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Archaeologists shed new light on Americas’ earliest known
civilization
DeKalb, Ill.— Overlooked for at least a century because there
was no pottery or gold, a sand-swept region of archaeological sites
in north-central Peru is now believed to be the place where cultural
evolution in the Andes—and in the Americas, for that matter—first
diverged from simple hunting and gathering into complex society.
Recent archaeological excavations bring into focus a civilization
that acrose more than 5,000 years ago in three small valleys 100
miles north of Lima. Over more than a millennium, it spurred the
development of more than 20 separate major residential centers.
They are characterized by monumental architecture, large circular
ceremonial structures, irrigated agriculture and housing.
Researchers publishing in the Dec. 23 edition of the scientific
journal Nature used radiocarbon dating to determine the rise and
fall of this first complex society of the Americas, from roughly
3000 to 1800 B.C., and document the extent of its influence, which
covered an area of nearly 700 square miles (1,800 square kilometers)
throughout Peru’s dry and dune-covered Norte Chico region.
Monumental architecture was evident at each site in the presence
of large platform mounds, also described as rectangular terraced
pyramids, which reached as high as 85 feet (26 meters).
“This wasn’t a single site where people were doing
something really unusual, but a whole region, a whole culture, where
people were organized to produce large pyramids and sunken plazas—something
the Americas hadn’t seen before,” said Professor Winifred
Creamer, a Northern Illinois University anthropologist. “The
people who built the first of these structures had no model to go
by, no precedent to use in building a monument. It’s a bit
like deciding to build a functioning spaceship in your back yard,
and succeeding.”
Creamer is a co-author of the Nature article with her husband
Jonathan Haas of The Field Museum in Chicago and with NIU graduate
student Alvaro Ruiz, the Peruvian co-director of the project. In
2001, Creamer and Haas were part of the research team announcing
that six immense platform mounds at the site of Caral in the Andes’
Supe Valley represented the oldest known man-made monuments in the
Americas.
The latest findings demonstrate that sites such as Caral were part
of a much larger complex of residential centers in a region that
includes the Supe, Pativilca and Fortaleza river valleys. The researchers
present 95 new radiocarbon dates from test excavation samples at
13 of more than 20 inland archeological sites in Norte Chico, a
region that stretches from the Andes to the western coastline of
central Peru. Added to previously published dates from earlier research,
127 radiocarbon dates are now available from the region, firmly
establishing a civilization thriving in the Norte Chico for more
than 1,200 years.
“The scale and sophistication of these sites is unheard
of anywhere in the New World at this time, and almost any time,”
said NIU Adjunct Professor Haas, who is MacArthur Curator of Anthropology
at The Field Museum. “The cultural pattern that emerged in
this small area in the third millennium B.C. later established a
foundation for 4,000 years of cultural florescence in other parts
of the Andes.”
The researchers’ findings also challenge the theory that
the initial emergence of complex society in the Andes was based
on the exploitation of maritime resources rather than agriculture.
“In Norte Chico, the path of cultural evolution in the Andean
region diverged from a relatively simple hunting and gathering society
to a much more complex pattern of social and political organization,
with a mixed economy based on agriculture and marine exploitation,”
NIU’s Ruiz said. “With this new information, we need
to rethink our ideas about the economic, social and cultural development
of the beginnings of civilization in Peru and all of South America.”
The dates show the clear appearance of large-scale communal construction
between 3200 and 2500 B.C., corresponding with previously collected
construction dates at Aspero, a coastal fishing community with evidence
of similar ancient architecture. The researchers did not find an
obvious center or starting point for the ancient culture. The next
500 years, however, marked a period of expanded occupation and construction
in Norte Chico’s inland sites, which were consistently located
adjacent to short irrigation canals watering large tracts of land.
The 13 inland centers studied range in area from 25 to more than
250 acres (10 to more than 100 hectares). Each has between one and
seven rectangular terraced pyramids. The largest of these mounds
range from 105,000 to more than 196,000 cubic yards (80,000 to more
than 150,000 cubic meters) in volume. Rooms were constructed on
the tops and upper terraces of the structures. Another hallmark
of the sites is the presence of sunken circular plazas, ranging
from 22 yards to 44 yards (20 to 40 meters) in diameter and 1 to
2 yards deep.
Radiocarbon dating was performed on the remains of annual plants,
including reeds and wild cane, which were woven into mesh bags and
used to tote rocks to construction sites. “The inhabitants
of Norte Chico seemed to have put all their energy into construction
of these massive structures, and they were very frequently remodeling,”
Creamer said. “In cases where we have been able to examine
the interior of the mounds, we see what appear to be many different
periods of construction. You can see the walls and floors and processes
of construction and remodeling.”
Together, the Norte Chico sites indicate an advanced civilization
that arose without the development of ceramics—a hallmark
of other complex societies worldwide. Yet the researchers found
indications of a multifaceted economy based on inland irrigation
of cotton and food plants, diverse marine resources and a system
of regular exchange between inland and coastal sites. Numerous remains
of shellfish and fish bones were recovered at the inland sites.
Researchers also recovered botanical remains of domesticated plants—including
cotton, squash, chilli, beans and avocadoes—but found almost
no evidence of preserved corn or other grains. “This early
culture appears to have developed not only without pottery, arts
and crafts but also without a staple grain-based food, which is
usually the first large-scale agricultural product of complex societies,”
Creamer said. “The ancient Peruvians took a different path
to civilization.”
More excavation will be required to estimate the population of
the residential centers. The sites have large expanses with features
indicating residential architecture, and the team found the remains
of dwellings, some made of adobe and others of wood poles, cane
and mud. “There hasn’t been enough excavation to show
if the ancient inhabitants of Norte Chico had things like workshops
and marketplaces, and we don’t know for sure whether they
lived here year-round or came here only on specific occasions,”
Creamer said.
The researchers also want to learn more about why a complex society
evolved in the arid, harsh environment of Norte Chico, which today
is sparsely populated. “Why did this happen here of all places?”
Creamer said. “It’s not a particularly easy environment,
but the big moment may have been when someone discovered that irrigation
wasn’t that difficult.
“You can use irrigation to explain both the rise and fall
of the Norte Chico region,” she added. “By 1800 B.C.,
when this civilization is in decline, we begin to find extensive
canals farther north. People were moving to more fertile ground
and taking their knowledge of irrigation with them. The Norte Chico
ultimately became something of a frontier zone between northern
and southern centers of influence and political development.”
Research for this project was supported in part by the National
Science Foundation, the California Community Trust, The Field Museum,
and the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies at Northern
Illinois University.
—30—
Nature article authors
- Winifred Creamer, Professor, Department of Anthropology, Northern
Illinois University, DeKalb, Ill.
Cell: 630-988-1394
Email: wcreamer@niu.edu
- Jonathan Haas, MacArthur Curator of The Americas at Chicago’s
Field Museum.
Cell: 630-992-9289
Email: haas@fieldmuseum.org
- Alvaro Ruiz, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Ill.
Email: aarr86@hotmail.com
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