The decline of the Tiwanaku state saw the emergence of two new cultures-Pica-Tarapacá and Atacama-during the Late Intermediate Period in northern Chile. Archeological evidence suggests that both groups practised maize agriculture and pastoralism, but that their interaction zones differed significantly. Marine resources are common at Pica-Tarapacá sites, even those far from coast, while Atacama ...

or as the ends of a boiv are drawn together." They have a legend that it visits the country every thirty years. The epidemic arrived in Bhamo in June last, having travelled up the Irrawaddy Yalley starting in Rangoon in May and visiting Mandalay during the early part of June. It is interesting to note this following of the important trade route. It is not unlikely that the epidemic originated f...

In June and July 1997, Nomad, a planetary-relevant mobile robot, traversed more than 220 kilometers across the barren Atacama Desert in Chile, exploring a landscape analogous to the surfaces of the Moon and Mars. In this unprecedented demonstration, Nomad operated both autonomously and under the control of operators thousands of kilometers away, addressing issues of robot configuration, communi...

In this paper we describe the steering, suspension and control systems of the rover Zoë, a solar-powered robot designed to explore the Mars-like landscapes of the Atacama Desert in Chile. We are developing the Zoë chassis as an alternative to the traditional six-wheeled, rocker-bogie system used by Mars rovers flown in the past ten years. Zoë travels over rough terrain using only four independe...

In the driest parts of the Atacama Desert there are no visible life forms on soil or rock surfaces. The soil in this region contains only minute traces of bacteria distributed in patches, and conditions are too dry for cyanobacteria that live under translucent stones. Here we show that halite evaporite rocks from the driest part of the Atacama Desert are colonized by cyanobacteria. This coloniz...

Focused groundwater discharge in closed basins provides opportunities to investigate mechanisms for closing hydrologic and solute budgets in arid regions. The Salar de Atacama (SdA), adjacent to the Central Andean Plateau in the hyperarid Atacama Desert, provides an extreme example of halite (>1800 km) and lithium brine (~5000 ppm) accumulation spanning late Miocene to present. Minimum long-ter...

A sediment quality triad (SQT) assessment was made of the impact of copper mine tailings disposal on littoral meiofaunal assemblages in the Atacama region of northern Chile. This situation is unusual in that the disposal is direct into the high-energy coastal system and not via a river estuary or other low-energy environment. This situation also allows for the examination of the impact of coppe...

[1] Soil sulfates are present in arid and hyperarid environments on Earth and have been found to be abundant in soils on Mars. Examination of soil gypsum from the Atacama Desert, Chile, the Mojave Desert, United States, and Al-Jafr Basin, Jordan, revealed endolithic cyanobacteria communities just below the surface of soil gypsum samples. Optical and scanning electron microscope observations of ...