Archaeology of new plants and flavors in Post-Inca Andean Cultures: An Archaeobotanical Introduction to the Colonial Indigenous World from Tarapacá.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Materialidades, representaciones, vegetales y animales del mundo Colonial de Andinoamérica y Mesoamérica" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The archaeobotanical studies in Tarapacá, Northern Chile, have mainly focused on pre-Hispanic plants like maize, potatoes, and quinoa. Hence, the study of plants introduced during the post-Inca period (from the 16th century onwards) has been limited. These new plants, brought from Europe and the Americas, have undergone little analysis regarding their productive, culinary, medicinal, and ritual uses. The aim is to archaeologically assess how these colonial and historical plants (up to around 1820-1830) influenced the practices of historical communities in Tarapacá and to understand how the Spanish invasion and colonialism transformed the environment and local economies before industrial modernization. We present the results from the Vigueras Street and Segundo de Línea archaeological sites located in San Lorenzo de Tarapacá. The plant remains reveal post-Hispanic species (Prunus sp., Olea europaea, Juglans regia, and exotic woods) alongside typically Andean species (Zea mays, Gossypium sp., Neltuma spp., Cucurbitaceae), and plants introduced from other parts of the Americas (Jubaea chilensis). The discussion focuses on how the introduction of new plants contributed to the formation of new cultural and natural collectives, as well as to the creation of innovative networks in the context of the emerging colonial world.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Materialidades, representaciones, vegetales y animales del mundo Colonial de Andinoamérica y Mesoamérica

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53686