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The Viru Valley is located in
La Libertad Region La Libertad (; in English language, English: ''The Liberty'') is a Regions of Peru, department and Regional Government of La Libertad, region in northwestern Peru. Formerly it was known as the Department of La Libertad ('). It is bordered by the L ...
on the north west coast of
Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...
.


The Viru Valley Project

In 1946 the first attempt to study settlement patterns in the
Americas The Americas, sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North America and South America.''Webster's New World College Dictionary'', 2010 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. When viewed as a sing ...
took place in the Viru Valley, led by
Gordon Willey Gordon Randolph Willey (7 March 1913 – 28 April 2002) was an American archaeologist who was described by colleagues as the "dean" of New World archaeology.Sabloff 2004, p.406 Willey performed fieldwork at excavations in South America, Central A ...
. Rather than examine individual settlement sites, Willey wanted to look at the valley as a whole and the way that each village interacted with the others. The study showed that villages were located in places which reflected their relationship with the wider landscape and their neighbours. The project emphasised the importance for archaeologists of viewing sites holistically and to take into account the economic, environmental, social and political factors acting on past societies. Willey's groundbreaking study stimulated the work of a number of subsequent archaeologists in the valley. From 1992 to 1998 Dr. Thomas A. Zoubek embarked on a study of the earliest mid and upper valley sites in Viru concentrating specifically at the sites of Huaca El Gallo/La Gallina of Virú culture, in the El Nino Quebrada. These excavations and later ones in the Susanga region completely redefined our knowledge of the earliest agricultural societies in the valley and resulted in the discovery of the earliest ceramics found in coastal Peru that have been dated to c.2400 BCE.


Notable people

* Julio Castillo Narváez (? –2011), producer and radio news program host, murdered in Viru.


See also

* Virú culture *
Chavimochic Chavimochic Special Project is an irrigation system that extends throughout much of the coast of the La Libertad Region, on the north coast of Peru. It was started in the 1960s by the National Development Institute (INADE), a Peruvian central ...
* Chao Valley * Moche valley *
Chicama Valley Chicama Valley is an area located at north of the Valley of Moche in La Libertad Region, northern Peru, it has agricultural resources where one of the main products is cane of sugar; this valley has been formed on both sides of the Chicama Rive ...
* Jequetepeque Valley


References

Willey, G. R. (1953): ''Prehistoric settlement patterns in the Virù Valley, Peru''. Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 155. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Archaeology in the Americas Archaeological sites in Peru Archaeological sites in the Department of La Libertad Valleys of the Department of La Libertad {{LaLibertad-geo-stub