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
15 - Conclusions
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
Our long-term study of Preceramic times in the Zaña and Jequetepeque valleys has not produced a wide-sweeping theory or given attention to a new social process. Nor have we reviewed the database from the perspective of several popular conceptual models, such as optimal foraging theory, self-aggrandizement and wealth accumulation, cost-benefit analysis, and human behavioral ecology in general. Rather than forcing the data into unproven models that often substitute for patterning, we decided to focus our attention on identifying patterns in the archaeological data and on the interpretation of historical events and processes and specific sociocultural and techno-environmental contexts forming larger patterns. In small and large processes of contrast across time and space in the study area, we attempt to offer a synthesized understanding of the exceptional database that we have gathered over the past three decades. This does not necessarily imply a complete abandonment of the use of concepts, for in many places throughout this study we have assessed our findings in regard to broader issues in the areas of plant domestication, human response to environmental change, change stimulated by environmental richness, household and community development, emergent social complexity, the roles of household and public ritual, and related topics.
We perceive this study as being useful on several fronts. First, it has provided a cultural historical and ecological interpretation of one of the largest Preceramic databases produced to date in South America. Our interpretations of these data are based on more than three decades of interdisciplinary research.
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- From Foraging to Farming in the AndesNew Perspectives on Food Production and Social Organization, pp. 285 - 310Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011
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