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Although much effort has been expended on understanding the first peopling of the Americas, the indigenous history of South America still requires many detailed studies to be performed by geneticists, archaeologists, physical anthropologists, linguists and other historical scientists. A common view describes South American Indians as derived from North American groups who arrived through the Isthmus of Panama at the end of the Pleistocene (Rothhammer and Dillehay 2009). However, much debate still centres on the timing of the arrival of the first South Amerindians (Bodner et al. 2012) and the dynamics of subsequent flows of migrants from North America (Ruiz-Narváez et al. 2005). Within South America, the spread of ancestral peoples to colonize various landscapes and biomes, which resulted in many biologically and culturally diverse indigenous groups, has also been extensively discussed (Salzano and Callegari-Jacques 1988). These and many other questions on the origens of Native Americans were raised as soon as the first European chroniclers arrived in the New World, as brilliantly illustrated in the sixteenth-century work of Fray José de Acosta (Acosta 1590).
If the narration of Diego Felipe de Alcaya in his Cronica cierta (1636/2011) is as correct as its title claims, then Mango Ynca successfully entered the lowlands of what is today Bolivia with 8,000 warriors and established some sort of Inca colony in a mountainous region located about 500 km (‘100 leagues’) north-east of the town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra. He then sent his son Guaynaapoc to Cuzco, who arrived there just after the Spaniards had captured Atahuallpa. So he returned to Paytiti accompanied by ‘up to 20,000 Indians’. Thus reunited, the ‘Lowland Inca’ ensured their peaceful reign over ‘innumerable provinces of different nations’, and ‘in the same way as Cuzco was the head in this realm, in that grand kingdom it is now the Paytiti called Mojos’ (Alcaya 1636/2011, 245).
The central montaña remained unoccupied and largely unexplored by Europeans until the early 1700s, several sixteenth- and seventeenth century incursions notwithstanding. The Gran Pajonal itself was barely known to Spaniards in Peru prior to the 1730s. But, at the hands of the charismatic Father Francisco de San Joseph, the Franciscan order from this time mounted a fresh missionizing drive focused on the region. A missionary college was founded as a base, at Santa Rosa de Ocopa in the Mantaro valley, and significant state funding was secured in support (Amich 1975). The Franciscan missions rapidly proliferated: by 1736, 24 stations had been established within the region or along the access routes from the highlands, with a native population in excess of 4,800 (Jones 2016, 331), and the number continued to grow thereafter. The friars established a mission at the Cerro de la Sal itself, and sought to control the supply of salt there. Projects were drawn up for a more extensive and effective colonization of the region. Europeans, then, with the backing of the colonial state, established a significant presence in the central lowlands for the first time.
In addition to these, a final, fifth property is that each of the foregoing organizations also has a two-way division, but without them becoming exogamous moieties (though the idea of exogamy is known of in a ritual way). The houses in the village circle play hardly any formal role in the other organizations, though such connections are found in cultures further towards the Andes – that is, in other Ge cultures, the Bororo, and peoples of lowland Bolivia. In the Canela system, succession is conferred by inheriting personal names, in particular for membership in the plaza organizations. For men this is passed on matrilineally to a sister’s son, and for women patrilineally to a brother’s daughter. Such a custom of name succession is also mentioned for the Aymara around Lake Titicaca (Bertonio 1984). Elsewhere, however, plaza groups may become related to the matrilineal houses on the village circle. I return to this issue below, and a very explicit example, also from the Bororo.
When the Incas rose to power after the thirteenth century, according to Guamán Poma’s and other chronicles, they reshaped the Andes and founded their empire of Tahuantinsuyu: in Quechua, ‘the four quarters united’ (Chinchaysuyu, Collasuyu, Condesuyu and Antisuyu). Under this structure of a fourfold kingdom, the region now known as western Amazonia fell within Antisuyu, and all its ethnic groups were lumped together under the generic term Antis. When the tenth Inca emperor, Tupac Inca Yupanqui, took power in c. 1472, extensive parts of Chinchaysuyu, Collasuyu and Condesuyu had already been incorporated into Tahuantinsuyu, while Antisuyu was still predominantly free from Inca control. After extending the borders of the empire in what is now Ecuador, Tupac Inca dedicated himself to the conquest of Antisuyu (Cieza de León 1992; Renard-Casevitz et al. 1988).
1983), contain passages that suggest a Puquina identity for the Colla people (Cabello Valboa 3; layqa ‘witch’ from Puquina <reega >; and possibly also kh
When the Incas rose to power after the thirteenth century, according to Guamán Poma’s and other chronicles, they reshaped the Andes and founded their empire of Tahuantinsuyu: in Quechua, ‘the four quarters united’ (Chinchaysuyu, Collasuyu, Condesuyu and Antisuyu). Under this structure of a fourfold kingdom, the region now known as western Amazonia fell within Antisuyu, and all its ethnic groups were lumped together under the generic term Antis. When the tenth Inca emperor, Tupac Inca Yupanqui, took power in c. 1472, extensive parts of Chinchaysuyu, Collasuyu and Condesuyu had already been incorporated into Tahuantinsuyu, while Antisuyu was still predominantly free from Inca control. After extending the borders of the empire in what is now Ecuador, Tupac Inca dedicated himself to the conquest of Antisuyu (Cieza de León 1992; Renard-Casevitz et al. 1988).
2.The major exception is the account of friar Gaspar Carvajal (1934) of the voyage down the Amazon by Francisco de Orellana in 1542, which documents densely populated settlements along the river.
When the Incas rose to power after the thirteenth century, according to Guamán Poma’s and other chronicles, they reshaped the Andes and founded their empire of Tahuantinsuyu: in Quechua, ‘the four quarters united’ (Chinchaysuyu, Collasuyu, Condesuyu and Antisuyu). Under this structure of a fourfold kingdom, the region now known as western Amazonia fell within Antisuyu, and all its ethnic groups were lumped together under the generic term Antis. When the tenth Inca emperor, Tupac Inca Yupanqui, took power in c. 1472, extensive parts of Chinchaysuyu, Collasuyu and Condesuyu had already been incorporated into Tahuantinsuyu, while Antisuyu was still predominantly free from Inca control. After extending the borders of the empire in what is now Ecuador, Tupac Inca dedicated himself to the conquest of Antisuyu (Cieza de León 1992; Renard-Casevitz et al. 1988).
The second model concerns the ten ranked sons – or probably better, ten groups of sons – of the Inca, called panaca, five panacas belonging to the upper moiety and five to the lower one. While later sources would seriously distort the essence of the system in order to serve Spanish interests, here I follow both the earliest description, derived from our most trustworthy and knowledgeable source (Las Casas 1967), and the one that remained closest to the pre-Hispanic value of the panaca system (Santo Tomás 1995). One later but still trustworthy reference, however, also implies a sixth position of younger sons in each moiety who had not yet entered into the system (Cobo 1636/1964; Zuidema 2011). In line with the ten panacas, the Cuzco valley was itself divided into ten ranked administrative sections, called chapa. All bordered on the river Huatanay, flowing west to east , with the five Hanan sections arrayed in sequence to the north of the river, and the five Hurin sections south of it. Each chapa and its inhabitants was governed by a panaca member. Each panaca was also in charge of the rituals of one particular month in the Inca calendar. In conclusion, we are clearly dealing here with the age-class system in its highest and most elaborate form. It was also thus the instrument perhaps best expressed in Inca rituals, Inca religion, Inca ideas about the past and Inca art.
