It was Augustus who first realized that the Roman Empire could not go on expanding for ever. Horace could write

Caelo tonantem credidimus Iovem

Regnare; praesens Divus habebiiur

Augustus adiectis Britannis

Imperio gravibusque Persis;

but a very real part of Augustus' claim to grateful veneration lay in the fact that he made up his mind to leave Britons and Parthians alone—to seek in them not new subjects, but peaceful and respectful neighbours. Coercere intra terminos imperium was the advice he left to his successors; and in principle they never departed from it. Claudius might conquer Britain, Trajan Mesopotamia and Dacia; but these were “rectifications,” as we say nowadays, not obliterations, of the imperial frontier.

For the frontier of the Empire, as Augustus left it, was far from perfect. Tiberius, concerned above all to maintain intact the system created by Augustus, played here, as everywhere, a waiting game, and did not meddle with the Augustan frontiers. But his successor Gaius, or “Caligula,” may have contemplated a conquest, or at least an invasion, of Britain; he certainly made a demonstration on the shore of the Channel. And Claudius, the fourth Emperor, took the decisive step. Britain and Gaul were too close together, too intimately linked by geography, blood and civilization, to permit of an unfortified Channel frontier. Southern Britain was already in part Romanized, and the flag followed trade.

It is not growing like a tree.… The poet wrote of Man, and Man as the ultimate standard of all size need not, outside a company of Footguards, regard I the trivial vacillation of his inches. In other manifestations, Size is a matter of moment. Look at a Little Pyramid; a Big Pyramid has to fight hard enough for intelligent recognition, but those little pyramids that the Pharaonic builders did not hesitate to scatter round and about are surely silly toys beyond belief. And imagine a little Empire State Building, bereft of the size and vista that give some sort of status, I suppose, to the actual pile; the thought horrifies. Imagine a little St. Peter’s, such as can in fact be seen somewhere in Canada, lacking altogether that superhuman, super-personal, immensity that in Rome at once conditions the mind to all measure of other-worldly emotion. Size.

Despite archaeological interest in the study of the origins of public architecture in the Andes, there remain a number of gaps in our knowledge, especially in the area between the Chancay and Lurin Valleys on the central coast of Peru. This situation may, in part, result from how we have approached the study of the Formative period. In particular, the lack of intensive studies in several types of sites and valleys means that we have incomplete knowledge of wider settlement systems. As a result, we know very little about the existence of smaller settlements, only the great public centres. Nor do we understand how the unique occupational histories of each site and valley developed. This is despite the fact that investigations of the period began with middens and sites with modest architecture such as Bellavista or Ancón (Uhle 1906; Rosas 2007). Yet this shortcoming has not been an obstacle to formulating explanatory models, which have focused on the origin of early public architecture. The current dominant explanatory model for the emergence of architectural monumentality focuses on the concept of the concentration of power (e.g. Haas 1982; Trigger 1990). Our project at El Pacífico takes a different perspective, seeing these mounds as a palimpsest of social experiences and socially constructed places to preserve community memory and traditional patterns of life (Dillehay 1990; Tilley 1994; Rosenswig & Burger 2012; Flores 2014).