Constanza Ceruti received the Gold Medal award of the International Society of Woman Geographers (ISWG) during the triannual meeting about “Women who make a difference in the World” (California, May 2017). Constanza´s conference about her contributions to High Altitude Archaeology and the Anthropology of Sacred Mountains was met with a standing ovation. Since 1933 the ISWG has given its highest award to about 20 outstanding women, including Jane Goodall, Sylvia Earle, Margaret Mead and Amelia Earhart.

The only female Andean high altitude archaeologist in the world, argentinean anthropologist Constanza Ceruti is a Scientific Investigator of the National Council for the Scientific Research in Argentina (CONICET), a Professor at the Catholic University of Salta and USAL and a Research Associate at the Institute of Archaeology in the University of Bern. She graduated from University of Buenos Aires and earned a Ph.D. at University of Cuyo, having climbed over 100 mountains above 5000 meters to study mountaintop shrines of the Inca civilization. In 1999 she co-discovered the best preserved frozen mummies at 6739 m, on the summit of Llullaillaco, the highest archaeological site on earth. The author of twenty books and more than one hundred academic publications, she has lectured throughout the five continents. TED fellow at the global meeting in Oxford and Rising Talent at the Women´s Forum for the Economy and Society, she is a Gold Medalist of the University of Buenos Aires, Gold Condor of the Argentine Army and Emerging Explorer of the National Geographic Society. Distinguished for her courage by the Wings Worldquest and Distinguished Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of West Georgia, she was one of the five awardees in Communication and Humanities at the Prince of Asturias Ceremony in 2006, and received an Honorary Doctorate from the Moravian College in Pennsylvania (2014).

Dr. Ceruti is currently conducting anthropological research on Sacred Mountains in diverse parts of the world. The Constanza Ceruti Chair on Sacred Mountains has recently been opened at the Catholic University of Salta (UCASAL) and Mundo Editorial has launched a collection of her books, which includes tittles about Thailand, Australia, Ireland, Spain, Easter Island, Costa Rica and the Andes.

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