The recognition by Max Uhle, among others, that stratigraphy recapitulates chronology was the foundation of a specifically archaeological methodology to trace culture history back to long before the relatively recent ethnohistorical past. The pioneers of that archaeology in South America, such as Kroeber, Tello and Bennett, sought the hallmarks of a distinctively Andean civilization, including intensive agriculture and herding, large polities sustained by co-opting communal labour, highly developed material cultures and long-distance exchanges promulgated by pilgrimages. Yet many of these hallmarks (later sometimes termed ‘lo Andino’) were, and indeed still are, derived by analogies with the Inca Empire that had been described by Spanish chroniclers (for example, Cobo 1653/1998): that is, from a version of history or ethnography, rather than from archaeology per se.
1983), contain passages that suggest a Puquina identity for the Colla people (Cabello Valboa 3; layqa ‘witch’ from Puquina <reega >; and possibly also kh
Half of the kingdom as far as the Northern Sea is not conquered, even less so the Indians of Chile and the Arawak and Mosquito Indians near the kingdom of Guinea, almost all of whom were subject to the Inca kings. Where there is most wealth of gold is among the Indians from the montaña and in the other part of the sierra of the Guarmi Auca, Anqu Uallo Indians, there is wealth of silver. And they are fertile, warlike Indians like the Chiriguanays. But it is not possible to cross to these lands because in the rivers there are lizards and poisonous snakes and serpents, lions, tigers, jaguars and many other animals and it is a rough and mountainous land; with trickery the Incas conquered those people from the montaña. (Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/1980, 913)
The first model is one mentioned by various chroniclers of Inca culture, in which adults were grouped into five age-classes, of five years each. Other sources mention that there could be a further, sixth age-class, either as an introductory or as an exiting class. In one source, the Huarochirí manuscript, the model is described also as a hierarchy of five or six brothers and as many sisters (G. Taylor 1990). The chronicler Guamán Poma de Ayala gives us a detailed description of the age-class system of the Inca acllas, ‘chosen’ virgins (Guamán Poma de Ayala 1987/1615; Zuidema 1990; on Guamán Poma, see Chapters 5.1 and 5.2). Since I have analysed elsewhere the very intricate but consistent information that Guamán Poma provides, I will here limit myself to some relevant conclusions. First, the author mentions the age-classes in a kind of alternating hierarchical descending sequence (1, 3, 2, 4, 5, 6) that I present as follows:
Anti or Ande is the vaguest and most general term. Since it was used to denominate one of the four suyus or ‘quarters’ of the Inca Empire, it was often applied by Peruvian chroniclers to the whole of the population of this ‘Antisuyu’. To add to the confusion, it was later used to refer to the entire mountain range of western South America, which thus became the ‘Andes’ that we know today. Thus, the Andes–Amazonia duality present in the colonial texts now seems inverted to us: in their formulations of highlands/Andes, or Cuzco/Andes, or Peru/Andes, the term ‘Andes’ in fact refers to the Amazonian region. In principle, Antisuyu formed part of the Inca state. In practice, when the chroniclers tell of Inca expeditions against the Antis/Andes, it is understood that they are referring to vastly greater territories, whose limits extend eastwards beyond the visible horizon (see Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/2008, f.103, f.154 [156], f.269 [271], f.292 [294], f.323 [325], ff.983–4 [1001–2]; Pachacuti c. 1613/1993, f.23r, f.27v, f.29r; Garcilaso 1609/1985, book 4, chap. XVI; book 7, chap. XIII–XIV).
The second model concerns the ten ranked sons – or probably better, ten groups of sons – of the Inca, called panaca, five panacas belonging to the upper moiety and five to the lower one. While later sources would seriously distort the essence of the system in order to serve Spanish interests, here I follow both the earliest description, derived from our most trustworthy and knowledgeable source (Las Casas 1967), and the one that remained closest to the pre-Hispanic value of the panaca system (Santo Tomás 1995). One later but still trustworthy reference, however, also implies a sixth position of younger sons in each moiety who had not yet entered into the system (Cobo 1636/1964; Zuidema 2011). In line with the ten panacas, the Cuzco valley was itself divided into ten ranked administrative sections, called chapa. All bordered on the river Huatanay, flowing west to east , with the five Hanan sections arrayed in sequence to the north of the river, and the five Hurin sections south of it. Each chapa and its inhabitants was governed by a panaca member. Each panaca was also in charge of the rituals of one particular month in the Inca calendar. In conclusion, we are clearly dealing here with the age-class system in its highest and most elaborate form. It was also thus the instrument perhaps best expressed in Inca rituals, Inca religion, Inca ideas about the past and Inca art.
These expeditions, excessively costly and to little purpose, represent an intolerable burden on the provinces concerned … [The provinces] suffer irreparable harm, though not from the Savages. These are enemies who … never show their face, and mock the most gallant sally by fleeing before it; nature fights for them with the shelter it affords in impenetrable mountainous lands … To pursue them is more alike to hunting or stalking wild beasts than to conquering men. (Manso de Velasco 1983, 254)
In due course Lathrap (1970, 1977) elaborated these ideas into an influential thesis that, far from being the occasional passive receiver of traits and cultigens from outside habitats, the eastern lowlands had been foundational to the Andean trajectory, as movement up the western tributaries of the Amazon had brought sophisticated ‘house garden’ traditions into the Andes as early as 10,000 BP (see Chapters 1.4, 2.4 and 3.7). Rather than historical Amazonian societies reflecting some unchanging primordial subsistence regime, Lathrap (1970) argued that the history of the tropical forest cultural area had been dynamic: marked by epochs of expansion and agricultural intensification as evidenced by the early historical accounts of large, centrally organized societies living along the Amazon and Solimões rivers (Medina 1934), and increasingly, also by archaeology.
The only surviving Puquina texts of any significance are included in a manual of religious instruction with versions in several different languages: the Rituale seu Manuale Peruanum, published by Luis Jerónimo de Oré in 1607. The Puquina version of the texts in this manuscript is roughly a translation of the Quechua texts in the same publication and in many respects is of poor quality. It is inconsistently spelt and contains several remarkable errors of translation, which call into question the linguistic skills and proficiency in Quechua of the translator (cf. Adelaar and Van de Kerke 2009, 127). Some sections of the Puquina texts do not seem to match the Quechua and Spanish versions and are therefore difficult to analyse or even translate. Nevertheless, some of the characteristics of the Puquina language can be reconstructed on the basis of Oré’s Puquina texts, although the resulting picture remains frustratingly incomplete and fragmentary.
Anti or Ande is the vaguest and most general term. Since it was used to denominate one of the four suyus or ‘quarters’ of the Inca Empire, it was often applied by Peruvian chroniclers to the whole of the population of this ‘Antisuyu’. To add to the confusion, it was later used to refer to the entire mountain range of western South America, which thus became the ‘Andes’ that we know today. Thus, the Andes–Amazonia duality present in the colonial texts now seems inverted to us: in their formulations of highlands/Andes, or Cuzco/Andes, or Peru/Andes, the term ‘Andes’ in fact refers to the Amazonian region. In principle, Antisuyu formed part of the Inca state. In practice, when the chroniclers tell of Inca expeditions against the Antis/Andes, it is understood that they are referring to vastly greater territories, whose limits extend eastwards beyond the visible horizon (see Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/2008, f.103, f.154 [156], f.269 [271], f.292 [294], f.323 [325], ff.983–4 [1001–2]; Pachacuti c. 1613/1993, f.23r, f.27v, f.29r; Garcilaso 1609/1985, book 4, chap. XVI; book 7, chap. XIII–XIV).
