From foragers to producers: desert gardening at the Archaic Peruvian site of Quebrada de Burros

Summary

Research at the Peruvian site of Quedrada de Burros (Dep. of Tacna, Peru) evidenced a very early settelement of fiserhmen and shel-gatherers on the desert Pacific littoral. The campsite has been occupied during the Early and Middel Holocene, between 10'000 and 6'000BP. The analysis of organic remains indicate that since the beginning, the different groups not only relied on ocean resources but also exploiter the surrounding vegetation. In particular, phytolith analyses show that the settlers changed drastically their direct environment over the time. This is the first time that such a direct human impact on vegetation could be identified at a very local scale for the Central Andes. We could also put in evidence that these inhabitants already used domesticated some food plants whose respective presence are among the earliest for the Andes.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The study of biological microremains as a tool for reconstructing paleoenvironment in human transition periods

Keywords

Spatial Coverage