The Tacahuay Landscape: Land Use and Environmental Change on the South Coast of Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Tacahuay Quebrada on the far southern coast of Peru was shaped by a combination of human and environmental forces. Within its watershed, there is a system of channels that have provided resources for humans and other living beings throughout its anthropogenic history. Excavations within these channels revealed use of the Tacahuay landscape between 1000 BCE and 500 CE. This period coincides with flood deposits found within the main Tacahuay quebrada. While a permanent settlement was not found during my investigations, material analyzed from Tacahuay revealed that people were taking advantage of the quebrada channels in addition to accessing resources from the nearby coast. Tacahuay presents a case study of a mixed subsistence strategy approach to thriving in an arid desert region prone to natural disasters. These peoples continued a legacy of maritime resource collections and supplemented these resources with the terrestrial resources found on the Tacahuay landscape. Similar to the environment in which they live, the people of Tacahuay were influenced by the intersection of the desert and the sea. This paper unites environmental data, including sediment and pollen records, and material culture, to understand the relationship between populations at Tacahuay and the landscape in which they lived.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38260.0