 Thank you very much for giving a voice also to South America and I will give my talk today in English So in my paper, I would like to discuss a question which I think is crucial For the topic of this session with the title art as material culture and the question is When we are dealing with archaeological remains and treat them as artworks Can we really be sure that the creators of these cultural manifestations? Conceived them as artworks I Will discuss this topic for the case of the geoglyphs of the Nazca culture in southern Peru And though I will come to the conclusion that the Nazca geoglyphs were not meant as images or artistic works as most people are claiming instead They were rather stages for ritual activities The image that you can see in the slide represents an Important transitional moment from the previous paracas period a time when geoglyphs indeed functioned as images and The transition is to the later Nazca period when the geoglyphs had a completely different function I will come back to this transition at the end of my talk Nazca is located on the west coast of South America in the southern part of Peru The geographical conditions are dominated by the cold humbled current Which is the reason for the extremely dry desert that reaches from north and Chile to southern Ecuador between the Pacific shore to the west and the foothills of the Andes to the east lies a large desert area Which is crossed by rivers These rivers have their origins in the high lands of the Andes and form oasis in the dry desert landscape The fertile river bottoms were the economic basis for the human societies that lived for thousands of years in this region the Nazca culture flourished here between 200 BC and 600 AD One of the outstanding Topographic features of this region is the sharp contrast between the fertile valley bottom Which is irrigate with its irrigated fields and human settlements and the flat desert pediments that form the so-called Pampas On these Pampas we find thousands of geoglyphs in the form of geometric lines and cleared areas But also figures like these homomorphic representations in the Pampa de Nazca Because of these figurative Geoglyphs most of which can be recognized only from the air Nazca geoglyphs in general have been interpreted as images and artwork To be seen from the air or by the gods in some of the areas the Pampas are literally covered by geoglyphs But as in this case of the Pampa de Nazca where the major concentrations of figurative geoglyphs occur We can recognize that the figurative geoglyphs represent only a minor part of the whole phenomenon In fact as a result of our detailed mapping of the geoglyphs We counted less than one percent of figurative geoglyphs in relation to the geometrics lines and plazas The construction technique of the geoglyphs is quite simple by removing the dark stones from the surface a lighter sediment appears The shadows of the accumulated stones at the borders accentuate the contrast and makes the geoglyphs clearly visible Figurative geoglyphs like this spiral in the background probably were constructed with simple technical devices Our research area lies in Palpa some 40 kilometers north of the Pampa de Nazca Although this region has been neglected for many years. We find they're the same type of geoglyphs like in the Nazca area During our research. We have studied more than 1,500 geoglyphs One of our main objective was the documentation of the geoglyphs with modern scientific methods Using the latest advances of photogrammetry. We created a digital terrain model The surface was visualized with an autofoto The geoglyphs were studied within the digital model as well as in the terrain and the Archaeological interpretations were stored in the form of vectors in a geographic information system Combining these elements we created a photorealistic digital 3d model of the geoglyphs This 3d model is a powerful tool for the analysis of the geoglyphs As a kind of by-product of our of course We were we also created and published 2d maps of the geoglyphs Our mapping area in Palpa covered about 90 square kilometers the models and maps Revealed the enormous complexity of the geoglyphs A second goal of our research was the investigation of the geoglyphs within their cultural context Beside settlement surveys and extensive excavations in Nazca settlements and cemeteries We were the first to excavate on the geoglyphs themselves One of the results of our excavations on the geoglyphs was the discovery of stone structures on the geoglyphs Here we can see the ongoing work at the end of trapezoids in the Palpa area Where the Nazca used to place small stone platforms In certain cases stone platforms were also placed at important crossing points of geoglyphs like in this case The pairing of stone platforms is typical The finding of wooden posts suggests that the platforms were surrounded by other structures built with perishable material We excavated at 10 different locations sites Documenting a recurrent pattern of stone platforms in most cases these consisted of simple rectangular stones construction Located at the end of trapezoids In some cases wooden posts were discovered between the platforms Which suggests the existence of large poles used perhaps as site marks Inside the stone platforms and around the platforms we found the remains of offerings Beside broken ceramic vessels we found the remains of crop fruits like corn cobs or tubers textile fragments and many remains of animals related to water like fish bones crabs and sea shells Especially important is the finding of Spondulous shells spondulous