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Buena Vista, Peru
Buena Vista is an 8 hectare (20 acre) archaeological site located in the Chillon River Valley north of Lima, Peru. The site was first excavated by Frederic Engel (1987). He obtained radiocarbon dates that pertained to the Early Preceramic Period (9700+/-200 uncalibrated radiocarbon years before present), and to the Early Intermediate Period (1960+/-80 uncalibrated radiocarbon years before present).
In 2006, archaeologist Robert Benfer of the University of Missouri announced the discovery of a 4200 year old observatory at Buena Vista. Named the "Temple of the Fox" by archaeologists, the observatory is located atop a small pyramid. Features of the temple's construction produce alignments that mark that the summer and winter solstices. Radiocarbon dating of organic materials recovered from sealed contexts within the temple resulted in an age of ca. 2200 cal B.C. This date makes the Temple of the Fox the oldest observatory presently known in the Americas.
External links
National Geographic story
See also
List of archaeoastronomical sites sorted by country
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Buena Vista, Peru
