An Isotopic Study of Dietary Diversity in Formative Period Ancachi, Atacama Desert, Northern Chile

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Stable isotope analysis has been used to reconstruct the dietary patterns of individuals recovered from archaeological sites. Given the centrality of food to human social interaction, dietary insights provide a window into the inner-workings of past societies. In the present instance, stable isotope analysis, when coupled with multi-source mixture modeling, permits an enhanced understanding of the economic and social relationships that bound together Formative Period (1000 BC - AD 400) populations and individuals in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. This work specifically focuses on 29 individuals recovered near the modern town of Quillagua at the cemetery of Ancachi (02QU175). This cemetery is associated with a logistical settlement on the Loa River at a frontier between coastal and inland/highland populations during the Formative Period. We present here a reconstruction of the dietary variation in the Ancachi individuals obtained by isotopic composition analysis of bone collagen and hydroxyapatite. These data were compared with a robust database of available foods, contemporary individuals from throughout the region, and the exceptional preservation of the hyper arid Atacama. Ultimately, the results speak to the ways in which economic exchange promoted the development of new diets and lifeways during a time of burgeoning economic, social, and cultural change.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23609