A Record of Changing Pulses and Pathways of Interregional Interaction from Manachaqui Cave in the Northeastern Peruvian Cloud Forest

Summary

Results from analyses of deep, stratified cultural deposits excavated at Manachaqui Cave (3,620 m) in the ancient Chachapoyas region provide a "window" on changing patterns of interregional interaction in Peru’s northern ceja de selva. Located beside a pre-Hispanic paved road, the rock shelter accommodated mobile foragers, cultivators, travelers, and llama caravans moving through networks connecting societies north, south, east, and west. Despite several chronological gaps, Manachaqui’s sequence extends from the Terminal Pleistocene through the Late Horizon. Diachronic analysis of Manachaqui’s assemblages revealed two major patterns of movement and cultural connections. Early interregional interaction connected societies in regions north and south. By ca. AD 200-400, interaction involving llama caravans pivoted west toward highland societies. This new east-west network overlay, but did not replace north-south interaction that persisted throughout the latter centuries of the sequence. To evaluate subsistence self-sufficiency, it is more useful to examine data from the settlement complexes clustered to the east around 2,800 m in the forested Montecristo valley. Evidence from Manachaqui attests to the presence and intensity of interaction crisscrossing the ceja de selva. Mounting archaeological data from the Montecristo valley, and elsewhere along the ceja is revealing understudied, unique cultural developments unlike those in the Andean highlands.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21138