David M. Stemper died on July 3^rd while playing basketball. David earned his PhD in 1989 at the University of Wisconsin, with a thesis on pre-hispanic chiefdoms in the Daule River, as the culmination of a long association with the project of risen fields directed by W. Denevan for the Andean region. Initially taught at the Universidad del Valle in Colombia, and was associated with the Instituto Vallecaucano de Investigaciones Cientificas Vallecaucano (INCIVA). There, with Hector Salgado he did some archaeological investigations at the Bocana, one of the northernmost Tolita sites (350 km from La Tolita) and Palestina (San Juan River), both localities of the Colombian Pacific coast. Also he started there, with Carlos A. Rodriguez, a long-term project on the dominions of the Valle del Cauca. Later he taught at several American universities, like the University of Texas (El Paso), Maryland (Baltimore), Georgetown, and lately, the American University. As a consultant, he conducted research and educational projects in Cuba, Peru and Colombia. Among his publications includes: 1987, Raised fields and agricultural production, AD 1400-1600, Rio Duale, Guayas, Ecuador. In Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Fields in the Andean Region, W. Denevan, K. Mathewson, and G. Knapp, eds., Pp. 297-319. BAR International Series, vol. 359 (ii). Oxford; and 1993, The persistence of prehistoric chiefdoms on the Rio Duale, Coastal Ecuador. La persistencia de los cacicazgos prehispánicos en el rio Daule, Costa de Ecuador, Edición bilingüe español-inglés. Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology, vol 7. University of Pittsburgh.