Social Adaptation in a Highly Varied Spatial Environment

Northern Illinois University, Dekalb IL

Investigators

Abstract

Human settlement of the Americas was the most recent, rapid, and extensive biogeographic expansion of our species. Site-level investigations throughout the hemisphere have provided glimpses of how early Americans adapted to specific ecological zones. However, to understand how people expanded through the Americas and colonized new lands, investigation of Paleoindian settlement systems is needed. Analyses of plant and animal materials at archaeological sites will contribute valuable paleoenvironmental information on Pacific sea-surface temperature and El Niño history. Ultimately, the project will enrich knowledge of early Americans, the timing and routes used in initial settlement, the evolution of human adaptations to extreme high-altitude environments, and foundations of classic inter-zonal connections in the Andean region. Graduate and undergraduate students from the US and Peruvian institutions will receive training in cutting-edge field and lab methods and participate in all aspects of the project as integral members of the interdisciplinary scientific team. Close collaboration with governmental agencies and local communities will support the conservation of archaeological sites in this culturally unique region. Dr. Kurt Rademaker of Northern Illinois University, along with colleagues from the US, Canada, Peru, France, and Germany, will conduct research at a set of connected early sites in southern Peru, including one of the earliest coastal fishing settlements in the Americas and the highest-elevation Pleistocene (ice age) sites known in the world. The project will investigate how people living at the Pacific Coast and in the high Andes interacted 13,000 years ago and how their settlement system expanded and evolved over five millennia. The project has three primary objectives: (1) to determine the chronology of settlement in each ecological zone through precise radiocarbon dating and thus learn whether the Pacific coast or Andean interior was settled first; (2) to identify the season of occupation of coastal and highland sites using plant and animal remains, thereby learning whether a single group or multiple groups of people created them; and (3) to study materials and artifacts in 30 early site collections to learn about diet, settlement, and mobility patterns. Outcomes from this project will shed light on the nature and strength of Pacific Coast-Andes social interactions through time.