10.8156°S, 77.7410°W.
Aspero is a Late Archaic monumental complex on the Pacific coast of Peru at the mouth of the Supe Valley, dated between approximately 3000 and 1800 BCE — making it among the oldest urban-scale architecture in the Americas, contemporary with the Egyptian Old Kingdom. The site contains six monumental platform mounds of stone and adobe rising up to 10 metres above the desert floor, faced in cut stone walls with sunken plazas. Aspero was first surveyed by Max Uhle in 1905 and reinvestigated by Robert Feldman in the 1970s, who documented the platform mounds and recovered ceremonial offerings. The site is closely associated with inland Caral, the larger contemporary site 23 km up the Supe Valley, with which Aspero formed a coastal–inland economic dyad. A 2016 excavation recovered an intact Late Archaic burial of a high-status woman with elaborate offerings.
Aspero is a coastal city built before pottery existed in the Andes, by people who walked into the desert and stacked stone platforms by the sea.