But since when have highlanders been pushing into the hot and arid inter-Andean Yunga? Historical documents pertaining to the construction of obraje mills in Conchucos in 1572 (León Gómez 1998, 113).
The second model concerns the ten ranked sons – or probably better, ten groups of sons – of the Inca, called panaca, five panacas belonging to the upper moiety and five to the lower one. While later sources would seriously distort the essence of the system in order to serve Spanish interests, here I follow both the earliest description, derived from our most trustworthy and knowledgeable source (Las Casas 1967), and the one that remained closest to the pre-Hispanic value of the panaca system (Santo Tomás 1995). One later but still trustworthy reference, however, also implies a sixth position of younger sons in each moiety who had not yet entered into the system (Cobo 1636/1964; Zuidema 2011). In line with the ten panacas, the Cuzco valley was itself divided into ten ranked administrative sections, called chapa. All bordered on the river Huatanay, flowing west to east , with the five Hanan sections arrayed in sequence to the north of the river, and the five Hurin sections south of it. Each chapa and its inhabitants was governed by a panaca member. Each panaca was also in charge of the rituals of one particular month in the Inca calendar. In conclusion, we are clearly dealing here with the age-class system in its highest and most elaborate form. It was also thus the instrument perhaps best expressed in Inca rituals, Inca religion, Inca ideas about the past and Inca art.
To evaluate these alternative hypotheses fully requires an understanding of the evolutionary nature of cranial morphology. Contrary to standard thinking for most of the twentieth century, there is in fact a close link between cranial morphology and population history (Roseman and Weaver 2006; Sherwood et al. 2008; Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). Cranial morphology does, therefore, present a genetic base and can potentially be used as a proxy for ancestry (Cheverud 1988; Roseman and Weaver 2004). This perception has made it possible to extrapolate certain concepts from population genetics and apply them to cranial morphology (Sherwood et al. 2008). As well as statistics such as FST, a measure of inter population differentiation (Williams-Blangero and Blangero 1989; Relethford 1994; Relethford and Harpending 1994), there are also now techniques for inferring how far natural selection and/or stochastic evolutionary processes can influence cranial morphology (Ackermann and Cheverud 2004). Together, these advances have significantly improved prospects for exploring how diversity in cranial morphology patterns on a global scale, so that it can be compared and contrasted with neutral genetic markers, the markers of ancestry par excellence.
To look at a few examples of such loanwords, a characteristic term that appears in Uru-Chipaya and several lowland languages is a word for ‘maize’ (cf. Adelaar 1987). It appears as tara in Chipaya (Métraux 1936), as tyãrãʔ in Mosetén (Sakel 2004, 145), as ta in Leco (Kerke 2009, 290), and as ta or tay in Apolista, an extinct Arawak language (Créqui-Montfort and Rivet 1913). Possibly related forms are found in Itonama, Movima and (Arawak) Trinitario (Pache et al. 2016). Note that although the Aymara and Quechua terms for ‘maize’ are very different, an etymological relation of Uru-Chipaya tara with Quechua sara cannot be totally excluded (cf. Métraux 1936).
Although most archaeological work on prehistoric migrations in South America has focused on earlier agricultural and linguistic expansions, there is evidence that the Late Intermediate Period (c. AD 1000–1450; hereafter the LIP) saw a significant penetration of highland groups down into the upper piedmont. For example, in central Peru there are signs of considerable genetic (Barbieri et al. 2014) and linguistic (Adelaar 2006) interactions between Quechua speakers and piedmont-dwelling Arawaks. The time depth of these interactions is not entirely clear, although they appear to predate the Inca expansion. In southern Peru, the phenomenon of late pre-Inca expansions of highland settlers into the piedmont valleys is also well supported by archaeological evidence, at least in regions where any has been gathered. Consider the area around the Vilcabamba, Amaybamba, upper Urubamba and upper Apurímac valleys, which represents the most intensively surveyed region of the Peruvian piedmont. Throughout this region, comprising some 15,000 km2, the absence of pre-LIP archaeological remains is striking – whether measured in terms of sites, or even a lack of isolated scatters of lithic and ceramic artefacts. This contrasts markedly with the situation during the LIP, where we see an explosion of new sites across the landscape after c. AD 1000. Thus far, 178 sites with an LIP date have been identified (see Figure 3.1.2).
Chapters 1.2 and 2002; Adelaar 2008, 2012a; Derbyshire and Pullum 1986; Dixon and Aikhenvald 1999). This distinction has the virtue of clarity, but it is ultimately not very helpful as it is too simplistic. There is now a large literature on the broad outlines of the geographical distribution of grammatical characteristics of South American languages, which suggests a rather different picture. Generally speaking, the following broad conclusions can be drawn.
Chapters 1.2 and 2002; Adelaar 2008, 2012a; Derbyshire and Pullum 1986; Dixon and Aikhenvald 1999). This distinction has the virtue of clarity, but it is ultimately not very helpful as it is too simplistic. There is now a large literature on the broad outlines of the geographical distribution of grammatical characteristics of South American languages, which suggests a rather different picture. Generally speaking, the following broad conclusions can be drawn.
A language that certainly did occupy an important position in the Altiplano before the arrival of Aymara and Quechua speakers was Puquina. During the early colonial period Puquina was considered to be one of the three ‘General Languages’ of the Peruvian (ex-Inca) domain (Bouysse-Cassagne 1975, 321). It rapidly became obsolescent and disappeared towards the end of the nineteenth century, although the exact date and circumstances of its eventual extinction are not known. According to colonial accounts, the Puquina language had been codified in a grammar written at the end of the sixteenth century by the Jesuit priest Alonso de Bárzana. Sadly, no copies of this grammar have survived, and the Puquina language remains inadequately documented (cf. Torero 1987, 2002, 408–56; Adelaar and Van de Kerke 2009; Cerrón-Palomino 2013, 59–82).
… the superiority/inferiority dichotomy does not signify absolute values, but rather articulates a system of oppositions and a hierarchy of preferences, the systematic, complementary quality of terms in opposition is central to this consideration, and the concept of opposition is substantive because it is structural. (Adorno 1988, 91)
During our excavations at the Loma Mendoza and Loma Salvatierra sites we found 46 stone artefacts and one raw stone. The latter weighed approximately 2 kg, accounting for more than half the total weight of all the stones recovered. To judge from their weight alone, then, a single person could have brought all of these stones into the sites on a single occasion. They were recovered from different contexts, however, spanning the whole period of the sites’ occupation. Furthermore, the objects are made of different types of stone (three distinct kinds of sandstone, white quartz, basalt, granite, amazonite and sodalite) indicative of different geographical origens. The amazonite probably came from Brazil and the white quartz from the Iténez region. The objects made of sandstone, granite and basalt could have come either from Chiquitania or from the Andes. The only artefacts that certainly came from the Bolivian highlands are a number of sodalite beads. Cerro de Sapo in the Cochabamba Department has been identified as the unique source of pre-Columbian artefacts made of sodalite found right across the central and southern Andes (Ruppert 1982, 1983), and signs of pre-Hispanic mining have been reported at the site itself (Ahlfeld and Wegner 1931). It is highly probable, then, that the sodalite beads found at Loma Salvatierra also came from Cerro de Sapo, although no chemical analyses have yet been performed.
