Lacking archaeological data, scholars have tended to overlook the forested eastern slopes of the Central Andes as potential habitats for early foraging populations. Excavations at Manachaqui Cave (3,650 masl), however, recovered evidence of human occupation as early as cultural remains from South American regions that have received far more intensive study (Church 1999, 2004). Two AMS dates calibrated to approximately 12,200 and 11,900 BP (dates calibrated using McCormac et al. 2004; OxCal v.3.10, Bronk Ramsey 2005 unless otherwise noted) accompany scrapers, gravers, burins, and stemmed projectile points (see Figure 45.2a-g) resembling north coastal Peruvian Paijan (Chauchat 1988) and highland Ecuadorian El Inga styles (Bell 2000). The Manachaqui points seem to represent a southern, eastern-slope extension of an ostensibly “northern Andean” lithic industry, but great stylistic variability suggests that more than one transient population used the
Figure 45.2. Preceramic Period projectile points from Manachaqui Cave. (Warren Church)
Cave. The finds support postulations that the eastern slope ecotone provided game species such as deer, taruca and other attractive resources (Dillehay 2000), while it may also have served as a migratory corridor for the southward spread of South America’s early settlers (Hester 1966; Lothrop 1961; Raymond 1988; Sauer 1944). Manachaqui’s late Pre-ceramic Period levels yield abundant triangular points with basal notches (Figure 45.2h-k), associated with hearths and radiocarbon dates averaging 2700 BC (Church 1996). Because the nearest distribution of similar triangular points lies 1,000 km distant at sites such as Asana (Aldenderfer 2000) and Toquepala (Ravines 1972) in southernmost highland Peru, the isolated northern occurrence of this point style at Manachaqui warrants further study and explanation.
Around 2000 BC, Manachaqui’s function shifted from a hunting camp to a semipermanent habitation. A terminal Pre-ceramic Period component termed the Lavasen phase has been identified by occupation floors and rock-filled hearths, but few diagnostic artifacts (Church 1996). Charred, macrobotanical remains identified by Pearsall (1996) complement contemporaneous palynological indications of landscape disturbance and cultivation of Chenopodium or Amaranthus in the Manachaqui Valley (Hansen and Rodbell 1995), and fit into the widespread pattern of Late Preceramic Period cultivation of high-altitude grains in the Central Andes (e. g., Pearsall 1989, 1992; Chepstow-Lusty et al. 1998). These centuries coincide with the coastal Cotton Pre-ceramic Period. At both Manachaqui and at Pandanche in Cajamarca (Kaulicke 1975) it is tempting to speculate that “impoverished” core-flake lithic assemblages reflect the local adoption of woven cotton fiber for clothing, and the abandonment of lithic technologies adapted to processing animal hides. Manach-aqui’s obsidian flakes have been traced to the Alca source approximately 1,000 km distant in the southern highlands of Arequipa (Burger et al. 1996).
World History
