Marine food consumption in coastal northern Chilean (Atacama Desert) populations during the Formative Period: Implications of isotopic evidence (C, N, S) for the Neolithic process in south central Andes

Abstract

Stable carbon, nitrogen and sulfur isotope analyses combined with radiocarbon dates were carried out on human and faunal (camelids) hair remains from three archeological coastal sites in northern Chile (Playa Miller 7, Quiani 7 and Camarones 15) to assess subsistence patterns between 4000 and 1500years ago. Sulfur isotopes were useful to decipher some cases where carbon and nitrogen did not detect significant consumption of terrestrial resources. These isotopic results confirm that the exploitation of marine resources was the main activity for the inhabitants of the Formative Period, a time of neolithization process in south central Andes. This contradicts previous assumptions on the speed of the shift from the exploitation of marine to terrestrial resources, suggesting that this transition did not impact the subsistence strategies of this population as fast as previously thought. Therefore the “neolithization” of populations during this period did not lead to a significant change in diet. In this paper we present data from fifteen individuals, of which thirteen had a diet mainly based on marine resources, while two showed a more terrestrial-based diet. These different cases among individuals in relation to different access to resources are discussed. Moreover, the results are compared with those obtained from other contemporaneous Chilean sites of the same geographical area. This investigation on mummified hair samples offers new palaeodiet insights into the prehistoric subsistence strategies in northern Chile during a key transitional period.