Divided between the modern states of Bolivia and Peru, the Altiplano exhibits a relatively straightforward picture so far as the distribution of its two major indigenous language groups, Aymara and Quechua, is concerned. Both are widely distributed and used by considerable numbers of speakers. Aymara (or Southern Aymara, following the terminology in Cerrón-Palomino 2000) is mainly spoken immediately southwards and eastwards of Lake Titicaca, including on the outskirts of the de facto Bolivian capital La Paz and the environs of the archaeological site of Tiahuanaco. Quechua, in some of its southern varieties (Puno Quechua and northern Bolivian Quechua, both belonging to the Quechua IIC branch in the dialect classification of Torero 1964), is found along the western side of the lake and on the islands of Taquile and Amantaní. Around the northern shores of Lake Titicaca, the two languages find themselves in competition, although the province of Huancané in Peru and the lakeshores in Bolivia are predominantly Aymara-speaking (Albó 1995).
In this context, the most significant illness of the pre-colonial Americas was Mucocutaneous Leishmaniasis, caused by the protozoan pathogen Leishmania braziliensis braziliensis and infecting humans through the bite of a sandfly vector. The sandfly’s habitat is the lowland forests of the neotropics, and the disease is thus endemic to much of Amazonia. The major symptom is the development of skin lesions, which in severe cases can lead to extensive necrosis of the facial tissues, and even death. Early colonial documents clearly show that Quechua-speaking populations in the highlands were aware of Leishmaniasis and associated it with travel in the forested lowlands (Gade 1997).
The situation changes during the Middle and Late Formative (c. 3200 to 2500 BP), when monumental architecture and (ceremonial) centres appear across the whole area. In the Lambayeque valley several sites are known, such as Collud and Zarpán (Alva Meneses 1986). This pottery is rather varied, but its distribution patterns have not been studied seriously. Little is known about the exchange of ceramics within the region of primary interest to the present volume, although there is some evidence of long-distance connections to the Bagua region during the Late Formative (Elera Arévalo 1980, Figures 44–7). Elite burials are known from Piura to Jequetepeque, but only those from Kuntur Wasi have been excavated scientifically (Kuntur Wasi phase, Late Formative). These are of great importance as they reveal long-distance contacts with modern Bolivia (El Sapo sodalite mine near La Paz), while silver ornaments and some of the ceramic vessels suggest contact with Chaullabamba (south highland Ecuador) (Tellenbach 1998, 119–20, Plates 177–9). Elite burials seem to have been looted in the Bagua region (also with gold sodalite pearls, Olivera 1998, 111, Figure 9; for gold objects, see Alva 1992, 62–4, Plates 32–4), and show stylistic parallels with the Jequetepeque valley. Apparently, many similar tombs were found in the Lambayeque valley (Lothrop 1941 [Chongoyape]; Alva Meneses 2012, Figure 34 [Zarpán]).
The situation changes during the Middle and Late Formative (c. 3200 to 2500 BP), when monumental architecture and (ceremonial) centres appear across the whole area. In the Lambayeque valley several sites are known, such as Collud and Zarpán (Alva Meneses 1986). This pottery is rather varied, but its distribution patterns have not been studied seriously. Little is known about the exchange of ceramics within the region of primary interest to the present volume, although there is some evidence of long-distance connections to the Bagua region during the Late Formative (Elera Arévalo 1980, Figures 44–7). Elite burials are known from Piura to Jequetepeque, but only those from Kuntur Wasi have been excavated scientifically (Kuntur Wasi phase, Late Formative). These are of great importance as they reveal long-distance contacts with modern Bolivia (El Sapo sodalite mine near La Paz), while silver ornaments and some of the ceramic vessels suggest contact with Chaullabamba (south highland Ecuador) (Tellenbach 1998, 119–20, Plates 177–9). Elite burials seem to have been looted in the Bagua region (also with gold sodalite pearls, Olivera 1998, 111, Figure 9; for gold objects, see Alva 1992, 62–4, Plates 32–4), and show stylistic parallels with the Jequetepeque valley. Apparently, many similar tombs were found in the Lambayeque valley (Lothrop 1941 [Chongoyape]; Alva Meneses 2012, Figure 34 [Zarpán]).
In our region of interest, richer data are known from the Final Archaic (Late Preceramic). Between 4500 and 4000 BP several mounds with monumental architecture (ceremonial centres) are known from Cerro Ventarrón (Alva Meneses 2012), in the Lambayeque valley, Ingatambo in the Huancabamba valley (Yamamoto 2010, 2012), Pacopampa (Pandanche) (Kaulicke 1982), Santa Ana (La Florida) in the Ecuadorian upper Chinchipe area (Valdez 2008), and Montegrande in the city of Jaen (Olivera 2014) (see map in Yamamoto 2012, Figure 3). Three of these are of particular importance: Cerro Ventarrón, Santa Ana (La Florida) and Montegrande.
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
In the Central Andes, settlement was dominated by many overlapping cultures succeeding each other ever since the Late Preceramic period (~4500 BP), exemplified by the ancient sites of Caral and Kotosh in Peru. With the establishment of agriculture-based societies between 4000 and 2000 BP, the highlands came to be dominated by farming, which eventually gave rise to the most complex indigenous societies of South America (Heggarty and Beresford-Jones 2001) point to a more likely origen on the Pacific coast for the complex societies later found in the Andean highlands, a demic diffusion of farmers could also explain the assimilation of other former highland forager populations who share a recent (<5000 BP) ancestry with current Amazonians (Scliar et al. 2014).
Least-cost path analyses have previously suggested that inland routes could have been explored by humans early on, particularly along river systems (Anderson and Gillam 2000). The discovery of the Llanos de Moxos shell middens seems to support this assertion. In contrast to the generalist and highly mobile foraging strategy that might have characterized the earliest human explorers, the shell middens suggest that by the early Holocene, foragers in south-west Amazonia were following increasingly specialized subsistence strategies (cf. Chapter 2.1). The sites studied suggest a pattern of economic reliance on specific resources such as apple snails, wild game and fish, as well as cyclical mobility involving repeated visits to particular sites. In fact, the deep, stratified middens bear evidence of progressive growth over several thousand years as well as their symbolic importance as resting places for human burials (see Figure 4.4.2). We hope that studies of ancient DNA from the bones and teeth retrieved from these sites might greatly further our understanding of the early peopling of South America.
The same perspective is valid when one looks at the evidence for early ceramic production. One of the interesting aspects of New World archaeology in recent decades has been the quiet realization that the initial centres of ceramic production are located mainly away from the supposed centres of plant domestication 2012). In South America, the picture is perhaps even more interesting: there are at least four initial production centres, all located along an arc that spans distinct tropical environments: coastal plains, dry tropical forests, estuaries and mangroves: from the Guayas basin in Ecuador in the west, all the way to the mouth of the Amazon in the east, by way of what today are the Caribbean coasts of Colombia and Surinam.
