Farming Landscapes under Stress: Modeling Access to Pastures and Fields in the Late Intermediate Period Colca Valley (1100–1450 CE, Arequipa, Peru)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Late Intermediate period (1100–1450 CE) in the highland Andes of South America has long been characterized by warfare and climate stress. These conditions almost certainly had profound impacts on ancient farmers. It has been suggested that climate changes compelled farmers to diversify by cultivating crops in a greater range of ecological zones or by combining cultivation with herding of native camelids (llamas and alpacas). At the same time, increased risk of warfare may have constrained farmers, encouraging more intensive use of lands and resources proximate to hillforts. Here, remote sensing and geospatial modeling are combined with local ethnographic and historic data on farming and traditional ecological knowledge to model the distribution of farming ecotopes and their articulation with Late Intermediate Period settlement patterns in the Colca Valley. Prior work in the valley, including archaeological survey of hillforts and local paleoclimate reconstructions, attest to local experiences of conflict and prolonged drought. The results suggest that farmers across the valley responded by prioritizing access to a diversity of resources but developed wildly different defensive strategies to secure access to those resources. These findings provide insights into human adaptability in the face of shifting social and environmental contexts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36986.0