shells among the pre-spanic and dean societies were an outstanding symbol for water and fertility In archaeological excavations they are found exclusively in ritual and funerary contexts Spondulous shells do not occur on the south coast of Peru They have the natural habitat in the warm equatorial waters And were traded from the actual territory of ecuador to southern peru over a distance of more than 2000 kilometers Our finding suggests Suggest that the geoglice were used for offerings in ritual activities Additional evidence from the geoglice, which I cannot detail at this point demonstrates that the geoglice were used for ritual processions If our assumption Assumptions are correct The function of the geoglice was not to be seen from above Rather what was to be seen were the activities performed on the geoglice in short The geoglice were not images but stages for ritual activities In order to test this interpretation model we conducted viewshed analysis using our three-dimensional model of landscape and geoglice On the slide you can see a viewshed in green color Generated from one of the platforms with offerings assuming that the person with his eyes At an altitude of about one meter fifty was standing beside the platform The viewshed covers nearly all the geoglif groups in the surroundings This observation suggests that people or the activities on the geoglice Were visible from other geoglif groups in the region and also from the settlements, which are located in the valleys In order to test the general visibility of the geoglice We assigned a visibility index to each of the cells shown here in the slide Green cells indicate low visibility while red cells represent a high degree of general visibility If we project the geoglice over the matrix we recognize that indeed the geoglice are placed mostly in locations Where visibility is high That means that the nasca people constructed that geoglif Geoglifts in places where the activities performed upon them could be easily seen from other geoglifts And also from the settlements in the valleys Taking together the results of our documentation of the geoglifts of the excavations and the analysis with geographic information systems We can assume that the pampas in the nasca and palpa region were used by the nasca people as a ritual landscape For ceremonies related to water and fertility In this context the figural geoglifts most probably were used for ritual processions In palpa we also found a great number of geoglifts of the paracas culture which precedes the nasca culture The paracas culture is dated from 800 to 200 bc The paracas geoglifts are different from the nasca geoglifts. They are smaller about 15 to 30 meter high They represent human or animal figures Some features like the eyes were made in a positive technique that is accumulating material While the nasca geoglifts were made in negative technique removing material And they are placed on the slopes so that they can easily be seen from the valley In short the paracas geoglifts were images Which were meant to be seen from the valley In palpa we have recorded so far more than 80 groups of paracas geoglifts and in recent years They are also being recorded in other valleys of the nasca area In palpa we also recorded hundreds of paracas petroglifts many of them with similar motifs like those of the geoglifts In the upper row of the slide we can see the petroglifts in the lower row the geoglifts A human figure with head rest to the left another human figure with long hairs A feline and a bird figure Based on the similarity of the motifs of the petroglifts with the ones of the geoglifts We assume that the petroglifts were the origin of the geoglifts At some moment in history the motifs were transferred from the rocks to the ground In much larger dimensions This geoglift was photographed from the air in the 1940s by the German scholar Maria Reichen Unfortunately without recording its exact location Recently we were able to relocate the geoglift and study its detail Which are interesting for several reasons The motifs show elements that are clearly in the paracas tradition namely the elongated elements on the left And the small faces inside the orca figure The orca itself approximately 80 meters long is clearly executed in the nasca style The technique of execution is a mixture of the positive technique typical of the paracas tradition And the negative technique typical of the nasca tradition And finally although the main motif represents already the nasca tradition the location of the geoglift on the hill slope Is identical to the location of most of the paracas geoglifts in the palpa and nasca area This geoglift therefore represents the moment of transition from the paracas to the nasca tradition a period That we call the initial nasca period and which is dated to around 200 bc According to the available evidence this must have been the period of transition from geoglifts that clearly have the function of images To geoglifts that were used as stages for ritual activities To conclude we can state That while paracas geoglifts Functioned as images Nasca geoglifts were used for activities The desert pampas of the nasca and palpa area must be regarded as a ritual landscape for ceremonies related to water and fertility And regarding the long lasting discussion about the function of the nasca geoglifts, this means a paradigm shift Geoglifts of the nasca culture should not be considered as objects of art or artistic representation to be seen from the air Nasca geoglifts were stages for social and religious activities Thank you very much