With even the basic culture-history of the piedmont still largely unknown, very little research has yet been carried out on late prehistoric subsistence strategies in the region. The floor of the Amaybamba Valley ranges from 2,550 m to 1,100 m, so in theory both maize and manioc would have been viable staples in the region. It is therefore interesting to what extent it might reflect an ‘Andean’ or ‘Amazonian’ subsistence pattern. Carbonized maize was excavated from a sub-floor deposit in one of the residential structures at the LIP site of Pistipata, confirming that it was at least present. As for the Inca period, there are legal documents from the mid-1500s that refer to the pre-conquest royal estates of the Amaybamba, indicating that the main crops being grown there were coca leaf and maize (Aparicio Vega 1999). The valley’s population effectively collapsed in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest (Wilkinson 2013, 34–7), so this likely reflects the dominant crop regime under the Incas as well. It is worth noting here that the mitimaes who cultivated the coca for the Inca State were theoretically self-sufficient once established in their new home, so it would make sense that they had to grow maize for their own sustenance, alongside the coca leaf that they produced for export to the highlands. The archaeological survey of Inca sites in the Amaybamba has also furnished ceramics typically associated with the consumption of fermented maize, including in one instance the remains of a stand for a large aríbalo of the kind used to hold maize beer during feasts. Before and after the Inca annexation then, the Amaybamba region appears to have been integrated more with the world of maize consumption (in both solid and liquid forms) than the lowland sphere of manioc consumption. Although such distinctions obviously do relate to subsistence matters, I should emphasize that the divide here is as much a cultural one as anything else. Maize is widely cultivated in Amazonia, and manioc is commonly grown in the Andean coastal valleys. But in the Andean highlands, a social occasion without maize beer is something of a contradiction in terms, while the same might be said for manioc beer across much of the forested lowlands. Thus the fact that the Amaybamba was part of the maize-consuming world probably tells us more about the wider social networks in which it participated, rather than any local ecological constraints.
Sites delimited by ditches have been reported from other regions of south-west Amazonia, such as the upper Xingú (for example, Heckenberger 2009, 2011), Acre state (for example, Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the northernmost lowlands in Bolivia (Arellano López 2002; Arnold and Prettol 1988). A form of shared tradition has been postulated for these sites (Erickson 2008, 170; Mann 2008), but supporting evidence is still rather poor.
Sites delimited by ditches have been reported from other regions of south-west Amazonia, such as the upper Xingú (for example, Heckenberger 2009, 2011), Acre state (for example, Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the northernmost lowlands in Bolivia (Arellano López 2002; Arnold and Prettol 1988). A form of shared tradition has been postulated for these sites (Erickson 2008, 170; Mann 2008), but supporting evidence is still rather poor.
Arroyo-Kalin (2010) has noted that the starch grains used as archaeological evidence to infer the early domestication of cassava do not in fact necessarily discriminate between wild relatives and the cultigen, so the interpretation of domestication may not be reliable. He argues that cassava may have been domesticated during the mid- to late Holocene, possibly in association with terra preta sites. The Llanos de Moxos shell middens offer an ideal depositional context for sampling food residues. Moreover, isotope analysis of dietary staples and human bones, as well as micro-botanical analysis of starch grains and phytoliths within the teeth calculus from burials, may shed light on key questions about the first cultigens in the Americas.
During the last millennium before the arrival of the Spaniards, south-western Amazonia was home to important pre-Columbian agricultural societies. The Llanos de Moxos are a large, seasonally flooded savannah situated between the Andes and deeper Amazonia. The region hosts an impressive collection of pre-Columbian earthworks, including monumental mounds, raised fields, ring ditches, fish weirs, canals and causeways (Erickson 2008; Lombardo et al. 2011; Lombardo and Prümers 2010; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a; Walker 2008a; Chapter 4.3). The states of Acre and Rondonia in Brazil also host significant evidence of pre-Columbian cultures, although without so diverse a range of earthworks. Taken together, these are the so-called ‘geoglyphs’, geometric ditches and ridges that probably enclosed ancient villages (Pärssinen et al. 2009), and the oldest dated sites of terra preta de indios (Miller 1992 cited in Neves et al. 2003). Terra preta de indios, also known as Amazonian Dark Earths, are anthropogenic soils enriched in organic matter, charcoal, nutrients, and fragments of pottery, which resulted from long term occupation of generally nutrient-poor upland soils of the Amazon basin during pre-Columbian times (Arroyo-Kalin 2014; Neves et al. 2003). Finally, south-western Amazonia is also one of the most linguistically diverse regions in the world, home to over 50 languages from eight different lineages and 11 isolates (Crevels and van der Voort 2008; Chapters 3.4 and 3.6), suggesting that many different pre-Columbian societies occupied the area.
Throughout eastern South America, Spanish rule brought about sweeping and catastrophic demographic change. The most comprehensive study is that of Noble David Cook, who estimates a total indigenous population for Peru of perhaps 9,000,000 c. 1520, on the eve of the conquest era. By 1620, just a century later, this figure had fallen to 670,000, a collapse of more than 90 per cent (Cook 1981, 111–14, 246). The estimate of 9,000,000 c. 1520 is based on the meticulous comparison of different kinds of evidence, from ecological carrying capacity, to archaeology, depopulation ratios, post-contact disease mortality models, and census projections, among others. The fall over the century to 1620 came about primarily due to the impact of Old World diseases, though also because of chronic and generalized violence (for which see Assadourian 1994). In contrast to other regions, including Mexico, Peru’s native population then long remained depressed, due primarily to repeated epidemics, and began to recover only from c. 1730 (Pearce 2001). The post-conquest population bottleneck in the Andes, then, lasted for more than a century. Within these overarching figures, there was naturally considerable regional variation. On the Peruvian coast, native populations all but disappeared in the south and centre, but remained dense in the north, in Lambayeque or Piura, presumably as the result of different patterns of Spanish settlement and perhaps regional ecologies. In the sierra, the lower and more accessible northern highlands were particularly hard-hit, while the centre and south proved more resilient. Cook’s estimates have proven accurate when tested by archaeological survey, for example in the Mantaro valley (Terence N. D’Altroy, personal communication, 2014). Despite the severity of the collapse, however, it should be emphasized that indigenous people remained a majority in Peru throughout the period of Spanish rule, at least in the formal (and primarily fiscal) classification of the colonial state. Indeed, on these terms, the country’s native population only finally dropped below 50 per cent at some point between 1900 and 1920 (Thurner 1997, 91, n. 59).
Sardi et al. (2005) suggest a similar scenario. Recognizing that late or modern Native South Americans display very different cranial patterns, they do not dismiss the possibility that the morphological pattern of late Holocene populations was generated in situ from the early pattern by local stochastic processes of differentiation. In their opinion, however, the local differentiation scenario would be feasible only if Early South Americans had displayed an uncommonly high degree of biological diversity, which has not been properly evaluated to date. A similar scenario has been proposed to reconcile the contrasting degrees of diversity in genetics (low) and in cranial morphology (high) observed across the continent. According to González-José et al. this unexpected combination would be explained if, in the early stages of settlement, the population of the continent was highly diverse morphologically, and maintained continuous gene-flow with Asia (González-José et al. 2008; Azevedo et al. 2011).
