NIU archaeologist says cotton seeded
growth of ancient Peruvian civilization

by Tom Parisi

The ancient Peruvians living on the country’s central coast made regular inland pilgrimages for trade, feasts, religious ceremonies and temple construction, giving rise to the first-known complex civilization in the Americas, suggests a new hypothesis by NIU anthropologist Winifred Creamer.

Creamer and her husband, Jonathan Haas of Chicago’s Field Museum, describe what they believe was a unique path to civilization in the October issue of Current Anthropology.

The cultivation of storable grain, such as corn or rice, was a key ingredient to the growth of ancient civilizations in other areas of the world, but Creamer and Haas believe a different crop spurred the rise of complexity in Peru: cotton.

“The coastal waters were rich in tiny fish, and fishermen needed the cotton grown at inland sites to make their nets,” Creamer said. “It’s not that the people on the coasts couldn’t farm, but they would have had to leave the coast and set up inland. You can’t plant and fish at the same time.”

Archaeological excavations in recent years have continued to shed light on the ancient Peruvian civilization that arose more than 5,000 years ago in the “Norte Chico,” a dry and dune-covered region of four valleys about 100 miles north of Lima.

It is believed to be the place where cultural evolution in the Andes first diverged from simple hunting and gathering into a trajectory that ultimately led to such highly complex civilizations as the Moche, Wari and Inca.

Over the course of more than a millennium, the Norte Chico saw the development of more than 20 major inland communities, each with dwellings, irrigated agriculture, large circular ceremonial structures and one or more rectangular, terraced pyramids.

The new premise by Creamer and Haas challenges previous theories that suggest maritime activities drove the growth of the Peruvian civilization and that the ancient inland site of Caral was the region’s central city.

“If maritime exploitation was the driving engine behind the development of complex political systems, there should have been examples up and down the coast,” Haas said. “Also, while there were ancient coastal settlements, all of the truly monumental architecture is inland. Based on the currently available picture of site occupation in the Norte Chico, the maritime coastal sites seem to be secondary elements in the overall political system.”

“Our research shows that numerous inland centers developed rather than a single capital for the region,” Creamer added. “While Caral is an important archaeological site, it’s not the oldest, nor the largest, nor the most complex in the Norte Chico.”

The relatively small number of dwellings found at inland sites led the researchers to conclude that the inlanders probably didn’t build their large monumental temples by themselves.

“Although the inland sites are quite large in terms of total area occupied, comparatively little of this space is taken up by permanent residential architecture,” Creamer said. “This suggests that coastal fishermen were participants in periodic activities at inland centers such as trade, feasting and ritual activities.”

Archaeologists have found botanical remains of domesticated plants such as cotton, corn, squash, beans and avocadoes at the inland sites, as well as numerous remains of shellfish and fish bones.

“Only by combining the total output of numerous coastal villages up and down the Peruvian coast could the quantity of marine resources consumed at these inland centers be accommodated,” Haas said.

He and Creamer believe the “inland innovators” were the effective power-holders on a regional scale, and that separate inland sites might have competed against each other. Their power was based on the production of cotton, critical for exploiting marine resources, and domesticated plants, critical for a balanced diet.

“The coastal trade partners are likely to have visited the inland sites and contributed labor to mound-building efforts,” Creamer said. “We also find stones that were burned bright red and appear to have come from cooking on earthen ovens. The fire-altered rock is scattered consistently on the surface and in the fill of almost every platform mound. We speculate that the feasts may have marked the beginning or completion of construction segments.”

Both Creamer and Haas said more research is needed to confirm their hypothesis. “It is not thoroughly confirmed with diverse data sets and certainly still needs to be rigorously tested with collection of new field data and analysis,” Creamer said.

“Still, it’s clear that the rise of civilization in the Norte Chico represents a unique cultural development without clear counterparts anywhere in the world,” she added. “Our perspective is very different today from that of only 10 years ago. If scholarly research is allowed to continue in the area, our understanding of this critical period in Andean history will continue to grow rapidly.”

10-30-06