We still know far too little about the typically small and scattered occupations of the first South Americans to arrive at a thorough understanding of forager life in the short period from 13,000 to 9,000 BP. But even with the modest amount of information at hand, it is clear that the earliest communities shared certain characteristics: a dispersal of population, low and fluctuating density of population, small group size, mobility and short-term stay, colonization and permanence in favorable habitats, and diverse, seasonal exploitation of resources. The pattern may have been somewhat different at the end of this period, when there is evidence of prolonged stay and greater permanence of shelter in some resource rich areas. However, in most cases, people remained mobile and continued residential hunting and gathering in small groups.
The small size of the settlements suggests that the number of residents comprised a few dozen people at most. One also receives an impression of short-lived and intermittent occupation at most early sites, given the frequently thin depositional strata. Although we know little to nothing about the social organization of the people living at these sites, site size and duration of occupation suggest small bands aggregating during the productive seasons of the years and dispersing during other times. There must have been social contacts and networks among dispersed groups in order to survive biologically and to exchange the kind of technological information we see in the continent-wide Edge-Trimmed, Fishtail, and Paijan assemblages.
The geographical extent of the territories exploited by the late Pleistocene communities is unknown, but in order to meet the long-term needs of survival it must have been extensive—several hundreds or even thousands of square kilometers, depending on the distribution of natural resources and the character of the landscape. Studies of various ethnographic hunter-gatherers in the Amazon basin and in southern Patagonia have shown that they are aware of the boundaries of their territories, and so undoubtedly were their prehistoric forerunners. Natural landmarks such as mountains and rivers may have been used in this respect, but cultural signs such as sacred places and rock art may have had a similar significance. Although no hard evidence exists, ceremonies, initiation rites, and group meetings must have added to the expression of the rights of exclusive use of a territory.
It is likely that the early South American foragers were flexible and fluid units. Rather than being closed and fixed groups whose membership was clearly defined, we perhaps should consider them as aggregations of individuals whose affiliations were defined in different ways. Special places such as caves, watering holes, littoral promontories and other places probably played a role in defining a group’s social identity. There is no evidence to suggest the accumulation of material goods or the storage of foods for long periods of time, although it is probable that people made caches for later consumption. For the most part, the earliest South Americans were “immediate return hunters and gatherers” (Woodburn 1982), that is, they consumed resources as soon as they acquired them.
The people making early El Jobo, Fishtail, early Paijan, and Itaparica stone tools are likely to have exploited their territories on the basis of immediate returns. An ethic of sharing food and other goods may have been actively encouraged in a fashion similar to that of many modern hunter-gatherer societies. Sharing probably had little or nothing to do with sentiments or generosity; instead, sharing was likely a banking strategy that brought security as it entitled people to a portion of someone else’s catch in a time of resource scarcity. Sharing also must have had a significant effect on the structure of social relationships in these societies, and it is likely that each foraging society had its own way of organizing its networks of sharing and exchanging partnerships. Future research should examine the different kinds of sharing, exchange, and other relationships practiced by early foragers, and what they imply about principles of social and economic organization among different foraging strategies.
At some point in time some foragers possibly abandoned sharing and began exploring new possibilities for increasing their subsistence and resource needs, including intensification and exchange. Groups could have created opportunities for increasing yields of plant foods and animals without the obligation to share these resources with others. Such strategies may have included storage of foods, intensified production, domestication, and environmental manipulation. One form of the latter is the use of fire to create and maintain plant associations (Mills 1986) and especially to spatially concentrate game animals in open terrain (Mellars 1976). In some areas burning possibly allowed earlier seasonal plantings and collection of wild plants. Geological reports of excessive burning occurring around 14,000 to 10,000 years ago may be attributed to early humans (see Clapperton 1993).
