Fish and shell remains from the Late Archaic period in the inland region of the Atacama Desert: insights into the circulation and consumption of special coastal meals and goods by complex hunter-gatherers

Summary

This is an abstract from the "A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

It has been suggested that hunter-gatherer social complexity becomes evident during the late Middle Holocene in the Atacama puna. The Loa River basin is a highly advantageous location, characterised by a concentration of water and biotic resources, and contains multiple human settlements. The Late Archaic is represented by the Chiu Chiu Complex, which encompasses more than 50 sites in the Chiu Chiu micro-basin. Of these, the RanL-140 site is particularly noteworthy. This is the first Chiu Chiu Complex site to date where an occupational sequence with three levels of solid architecture has been identified, dated between 5.1 and 4.7 cal ky BP. The site features an offering pit, a cache with projectile points, and numerous ichthyological and malacological remains. The latter corresponds to complete gastropods, shell fragments, and beads. This provides evidence of the movement of malacological materials and fish from the coast, more than 150 km away. It allows us to understand the importance of the circulation and consumption of distant marine resources in a context of increasing social complexity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• A Movable Feast: Mobility and Commensalism in the Andes

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53367