Zooarchaeology of Challuabamba, Azuay Province, Ecuador

Suny At Binghamton, Binghamton NY

Investigators

Abstract

With National Science Foundation support Dr. Peter Stahl will identify and analyze a collection of animal bone specimens that were recovered during archaeological investigations at the site of Challuabamba in the southern Andean highlands of Ecuador. The site is of great importance for our understanding of early village agricultural life in this southern area of the northern Andes, as it appears to have been settled in 2200 B.C. and subsequently occupied for as much as 1000 years. Analysis of the animal bone collection from Challuabamba provides insight into local resource utilization. Identification of the material could also contribute to our understanding of the early introduction and subsequent spread of South American animal domesticates like llamas, alpacas and guinea pigs, into their northernmost pre-Columbian distribution. The identification of native domesticates in the Challuabamba collection would be of crucial importance for documenting their early appearance north of the present Peruvian border and for understanding the mechanism involved in their original introduction. In particular, their appearance at Challuabamba is critical for assessing the viability of a southern terrestrial trade route as a potential mechanism for introducing early animal domesticates into Ecuador. Coastal marine shells may have entered the southern Ecuadorian highlands via a terrestrial route through the nearby Cordillera de Mullupungu, where they were subsequently consumed and/or processed for further overland trade to interior northern Peru, and eventually to the coast. In exchange, southern-derived animal domesticates may have entered Ecuador via this early trade mechanism. This would be significant for our understanding of early domesticates in Ecuador, because Challuabamba appears to predate important early cultural sequences on the coast. The absence of native animal domesticates in the assemblage would support their appearance at Pirincay around A.D. 100 as the earliest occurrence of domesticates in the southern highlands of Ecuador, and potentially provide an earliest date for possible terrestrial exchange of animals into the area. Plants and animals were independently domesticated in several regions of both the Old and New World and Peru constitutes one such "hearth" area. In all cases domesicates eventually spread and were adopted by hunting and gathering peoples thus significantly altering their way of life. Anthropologists wish to understand the principles which underly this process of diffusion and culture change and Challuabamba provides an excellent context in which to address this question.