The Built Experience: Spatiality and Supra-household Community at Cerro San Isidro, Nepeña Valley, Peru

Abstract

In this dissertation, I examine how everyday experiences of space influenced life in the early urban center of Cerro San Isidro in Peru’s Nepeña Valley, with a specific focus on the Early Horizon period (800–200 BCE). Rather than focusing on traits, monumentality, or state authority, I investigate how people experienced, navigated, and lived within their built environment, and what those patterns reveal about community, cooperation, and identity. I employ a multi-modal, integrated methodology using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR), excavation, and pedestrian survey results, paired with Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Through this methodology, I advance three central hypotheses. First, Cerro San Isidro represents a form of low-density urbanism within a broader, integrated regional network. Second, I demonstrate that supra-household communities were present at Cerro San Isidro, based on evidence of spatial clustering, physical distinctiveness, and the presence of multiple households; these communities formed the basis for settlement organization. Third, shared experiences—specifically visibility and movement—reinforced cohesion and supported collective identity within supra-household communities and across the settlement. These findings demonstrate that early urban life at Cerro San Isidro was made meaningful through the experience of built space. Supra-household community identity and cooperation were not abstract ideals, but lived realities, reinforced through the spatial layout of the settlement and the ways its residents engaged with it. I argue that to fully understand early urban life, we must look not only at how space was constructed, but how people interacted with and lived within what was built. Through this dissertation, I contribute to ongoing efforts to deconstruct Western models of urbanism by emphasizing the diversity of urban forms and trajectories and by highlighting the centrality of everyday experience in shaping early urban populations.