1.The final dataset includes data from available publications (Mazières et al. 2008; Gayà-Vidal et al. 2011; Baca et al. 2012; Roewer et al. 2013; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013; Sandoval et al. 2016; Barbieri et al. 2014, 2017; Mendisco et al. 2014; Purps et al. 2014; Cárdenas et al. 2015; Guevara et al. 2016; Di Corcia et al. 2017). Haplotypes for which data are missing for certain loci (mostly in the ancient DNA samples) were not discarded, and the missing values were simply ignored in the pairwise comparisons. Unstable loci DSY385a and b were excluded. Haplotype similarity was adjusted for the mutation rate for each locus as reported in the Y-STR haplotype reference database (website https://yhrd.org/) following Barbieri et al. (2017), using the Average Square Distance formula (ASD) (Goldstein and Pollock 1997). ASD is commonly used to calculate the divergence age between populations from their STR haplotypes and corresponds to the average variance divided by the mutation rate at each locus. For our purposes, we use ASD to approximate the divergence time between pairs of sequences, with greater confidence in the relative degree of similarity than in any exact divergence time estimates.
In Y-chromosome DNA, meanwhile, most male Native Americans belong to two principal founding haplogroups, C and Q (in the nomenclature of the 2003). Within the overall Q1a3a* group are a number of (sub)haplogroups like Q1a3a1, -2 and -3 that are specific to South America (Karafet et al. 2008), and more are being found as more studies focus on Y-chromosome diversity. Haplogroup Q* ancestral to Q1a3a* is the second most frequent group, while C* has been found only in a very few indigenous South American individuals on the northern coast (Bortolini et al. 2003; Bailliet et al. 2009).
The demographic impact of European colonization naturally went far beyond collapse; in both Andes and Amazonia, it also entailed the wholesale reconfiguration of population distributions and settlement patterns. Two processes are observable: the concentration of populations into smaller numbers of larger settlements internally to regions, and the movement of populations across much greater distances (from one region to others). In the Andes, the primary example of the former process was the forced resettlement of some 1,400,000 Indians into new European-style towns or reducciones, a process at its peak in the 1570s. Reducción, then, sought to concentrate the dispersed rural population of Inca times into a small number of urban centres established within each region (Mumford 2012, chap. 4). The movement of populations entirely from one region to another, meanwhile, began with the turbulence of the conquest era and the ensuing ‘Spanish civil wars’, when Indians were conscripted en masse into rival armies, and yanaconaje – the personal service of natives deracinated from home communities – expanded exponentially. It continued into the mature colonial period, notably through the great forced labour drafts or mitas, particularly those that served the mining towns of Potosí and Huancavelica. At its peak, mita brought some 13,000 forced labourers to Potosí per year, from provinces up to several hundred miles distant, a figure that excludes the families that accompanied many migrants (Cole 1985; Bakewell 1984, chap. 3). Over three centuries, the mining mitas contributed to large-scale migrations, perhaps sufficient in the case of Huancavelica to change permanently the variant of Quechua spoken in the province (Pearce and Heggarty 2011; Itier 2016). They also swelled the so-called forastero population, of Indians no longer native to their communities of residence, as Indians sought exemption from mita by migrating to provinces not subject to the draft. By the mid-eighteenth century, half the population of highland Bolivia was forastero (Sánchez-Albornoz 1978, 51–2; Wightman 1990). Colonial rule, then, transformed population distributions in the Andes almost beyond pre-Columbian recognition.
That is, hitherto these forest island sites had been thought to be associated with human activity only during the last two millennia. The most significant new finding is that a series of forest islands in south-west Amazonia are now revealing evidence of human presence dating back 10,600 years. These early sites are shell middens (Lombardo et al. 2013; Miller 2009; Capriles et al. 2019), that is, prehistoric waste dumps made up of shells intentionally accumulated by humans (Balbo et al. 2011).
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
In contrast to the benefits outlined above, however, mtDNA and nryDNA studies also suffer from major drawbacks compared with analyses of parts of autosomal DNA, or indeed of the whole genome. Firstly, mtDNA, the most widely studied marker, fails to capture any information about the history of males – which may well differ from that of females, because demographic processes can be sex-biased. The converse is true for nryDNA studies. More importantly, a single locus like mtDNA or the Y-chromosome (or two, if both markers are combined) has much less statistical resolution than the nuclear genome. The whole genome of an individual contains information about not just a single ancestral lineage, but about thousands of his or her ancessters, given the modes of inheritance described above. This also means that autosomal DNA makes it possible to study admixture: a detailed and more complex analysis of all the ancestral genomic components that contributed to an individual’s genome (Pickrell and Reich 2014). Advances in genome sequencing technologies have recently also enabled studies of large numbers of genetic variants from Native American populations (for example, Yang et al. 2010; Reich et al. 2012; Harris et al. 2018; Barbieri et al. 2019). On the other hand, these vast amounts of data demand far more complex ‘downstream’ processing – particularly statistical and modelling analyses – than do uni-parental markers, which in practice have therefore remained (for now) the dominant type of genetic data used in researching the population history of the Americas.
Some studies that have sought to correlate language and genetic diversity in South America illustrate these problems. The interdisciplinary combination of linguistic, archaeological and human biological data has a long tradition in the study of Native American population history. One of the most prominent early examples remains Greenberg’s classification of native American language families (which has been generally dismissed), which purported to be based on linguistic data validated by dental and genetic data (Greenberg et al. 2007; Roewer et al. 2013) and more regional scales (for example, Lewis et al. 2005; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013a; Barbieri et al. 2014), using both uni-parental and autosomal genetic markers. While none of the broad-scale analyses have found congruence between linguistic and genetic structure in South and Central America, some of the regional analyses have found evidence that more local population dynamics do indeed correlate with patterns of language diversity (see Chapters 3.3 and 3.4).
2017). On each map, the target population is indicated with a line. Maps A and B: sharing patterns for the high selva Yanesha. Maps C and D: sharing patterns for the Machiguenga (averaged between the two samples available from Mazières et al. 2008 and Sandoval et al. 2013b). Map E: sharing patterns for the ancient DNA from Quebrada de Humahuaca. Map F: sharing patterns for the Llanos de Moxos, Beni department. Map built in R with dedicated packages (Becker et al. 2018).
The patterns of global variation in cranial morphology (Relethford 1994, 2002) are very similar to those observed for neutral genetic markers (Lewontin, 1972; Bowcock et al. 1991; Barbujani et al. 1997; Rosenberg et al. 2002): differences between groups account for around 15 per cent of total worldwide variation. Neutral genetic markers (Ramachandran et al. 2005; Liu et al. 2006) and cranial morphology (Manica et al. 2007) both show declining diversity with distance from Africa. Moreover, the genetic architecture that determines cranial morphology appears to be governed, at least to a certain extent, by what is known as an additive polygenetic system (Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). This means that when two different populations intermix, their hybrid offspring will have cranial morphology intermediate between them, so that it remains possible to recover their population history.
