Climatic and Demographic Changes in the South Central Andean Highlands during the Late Holocene

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The south central Andean highlands have a rich and complex socio-environmental history. Although generally seen as a single cultural area with fluid sociocultural interaction, its geographic heterogeneity is mirrored by its cultural diversity. To explain the varying effects of climate in the late Holocene history of the south central Andean highlands, we constructed four paleodemographic records of radiocarbon dates following a precipitation gradient: Lake Titicaca, Central Altiplano, Southern Altiplano, and Precordillera. Using regional proxies of paleoenvironmental change, we evaluate the timing, intensity, and resilience of each of these regions to significant events of environmental change. Our results suggest that climate had an observable effect on demographic trends including accelerating or slowing population growth and possibly causing migratory movements between neighboring regions. This outcome suggests that the south central Andean highlands emerged as an integrated cultural area as a consequence of long-term processes of climatic change as to processes of sociopolitical integration driven by emergent complexity. Funding: Fondecyt 1180121, FONDAP 15110009, PII20150081, CAPES FB-0002-2014.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Global Perspectives on Climate-Human Population Dynamics During the Late Holocene   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25765