Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Research History, Methods, and Site Types
- 3 Pleistocene and Holocene Environments from the Zaña to the Chicama Valleys 25,000 to 6,000 Years Ago
- 4 El Palto Phase (13800–9800 BP)
- 5 Las Pircas Phase (9800–7800 BP)
- 6 Tierra Blanca Phase (7800–5000 BP)
- 7 Preceramic Mounds and Hillside Villages
- 8 Human Remains
- 9 Preceramic Plant Gathering, Gardening, and Farming
- 10 Faunal Remains
- 11 Technologies and Material Culture
- 12 Settlement and Landscape Patterns
- 13 Foraging to Farming and Community Development
- 14 Northern Peruvian Early and Middle Preceramic Agriculture in Central and South American Contexts
- 15 Conclusions
- Appendix 1 Radiocarbon Dates for All Preceramic Phases and Subphases
- Appendix 2 Dry Forest Biomes of the Coastal Valleys and Lower Western Slopes in Northwestern Peru
- Appendix 3 Stable Carbon Isotopes
- Appendix 4 Faunal Species Present in Preceramic Assemblages by Phase in the Jequetepeque and Zaña Valleys
- References
- Index
- Plate section
Foreword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Research History, Methods, and Site Types
- 3 Pleistocene and Holocene Environments from the Zaña to the Chicama Valleys 25,000 to 6,000 Years Ago
- 4 El Palto Phase (13800–9800 BP)
- 5 Las Pircas Phase (9800–7800 BP)
- 6 Tierra Blanca Phase (7800–5000 BP)
- 7 Preceramic Mounds and Hillside Villages
- 8 Human Remains
- 9 Preceramic Plant Gathering, Gardening, and Farming
- 10 Faunal Remains
- 11 Technologies and Material Culture
- 12 Settlement and Landscape Patterns
- 13 Foraging to Farming and Community Development
- 14 Northern Peruvian Early and Middle Preceramic Agriculture in Central and South American Contexts
- 15 Conclusions
- Appendix 1 Radiocarbon Dates for All Preceramic Phases and Subphases
- Appendix 2 Dry Forest Biomes of the Coastal Valleys and Lower Western Slopes in Northwestern Peru
- Appendix 3 Stable Carbon Isotopes
- Appendix 4 Faunal Species Present in Preceramic Assemblages by Phase in the Jequetepeque and Zaña Valleys
- References
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
While it is commonly accepted that the Central Andes constitute one of the few centers of early plant domestication, there is not much agreement about the basic questions like specific places of “origin,” timing, process, and the region's relevance for early social and economic developments toward sustained social complexity.
In the early 1940s but based on earlier hypotheses, Julio C. Tello constructed an “agrotechnical” chain of human responses to environmental challenges. It starts in the eastern lowlands with extremely simple cultivation (basically manioc) combined with fruit collecting, hunting, and fishing. In the humid eastern slopes of the Andes, terracing was needed to improve the growing of crops, whereas in the upper highlands new plants were added like oca, quinoa, and potato. There, large concentrations of camelids and cervids together with a most benign climate turned puna and quechua into the “principal centers of human attraction in the remote past.” These plants, and particularly the potato, according to Tello, are capable of growing almost without human intervention. “Since the most remote times there was a migration of plants from highlands downwards and from the lowlands to the highlands” so that the coast receives many plants like fruit trees, coca, chili pepper, manioc, sweet potato, maize, and others “which grow easily in the montaña but need much attention on the coast” (Tello 1929: 21–22, 1942: 596–615).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- From Foraging to Farming in the AndesNew Perspectives on Food Production and Social Organization, pp. xi - xviPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011