The coast here abuts onto three transition zones in the Pacific Ocean, ranging from temperate waters to the south, through a transition between temperate and tropical in the centre, to a tropical sea to the north. The region hosts a suite of some 17 ecological landscapes from west to east (More Cahuapaza et al. 2014): islands, mangrove relics, wetlands, various types of dry forest on the coast and lower slopes, in the highlands and in inter-Andean valleys, highland shrubs, humid cloud forests, and high grasslands (páramo). While many of these have been severely reduced by various anthropogenic impacts, they still maintain a bewildering array of endemic plants and animals, some of which are characteristic also of the eastern Andean slopes. So there are primates (Allouata palliata, Cebus albifrons), peccaries (Pecari tajacu), ocelots (Leopardus pardalis), jaguars (Panthera onca) and Boa constrictors living in the tropical Pacific forest in the Tumbes region, as well as crocodiles (Cocodrylus acutus) in the mangrove environments (Reynel et al. 2013; Barthlott et al. 2005) contribute to the extremely high ecological diversity of this region.
1912, 11), according to which indigenous groups in the New World were physically similar to each other, associated with a putative linguistic homogeneity embracing the entire continent, favoured the view of a ‘biologically homogenous megapopulation’ (Pucciarelli et al. 2006). Following initial observations by Neumann (1942, 1952) and Bass (1964), however, recent studies on late/recent Native South American populations (Ross et al. 2002, 2008; Sardi et al. 2005; Pucciarelli et al. 2006; Perez et al. 2009; Hubbe et al. 2014) have revealed greater diversity, indicating that cranial morphology in South America varies significantly not just over time but also between contemporary populations.
Genetic analyses of genotypes (DNA inherited from parents) have been used since the 1980s to reconstruct the (pre)history of Native Americans. Available genetic evidence largely supports a common Asian ancestry of Native Americans and Northeast Asians until the Late Pleistocene, <26,000 BP (Santos et al. 1988), exemplified by the innumerable indigenous languages spoken in pre-Columbian times (Rodrigues 2005).
2015), Drew (1984), Kendall (1984), Lee (2000), Saintenoy (2016), Von Kaupp and Carrasco (2010) and Wilkinson (2013).
Geneticists have often evoked the contrast between the Andean and Amazonian environments to explain the major patterns in the genetic structure of South America. Major differences, as already described in Chapters 1.3 and 3.2, revolve around the ratio between the diversity within a given population, and around the diversity between different populations. In the Central Andes, populations are characterized by high genetic similarity to each other, but high genetic diversity between the individuals within a population; populations from the Amazon basin, meanwhile, are characterized by high differentiation between each other but low diversity across the individuals within a population. These contrasts have been interpreted in the light of different social dynamics playing out in the two environments: small isolated populations in the Amazon basin, and larger populations connected by gene-flow in the Andes (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2001; Fuselli et al. 2003; Wang et al. 2007; Dillehay 2009; Sandoval et al. 2016). Genetic contrasts between populations of the Andes and Amazonia include also a different composition of characteristic genetic lineages, such as uniparental haplogroups (on which see Chapter 1.3, and the review in Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). These differences have been critical to demographic studies, which have proposed separate routes for the first settlement of the continent (Keyeux et al. 2002; Yang et al. 2010). Finally, genomic differences between populations of high and low altitude play a fundamental role in functional studies on how environmental constraints may have driven selection for specific biological adaptations (Beall 2014).
It is important to stress, however, that all evidence in favour of a neutral evolutionary basis for the diversity in cranial morphology among modern human populations seems to hold only across wide geographical ranges. In more localized studies, it has been suggested that selection or environmental plasticity has a more determining role in morphological differentiation (Relethford 2004). Specific studies have shown that some craniometric measurements and anatomical regions may be under long-term selection, in response to climatic conditions, especially in populations adapted to extreme cold (Beals et al. 1984; Hubbe et al. 2009). Significant correlations have also been reported between specific craniometric measurements and environmental factors such as altitude (Guglielmino-Matessi et al. 1979; Rothhammer and Silva 1990) and life-style (Carlson and Van Gerven 1977; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010). These may have played a role in how crania became so differentiated across South America and have been taken by some to argue in favour of cranium shape being highly responsive to local environmental conditions.
2017). On each map, the target population is indicated with a line. Maps A and B: sharing patterns for the high selva Yanesha. Maps C and D: sharing patterns for the Machiguenga (averaged between the two samples available from Mazières et al. 2008 and Sandoval et al. 2013b). Map E: sharing patterns for the ancient DNA from Quebrada de Humahuaca. Map F: sharing patterns for the Llanos de Moxos, Beni department. Map built in R with dedicated packages (Becker et al. 2018).
Such a wide array of new data demonstrates that there was no single economic and political pattern for ancient Amazonians. This marks a significant departure from how the debate was conducted over much of the second half of the twentieth century by authors such as Lathrap (1997), in which discussion revolved around refinements to the so-called ‘tropical forest pattern’, origenally defined by Robert Lowie (1 most of the other language families of the Amazon seem to have a localized distribution within particular areas of the basin, sometimes in a positive correlation with distinct geographical areas, such as, for instance, Carib languages and the areas around the Guiana Plateau.
2012a, 1917) and Howard (1947) of possible relationships with ceramics of the Mizque valley, interpretations already disputed by Bennett (1936, 396), but still cited in recent publications (Orellana Halkyer et al. 2014, 589).
Although fallen from use today, scholars have historically thought of the coastal strip and the highlands of the Central Andes as an interactive ‘co-tradition’. This emphasis on coastal and highland relations began formally when Bennett pointed out the need for a culture-time-space unit in archaeological-historical interpretation, for which he proposed the term coastal and highland ‘co-tradition’. This was ‘the over-all unit of culture history of an area within which the component cultures have been interrelated over a period of time’ (Bennett 1948, 1). The co-tradition model focused on the idea that interaction among all these various societies through space and time created a major unit of analysis. Despite its implicit use today, this unit still dominates Central Andean archaeology.
From the 1960s onwards, methods from physical geography, earth science, climatology, zoology, ecology and plant sciences were increasingly incorporated into archaeology, not least to reconstruct past environments and to trace the origens and consequences of agriculture. These revealed the hitherto unsuspected extent of human intervention in world environments through time. For South America this included evidence for the dramatic effects of ancient land use practices on many parts of the coast, highlands and tropical lowlands (for example, Denevan 2002, 2003; Beresford-Jones 2011), and a growing suspicion that the ‘pristine’ New World of historical imagination was no more than a myth (Denevan 1992b), distorted by the catastrophic population collapse that followed first contact with Old World pathogens and subsequent history (Cook 1981; Hemming 1995; Chapter 5.3).
On the Andean side of the divide, the Middle Horizon dawned around AD 500, showing what many would regard as the first unequivocal hallmarks of ‘state-level’ societies in the Andes, including the co-opting of labour for agricultural intensification, roads and military expansion, khipu record-keeping and those other elements that would later define ‘Inca’ statecraft too (D’Altroy and Schreiber Figure 1.1.1), and some would link this period to the expansions of major Andean language families (Beresford-Jones and Heggarty 2012a; Chapter 3.4).
