An Application of Surovell’s Behavioral Ecology Models of Site Occupation Length in the Peruvian Andes

Summary

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

In his monograph, Toward a Behavioral Ecology of Lithic Technology (2009), Todd Surovell models mathematically the economics of prehistoric hunter-gatherers’ production, use, and discard of lithic technologies. Although we see great potential in these models to extend our understanding of hunter-gatherer mobility patterns and landscape use, they have received little empirical testing in the decade since publication. Here, we apply one subset of his models—those that use proportions of the lithic assemblage to estimate site occupation length—in a diachronic study of two stratified, multi-component prehistoric rockshelters of the Peruvian highlands, Cuncaicha and Carbun Ruán. In an extension of Surovell’s work, we propose new ways of operationalizing some variables, such as "lithic surplus," outlined in the original text and discuss the role that post-depositional processes might play in complicating these measurements. An extremely high-altitude site (4480 masl) with a Terminal Pleistocene fishtail component, Cuncaicha rockshelter is uniquely placed to benefit from an evaluation of occupation length, adding another line of evidence to ongoing debates regarding residential vs. logistical use of high-altitude environments during the initial phases of human colonization of South America.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25350