Last Update: Thursday, January 6, 2005. 4:00pm (AEDT)

US archaeologists accused of plagiarism

A Peruvian archaeologist has accused two US archaeologists of plagiarising her work on the Caral complex, recently determined to be the oldest site in the Americas.

The official news agency Andina reported Ruth Shady accused Chicago-area archaeologists Jonathan Haas and his wife Winifred Creamer before the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) with taking her work on Caral, Ms Shady told Andina.

Mr Haas and Ms Creamer may want to appear as the discoverers of the complex - one of the most important in the world due to its antiquity - or they might be seeking money for their "alleged" investigations, Ms Shady said.

Caral is located some 200 kilometres on the coast north of Lima.

It is part of several sites collectively known as the Norte Chico.

Researchers say the Norte Chico sites are 5,000 years old - much older than previously sites in the Americas and from the same period of the Egyptian pyramids.

Peru's National Institute of Culture (INC), headed by distinguished archaeologist Luis Lumbreras, said the institute is working on a formal document to submit to the SAA's ethics committee.

The report by Mr Haas - a curator at the Field Museum in Chicago, and Ms Creamer, a professor at Northern Illinois University - was published in December in the British journal Nature.

Recent work led by Ms Shady uncovered five 20-metre high terrace pyramids in Caral.

The site has been known for some 40 years, but only studied in detail over the past decade.

-AFP

Ojalá no se verdad, sino fatal. Me marca la vida, sólo un poco, después de todo, es Perú, el país en donde la comida es un hit, y no porque la típica sea rica, sino porque la enseñan muy bien, y los precios son sorprendentes.