The Palpa valleys and its tributaries, in the coastal and highlands of southern Peru, are being investigated by a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists and geographers from Peru and Germany, aiming to reconstruct the region’s cultural processes in terms of a varied landscape and changing climate. Research has revealed a long cultural process that began more than 10,000 years ago and whose clearest evidence ranges from the early Archaic to Inca periods. During this research, more than 1500 archaeological sites have been recorded in surveys and excavations. Additionally, in cooperation with the Institute of Geography of the University of Heidelberg, palaeoclimatic changes that occurred during the Holocene were recorded in detail. Analyses of fluvial and aeolian sediments of the desert coast, as well as analyses of macroremains and pollen of drill cores from peat bogs of the highlands, demonstrate that climatic parameters changed gradually over time and influenced the living conditions and settlement patterns of the pre-Hispanic societies.