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Hunter-gatherers on the eve of agriculture: investigations at Soro Mik’aya Patjxa, Lake Titicaca Basin, Peru, 8000–6700 BP

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2015

W. Randall Haas Jr  and
Carlos Viviano Llave
W. Randall Haas Jr
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, 1111 Woods Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA (Email: [email protected]) Collasuyo Archaeological Research Institute, Jiron Nicaragua 199, Puno, Puno, Peru
Carlos Viviano Llave
Affiliation:
National Register of Archaeologists, Ministerio de Cultura, Avenida Javier Prado Este 2465, San Borja, Lima 41, Peru
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Abstract

Recent excavations at the site of Soro Mik’aya Patjxa in the south-central Andes have revealed the earliest securely dated cultural features in the Lake Titicaca Basin. Radiocarbon assays show that the site was occupied across the Middle to Late Archaic period transition between 8000 and 6700 cal BP. The rich material assemblage makes it possible to identify behavioural patterns among these last hunter-gatherers of the Titicaca Basin, which anticipate later developments in the trajectory to socioeconomic complexity. Mobile hunter-gatherers appear to have occupied the site repeatedly for more than a millennium. Evidence for intensive subsistence practices and interpersonal violence foreshadow the emergence of incipient sedentism, food production and land tenure in subsequent periods.

Keywords

Peruhunter-gatherersmobilityartificial cranial modificationinterpersonal violence
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 89 , Issue 348 , December 2015 , pp. 1297 - 1312
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2015 

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