PERU Archaeologist says Americans plagiarized work on pyramids
LIMA - A Peruvian archaeologist is hurling allegations of plagiarism and intellectual plunder at American colleagues over a barren desert landscape where a mysterious culture built pyramids nearly 5,000 years ago. Peru's government and some U.S. researchers have lined up firmly behind Ruth Shady, who has long researched the ruins of Caral, the oldest known city in the Americas. She contends that Americans Jonathan Haas and Winifred Creamer lifted conclusions from her work to advance their own study, published last month in the science journal Nature. The article, based on radiocarbon dating of samples taken in three Peruvian valleys known collectively as the Norte Chico, attracted worldwide news coverage. It showed that Caral was part of a complex society that flourished at the same time the pyramids of Egypt were being built. ''The truth is, these people are Machiavellian,'' Shady said. ''The interpretations that they published in Nature, having to do with the theory of development of complex societies, was plagiarized from our 10 years of work.'' Haas, of the Chicago Field Museum, angrily denied the charge.
