Human-Environment Interactions and the Hunter-Gatherers of Chachapoyas, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Although a growing bodies of scholarship address later cultural developments in such regions, Tropical Montane Cloud Forests (TMCF) are nevertheless perceived by many as environments marginal for human occupation, especially for hunter-gatherers. One such region, the Chachapoyas culture area in northern Peru, has to date been home to only a single known hunter-gatherer site. Here, I present the results of excavations identifying three additional preceramic sites across two ecological niches, and describe multiple lines of evidence—including lithic, faunal, botanical, and paleoecological analyses—which demonstrate how these early groups adapted their cultural and subsistence patterns to different microclimates within the TMCF zone. The archaeological record of hunter-gatherers in Chachapoyas is not, as previously believed, scarce or elusive; on the contrary, this work reveals a deep and rich history of early human occupation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• The Archaeology of Tropical Montane Cloud Forests

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35619.0