In some areas, food collection probably took place in the context of delayed-return rather than immediate-return economies, employing a range of strategies based on logistical mobility. Based on the evidence from Monte Verde, late Paijan sites, Las Vegas sites, and probably several caves and rock shelters in eastern Brazil, there seems to be long-lasting logistical settlements at favored sites from which small task groups probably made forays of several days or weeks, searching for food for much larger groups. Several sites associated with the exploitation of marine resources along the coast of Peru and Chile, with reduced territoriality and semi-sedentism of camelid hunters in the puna and altiplano of Peru, Chile, and Argentina, and with plant manipulation in the tropical lowlands of Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil, also appear to have been occupied for longer periods by 9000 BP.
The decision to become semi-sedentary to sedentary may have been based on regional, not just local, resource distribution, or in the words of Kelly (1995: 152): “Sedentism can be a product of local abundance in a context of regional scarcity.” I think this is what may have taken place with some late Paijan groups living around oases-like wetlands in the arid coastal environment of Peru and Chile during the early Holocene period.
Also important to understand is the cultural diversity of early South America, which is not just environmentally determined but also related to deliberate decisions made by groups to develop specialized hunting and gathering strategies and generalized logistical behavior (Bryan and Gruhn 2003; Dillehay 2000). I suspect that in many areas societies continuously fluctuated between mobile foragers and semi-sedentary to sedentary gardeners and/or pastoralists through time and space and that many did so with an annual or even longer periodicity. Increased complexity probably developed in areas where environmental productivity was high but also where the potential for social productivity was even higher, with some hunters and gatherers living adjacent to gardeners, incipient pastoralists, and/or maritime specialists. By 9,000 years ago, when more groups were in contact and more zones were occupied, each social strategy probably was comprised of opportunists who made use of the subsistence strategies of the others. This mosaic was best achieved in areas where groups were socially and environmentally compacted and within easy reach of others such as the Pacific coast and closely juxtaposed Andean mountains of Ecuador, Peru and Chile and the large deltas of the Gulf of Guayaquil and the large deltas mentioned above where mixed gardening, hunting and gathering, and marine economies were probably carried out within several kilometers of each other and where different kinds of social principles of organization were rapidly developed. These conditions were certainly influenced by the natural environment but also by the kinds of social interactions that different groups were having with their neighbors through time (Dillehay et al. 2003). The study of these interaction patterns holds great promise for understanding the contributions of early societies to the development of later complex Archaic cultures and for understanding the spread of domesticates and mixed economic strategies that developed even later.
Although strategies of mobility and sedentism depended on environmental factors, social and ritual considerations also must have been important. Mobility was a social affair, part of what has been termed the “appropriation” or “enculturation” of the landscape: migratory routes may have received physical marks of recognition, the location of settlement may have been given ritual significance, and mountains and rivers may have entered the cosmological world. Extensive knowledge of South American landscapes and their resources was critical in order to have alternatives in case an expected resource was not available; it required total memorization, which was maintained and passed on from generation to generation probably through ceremonies and initiation rites and intermittent training. The symbolic and ancestral significance often given to landmarks such as rivers, forests, and mountains may have emphasized principles of belief, but it may also have served to support more mundane aims, as a means of communication, icons of social differentiation, or claims of ownership. In this regard, order and meaning were probably brought to the natural world and the role of people in it. Although there is as yet little or no proof in the archaeological data base that any of the above considerations were of importance to early foragers in South America, the significantly increased social complexity evident in the eighth and seventh millennia BP and the appearance of pyramids and proto-urban settlements in the fifth millennium BP in the Central Andes suggest that the option was, at least, not unlikely.
There has been little speculation on the degree of social complexity of the first South Americans. The probable domestication of plants and animals, greater permanence of
Settlement, the intensification of food collecting, and the occurrence of grinding stones and permanent structures in a few early Holocene localities have all been taken as evidence of an increasing elaboration of society in the tenth to ninth millennia BP. We would discredit the first South Americans if we downplayed the sophistication of their society and described them as people with little or no cultural sophistication. Although scatters of stone tools and bones are often the sole remnants of life many thousands of years ago, the early foragers were knowledgeable and flexible, shared social values and goals, had ethics and principles of belief, and practiced ritual and ceremony.
World History
