Paleoecology and Sedentism of Early Coastal Hunters-Gatherers in North Chile

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Under the supervision of Dr. Tom D. Dillehay, Teresa C. de B. Franco will analyze data gathered during her archaeological excavations at the Chinchorro sites of Camarones 14 and Camarones Sur located in the Camarones Valley in the Atacama desert in northern Chile. This culture dated between 7000 and 3500 years ago had its economy strongly oriented to maritime resources. The Chinchorro culture particularly is known for its mortuary patterns, characterized by the well-preserved and oldest artificial human mummies, which reveal early funerary practices. The funerary objects, like fishhooks and nets, are also very well preserved, giving deep insight into the cultural material. Despite the excellent preservation of material objects, the way of life of the Chinchorro people is not well understood and we do not know yet how they articulated their culture in association with the management of the fragile environment of the desert coast and surrounding areas in order to developed their complex and long-lasting culture. Thus, Franco's excavations are focused on the recovery of data that will help determine if the Chinchorro people were living in the same area during the whole year or if they were moving seasonally around in search of food and water and of social interactions with other people living along the coast or in the mountains. Her work will also help to understand whether increased cultural complexity was associated with a sedentary lifeway. Thus in order to examine sedentism, this project studies faunal remains. The analyses will focus on species identification and seasonal occurrence and age determination in birds and mammals. Marine mollusks shells will be studied through shell growth-line and isotopic analyzes. Both techniques will give information about the period of the year in which mollusks were collected and, consequently, when the Chinchorro people were living in individual sites. Detecting the season in which people were exploiting the surrounding environment will contribute to our understanding of Chinchorro mobility and its relation to economic strategies, mobility/sedentism, and early cultural complexity. In its broader aspects, this study will contribute to an understanding of the long-term interactions between humans and their surrounding environments in a harsh arid coastal area. Elucidating these issues is important to understanding the contributions that an early maritime lifeway and sedentism made to the initial social impulses toward Andean civilization. Beyond these questions, this project will also have a broader impact by enhancing the level of knowledge about the Chinchorro culture, one of the most successful cultures adapted to desert environments during the Early-Middle Holocene. This research also will improve our understanding of the contributions of the Chinchorro to the early cultural scenario of the Central Andes and of the formation of the "Andean World", which refers to a combination of very specific cultural traces with long-term traditions. In the present-day world of growing concerns about climatic change and rapid human adaptation to them, a greater understanding of past human responses to major climatic and environmental events is very important to the sustainability of future human populations. One way to enhance our understanding is to better understand past human and climatic relations, such as those proposed here. Finally, this award will assist in the development of a dissertation proposal and graduate student training.