Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Investigating the Development of Agriculture in the Salta Puna, Northwestern Argentina

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

Under the direction of Dr. Mark Aldenderfer, Claudia U. Rumold will collect data for her doctoral dissertation which will examine the adoption of agriculture in the high Andes of northwestern Argentina. She will participate in the archaeological investigation of two sites, Ramadas and Matansillas 2, located in the San Antonio de los Cobres River Valley. The sites, dating from circa 5240 to 2040 BP, span the period in which agriculture developed in this region and current evidence indicates that they will provide data regarding this process. Both sites contain evidence for the cultivation, processing, or consumption of plants (e.g., hoes, grinding stones, plant remains). Significantly, sites as early as Ramadas are rare in the south-central Andes and may provide key insights into the first stages of agricultural adoption. Within the last ten thousand years, agriculture appeared independently among many societies inhabiting distinct environmental settings around the world. The widespread adoption of an agrarian economy had and continues to have a far-reaching impact - contributing to increasing sociopolitical complexity, sedentarization, rapid population growth, urbanism, and large-scale human transformation of the environment. In view of its pivotal role, archaeologists wish to understand agriculture's origins and development - how and why it diffused so successfully throughout the globe. Clarification of the fundamental variables underlying the shift from hunting-gathering to farming hinges on careful comparison of case studies. Northwestern Argentina possesses many of the variables closely linked with the appearance of agriculture (e.g., the domestication of autochthonous plants and animals and the appearance of pottery and settled village life). Rumold's research here will therefore provide new data critical to the comparative process. Four analyses will be carried out with the aim of characterizing the emergence of farming at the sites in question. Grinding stone and ceramic use-wear analysis will elucidate the nature and intensity of plant processing techniques. Examination of charred plant remains will illuminate the use of seed plants. Roots and tubers (e.g., potato) - the most important economic plants domesticated prehistorically in the Andes - do not often preserve in charred form; therefore, starch grain analysis will be conducted in order to clarify their economic role. As this technique is relatively new to archaeology, Rumold's research will help to expand its empirical base in highland South America. On a theoretical level, data regarding the use of roots and tubers will be essential to correcting the present bias in theories of agricultural origins, which primarily concern seed plants.