2024-03-29T11:11:47Zhttp://digital.csic.es/dspace-oai/requestoai:digital.csic.es:10261/1635232021-12-27T15:36:56Zcom_10261_77com_10261_8col_10261_330
Simple technologies and diverse food strategies of the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene at Huaca Prieta, Coastal Peru
Dillehay, Tom D.
Rey Fraile, Isabel
Velchoff, Nancy
National Science Foundation (US)
National Geographic Society
Vanderbilt University
CSIC - Unidad de Recursos de Información Científica para la Investigación (URICI)
Late Pleistocene
Early Holocene Huaca Prieta
Peru
Simple stone tool
Chile pepper
Early peopling
Dillehay, Tom D. et al.
Simple pebble tools, ephemeral cultural features, and the remains of maritime and terrestrial foods are present in undisturbed Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene deposits underneath a large human-made mound at Huaca Prieta and nearby sites on the Pacific coast of northern Peru. Radiocarbon ages indicate an intermittent human presence dated between ~15,000 and 8000 calendar years ago before the mound was built. The absence of fishhooks, harpoons, and bifacial stone tools suggests that technologies of gathering, trapping, clubbing, and exchange were used primarily to procure food resources along the shoreline and in estuarine wetlands and distant mountains. The stone artifacts are minimally worked unifacial stone tools characteristic of several areas of South America. Remains of avocado, bean, and possibly cultivated squash and chile pepper are also present, suggesting human transport and consumption. Our new findings emphasize an early coastal lifeway of diverse food procurement strategies that suggest detailed observation of resource availability in multiple environments and a knowledgeable economic organization, although technologies were simple and campsites were seemingly ephemeral and discontinuous. These findings raise questions about the pace of early human movement along some areas of the Pacific coast and the level of knowledge and technology required to exploit maritime and inland resources.
We thank the NSF (grant 0914891), the National Geographic Society (grant 8935-11), Rebecca Webb Wilson and Spencer Wilson, and the Vanderbilt University for supporting our work.
We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).
Peer reviewed
2018-04-12T07:35:41Z
2018-04-12T07:35:41Z
2017-05-03
artículo
http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501
Science Advances 3(5): e1602778 (2017)
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/163523
10.1126/sciadv.1602778
2375-2548
http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100000001
http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100006363
http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100006537
28560337
en
Publisher's version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1602778
Sí
open
American Association for the Advancement of Science