the Lake Titicaca Basin of Bolivia

Abstract Raised field systems of agriculture in seasonally or perennially inundated landscapes have received increasing attention from scholars involved in the analysis of prehistoric agricultural intensification in the New World. This paper discusses the morphology and function of raised fields associated with the Tiwanaku civilization on the southern rim of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. The thermal properties, and specifically, the heat storage capacity of raised fields in this high altitude environment are analysed by means of an ANSYS finite element computer model. The analysis concludes that enhanced heat storage capacity was an essential design element of raised field agriculture in the Andean altiplano, and that this thermal effect served to mitigate the chronic hazard of frost damage to maturing crops in this rigorous environment. An experimental verification of this conclusion based on the performance of reconstructed raised fields subjected to severe sub-freezing conditions is briefly described.

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