AMERICAS, SOUTH | Early Villages

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Although village life is known for prehistoric peoples throughout the Americas, some of the earliest well studied villages are found in South America. Early North American and Mesoamerican agricultural villages were preceded by still earlier settlements in Perú and Ecuador. In Perú, exceptional preservation permits a wide range of studies of the archaeological record. Domestic structures may have been built 12000years ago and are definitely known from 7000BC in the central western Andean region. Coastal Peruvian fishing villages are present by 6000BC followed by more agricultural settlements in Ecuador and Perú by 4000BC. On the central coast of Perú, Quipa, a site with a domestic structure that dates to at least 7000BC, is not far from the first excavated large village settlement at Paloma at 6000–3000BC. Subsequent central Andean villages are larger and most have non-domestic structures. They present both food and economic crops such as cotton for nets and textiles. To the north, the precocious Real Alto site in Ecuador at 4000–3500BC demonstrates non-domestic architecture and pottery. The late aceramic component at the Buena Vista Peruvian middle valley site produced sculptures in the round and platform pyramids, which date to 4200BC. Very large sites in the Norte Chico of Perú are older still, but their settlement pattern is not yet resolved. The 55 domestic structures with their 200 interments from the stratified fishing villages at the Middle Preceramic site of Paloma describe changes over time in gender and age distinctions evident in mortuary customs. As well, shifts in subsistence activities and in dietary patterns at Paloma and related sites have been determined from bioarchaeological studies. Health changes with adoption of village life are minimal, although subsequent deterioration was followed by gradual improvement, perhaps never reaching the same level of adult health as was experienced at Paloma. These early villages represent the instantiation of widespread belief systems in particular habitats, probably maintained and partly shared with adjacent ethnic groups who were trading partners. The beginning of ancestor veneration at Paloma may be associated with an early astronomical alignment that becomes widespread in the larger settlements of the Peruvian Late Preceramic. While each people had its special history, there are some similarities in response to the dryer and more unpredictable climate that followed the end of the worldwide climatic optimum at about 3000BC. Village life, in time associated with monumental constructions, was a response of some of the peoples who experienced this change. Early Peruvian fishing villages were supplanted by a tripartite system of fishing, farming food crops, and growing of economic plants.