INVESTIGATIONS AT THE MOUTH OF THE RÍO ICA, PERU: A PRECERAMIC RECORD OF RICH SEAS, FOG-MEADOWS, INCIPIENT AGRICULTURE AND SHIFTING SHORELINES

Summary

The earliest evidence of human occupation on the Río Ica, south coast Peru are middens at the river’s mouth, accumulated through episodic fisher-hunter-gatherer occupations during the Middle Preceramic Period. We present results of ongoing investigations and dating of these sites to between 7,000 and 6,000 Cal yr BP.

Apart from a variety of rich marine resources, the occupants of these middens also exploited the river estuary, riparian woodlands in the river floodplain and lomas (or ‘fog meadow’). The long Middle Preceramic is a period critical in three respects: (1) the onset of modern El Niño (ENSO) conditions after millennia of apparent quiescence; (2) eustatic sea-level stabilization, and (3) the gradual transition to sedentism and agriculture here.

Interplay between these factors determined the availability of resources to prehistoric populations through, for instance, drinking water, the size of the estuary, beach formation, the extent and composition of adjacent lomas vegetation and indeed, the technologies developed to exploit them. We seek to understand and date these processes of environmental and social change because they are essential to understanding early human trajectories here, not least the transition from fishing and gathering to agriculture.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• From Foragers to Empires: Recent Research on the South Coast of Peru

Keywords

Spatial Coverage