People of the Coastal Atacama Desert - IEB

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Veth / Desert Peoples Final Proof 19.10.2004 12:01pm page 256Santoro,Arriaza,Standen,MarquetConclusionThe cultural history of the people in the Atacama Desert can be divided into threemajor epochs, summarized as follows. The early epoch corresponds to immigrantsarriving on the coast of the Atacama no later than 11,000 bp at Quebrada Jaguayand Quebrada Tacahuay, north of Arica. The available archaeological data showthat these people were equipped with simple and non-specialized technologies andfocused their procurement on a narrow spectrum of molluscs, sea birds, and fish.There is, however, evidence for the possible use of nets for fishing, even at this earlystage. Populations also occupied the high Andes at altitudes of 3,000–4,500 m aslon the margins of the desert from around 10,800 bp, but here they employed amore technologically sophisticated lithic industry characterized by highly formalizedtools for the capture and butchering of large game (including camelids,deer, and occasionally the American horse), as well as small rodents and birds(Aldenderfer 1999; Núñez et al. 2002; Santoro and Núñez 1987). This differentadaptation may be linked to the arrival of two cultural ‘‘traditions’’ to the AtacamaDesert, which maintained their character through prehistory. While the moderndescendents of these original coastal peoples are hard to distinguish among thecurrent population of the coastal cities, the highland people have survivedthe pressure of European invasion and the acculturation trends of the modernrepublic and today they assert different forms of social and ethnic recognition.The first populations detected archaeologically in the Atacama may be related toearlier immigrants into the Americas, from 13,000–12,000 bp (or even earlier).They may have moved rapidly through new lands, as Birdsell (1977) suggested forAustralia, leaving behind parties that started the more serious process of colonizationas seen in Quebrada Jaguay (site QJ 280) at around 11,000 years bp (Sandweisset al. 1989). This fast movement of the colonists is consistent with the tightchronological sequence of the first Americans, given that there is no clear chronologicalgap between the earliest known settlements in North vs South America. Infact, the earliest Paleo-Indian site in the South Americas is Monte Verde, south ofChile, dated between 13,500 and 12,500 bp, with other early sites from Patagonia(i.e., Cueva del Medio, Piedra Museo, and Los Toldos) dated to between 12,390 and12,890 bp (Massone and Prieto 2004). The occurrence of later dates for the firstoccupants of the Atacama Desert provides a challenge for future archaeologists toinvestigate whether a cline in settlement of this desert has occurred (a lag effect) orwhether sites of comparable age have simply not been investigated yet or have notsurvived due to taphonomic processes.In the second epoch, dated to the Holocene, the coastal desert people show aclear shift in their subsistence technology, as well as their social and ideologicalstrategies, which persevered, with only minor changes, for several millennia. Thematerial expressions of this new ideology seem to have been quite dynamic, as seenin the wide variety of methods used for artificial mummification. Specializedtechnological solutions for exploitation of marine resources were developed by_ 256_
Veth / Desert Peoples Final Proof 19.10.2004 12:01pm page 257People of the Coastal Atacama Desertthe mid-Holocene, and remained in place with only minor changes until lateprehistory.A distinctive feature of the hunter-gatherer-fishermen of the Atacama Desert wasthe opportunity to engage in agriculture, afforded by the presence of valleys andquebradas that cross-cut the desert in the northern section (see Figure 13.3). Fromca. 4,000–3,000 bp the introduction of agriculture is seen to complement amaritime focused economy, thereby allowing desert people to establish permanentsettlements in the form of small hamlets, with simple architecture (wooden posts,reed mats, and cane) of no more that 10 hectares in extension, as seen late inprehistory. This kind of infrastructure is commonly found along the quebradas andinland basins, such as Pampa del Tamarugal. Along the coast, people maintainedmore simple open camps until the sixteenth century ad; the time of the Europeaninvasion. This change in the way of life of the peoples of the coastal Atacama Desertcan be accommodated by the concept of the ‘‘Neolithic Revolution,’’ as coined bythe influential Australian archaeologist V. Gordon Childe, whose ideas were incorporatedinto the interpretation of Andean cultural history during the 1960s and1970s. This ‘‘revolution’’ within the coastal economies of the Atacama did notresult in substantial change in staple foods, however, as these were still provided bythe ocean. Processes of social class differentiation and other cultural ‘‘sophistication’’classified elsewhere as ‘‘civilization’’ took a different form here. The waves ofthe ocean and the sand dunes of the desert witness a different human socialcreation that we have attempted to shed some light on within this chapter.ReferencesAdovasio, J. and Page, J. 2002: The First Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeology’s GreatestMystery. New York: Random House.Aldenderfer, M. 1999: Montane Foragers: Asana and the South-Central Andean Archaic.Iowa: University of Iowa Press.Arriaza, B. 1995: Beyond Death: The Chinchorro Mummies of Ancient Chile. Washington,DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Arriaza, B. and Standen, V. 2002: Death, Mummies, and Ancestral Rites: The ChinchorroCulture. Arica: Serie Patrimonio Cultural I Region de Tarapacá, Universidad de Tarapacá.Auderheide, A. 2003: The Scientific Study of Mummies. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.Benfer, R. 1999: Proyecto de Excavaciones en Paloma, Valle de Chilca, Perú. Boletín deArqueología PUCP, 3, 213–37.Betancourt, J., Latorre, C., Rech, J., Quade, J., and Rylander, K. 2000: A 22,000 year recordof monsoonal precipitation from northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. Science, 289, 1546–50.Bibar, J. 1966 [1565]: Crónica y Relación Copiosa y Verdadera de los Reinos de Chile. Santiago:Fondo Histórico y Bibliográfico José Toribio Medina.Bird, J. 1943: Excavation in Northern Chile. New York: Anthropological Papers of theAmerican Museum of Natural History 38 (4), American Museum of Natural History.Birdsell, J. 1977: The recalibration of a paradigm for the first peopling of Australia. InJ. Allen, J. Golson, and R. Jones (eds), Sunda and Sahul: Prehistoric Studies in SoutheastAsia, Melanesia, and Australia, London: Academic Press, 113–67._ 257_
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