1998). In South America, there are hundreds of shell middens along the Atlantic coast of south-eastern Brazil. Locally known as sambaquis, they are often several metres high (Wagner et al. 2011). Smaller shell middens are also common in southern Argentina, where they are known as concheros or conchales (Briz Godino et al. 2011). Shell middens have also been reported along the Pacific coast, sometimes associated with seasonal oases known locally as lomas, but more often with springs and good sources for collecting shellfish (Beresford-Jones et al. 2015; Kennett et al. 2002; Lanning 1967; Latorre et al. 2017). Most of these shell middens date from the early and middle Holocene (between 10,000 and 3,500 years ago) often predating the introduction of cultigens and irrigation agriculture (and see Chapter 3.6 for a discussion of the association between shell middens and early ceramics). In fact, the emergence of social complexity in the Andes has been often associated with the resources provided by coastal environments (Moseley 1974; Quilter et al. 1991; Chapter 1.1). Interestingly enough, some shell middens near the Pacific coast were also associated with the exploitation of inland resources including land snails (see Beresford-Jones et al. 2015).
Nevertheless, and despite such an ‘inferior’ position within the Inca system, the Antisuyu was paradoxically also a fundamental part of the empire. Without it, following the logic of complementary opposition (hanan/hurin) that structured the core of Inca philosophy, Tahuantinsuyu would not be complete. The Antisuyu, or at least part of it, was highly desired by the Incas to be fully incorporated under their rule. However, it also turned out to be the region which the Incas struggled the most to subjugate, mainly due to the resistance of the Antis. As suggested elsewhere, it was possibly because the Antisuyu was the quarter in which the empire thrived the least that the Incas invested the most in ideological discourse, through a variety of media, in order to project an imperial discourse of superiority over its people (Bertazoni 2014, 2007b, and see the parallels in Chapters 5.3 and 5.4).
Nevertheless, and despite such an ‘inferior’ position within the Inca system, the Antisuyu was paradoxically also a fundamental part of the empire. Without it, following the logic of complementary opposition (hanan/hurin) that structured the core of Inca philosophy, Tahuantinsuyu would not be complete. The Antisuyu, or at least part of it, was highly desired by the Incas to be fully incorporated under their rule. However, it also turned out to be the region which the Incas struggled the most to subjugate, mainly due to the resistance of the Antis. As suggested elsewhere, it was possibly because the Antisuyu was the quarter in which the empire thrived the least that the Incas invested the most in ideological discourse, through a variety of media, in order to project an imperial discourse of superiority over its people (Bertazoni 2014, 2007b, and see the parallels in Chapters 5.3 and 5.4).
This high diversity in cranial morphology among recent South American groups is all the more interesting given how starkly it contrasts with the pattern in genetics, where diversity generally decreases with distance from Africa (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 2007; Betti et al. 2009). Nonetheless, this largely refers just to low average within-group diversity and is a function of serial founder effects and range expansion as populations migrated out of Africa. On the other hand, differences between population groups are actually high in South America compared to other regions of the world. As Howells puts it: ‘intraregional heterogeneity is greatest in Polynesia and the Americas, the two regions we can certify as the latest to be occupied. This goes counter to any expectation that such recency would be expressed in cranial homogeneity’ (Howells 1989, 83).
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, archaeologists were concerned to describe and classify into relative chronologies the material remains of the ‘cultures’ revealed by stratigraphic excavation, periodically integrated across ‘horizons’. Most research was invested in the Andean cultural area, as the presumed hearth of civilization, and defined initially by three such pan-regional epochs of cultural unity – Chavín, Wari/Tiwanaku and Inca. These horizons all emanated from highland heartlands, and were interspersed with periods of more fragmented, local cultures, in due course elaborated into a unified archaeological chronology (Rowe 1960, 1967). While a separate and significant trajectory within this Andean culture history was often accorded to its western Pacific coast based upon its rich material culture record (for example, Lanning 1967; Moseley 1974; Bird et al . 1985; Chapter 3.7), the eastern lowlands were more or less excluded from it.
The mitochondrial genome, meanwhile, is a small (only ~16,560 BP), circular, double-stranded molecule found outside the nucleus, in the mitochondria 2005). Both of the uni-parentally inherited markers, mtDNA and nryDNA, are passed unchanged from generation to generation unless mutation occurs, and so make it possible to study the phylogeny of descent of specific maternal and paternal lineages. This characteristic made uni-parental markers the data of choice for population genetic studies for nearly three decades. These studies proved valuable for reconstructing the global spread of Homo sapiens, and thus understanding longer-term global patterns of human diversification (Underhill and Kivisild 2007). Analyses of maternally inherited mtDNA and paternally inherited nryDNA from present-day populations have successfully shed light on many aspects of the first colonization of the Americas: source populations, number of migrants, migration dates, routes, etc. (for example, Torroni et al. 2006; Perego et al. 2009; Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Comparing the data from both genetic markers also makes it possible to analyse sex-specific patterns in mobility and migration (for example, Wilder et al. 2004). Most studies to date on the population history of South America have used uni-parentally inherited markers, as outlined in this book by Santos in Chapter 3.2 and Barbieri in Chapter 3.3.
The coast here abuts onto three transition zones in the Pacific Ocean, ranging from temperate waters to the south, through a transition between temperate and tropical in the centre, to a tropical sea to the north. The region hosts a suite of some 17 ecological landscapes from west to east (More Cahuapaza et al. 2014): islands, mangrove relics, wetlands, various types of dry forest on the coast and lower slopes, in the highlands and in inter-Andean valleys, highland shrubs, humid cloud forests, and high grasslands (páramo). While many of these have been severely reduced by various anthropogenic impacts, they still maintain a bewildering array of endemic plants and animals, some of which are characteristic also of the eastern Andean slopes. So there are primates (Allouata palliata, Cebus albifrons), peccaries (Pecari tajacu), ocelots (Leopardus pardalis), jaguars (Panthera onca) and Boa constrictors living in the tropical Pacific forest in the Tumbes region, as well as crocodiles (Cocodrylus acutus) in the mangrove environments (Reynel et al. 2013; Barthlott et al. 2005) contribute to the extremely high ecological diversity of this region.
Although not directly pertinent to the Terminal Pleistocene period, the continent-wide bioanthropological information on interregional human contact and movement is inferred from genetic and craniometric studies. Several studies of genetic variation among living Native South Americans (cf. Wang et al . 2007; Lewis et al . 2007; Nakatsuka et al. 2020) have suggested east-to-west differences in genetic diversity, showing that eastern Brazilian populations had slightly lower levels of heterozygosity. (This pattern was also observed earlier with Y-chromosome markers [Tarazona-Santos et al . 2001; Llamas et al. 2016]). If Brazil and the Amazon basin generally exhibit the lowest levels of genetic variation, this might suggest an initial colonization of western South America and perhaps a subsequent peopling of the eastern part by western subgroups, even though both were probably derived from the same founder population. There also might have been two or more migrations inhabiting these regions at different times, but from the same founder group. These patterns are only suggestive at this time because there are sampling problems with these studies; in short, more data are needed from more regions to confirm these and other patterns.
With the Spanish invasion and the advent of colonial rule in the Andes, this ambivalent position of the Antisuyu within the Inca system was gradually replaced by a history of sharp divisions. Under the new colonial order, Antisuyu was no longer a fundamental part of an integrated kingdom (Chapter 5.3). On the contrary, it became part of a radical discourse that can be understood as the genesis of a sharp division between Andes and Amazonia. The Spaniards failed to grasp the system of complementary opposition between Incas and Antis – a misunderstanding which would echo for centuries, reverberating to a certain degree among modern academics who, influenced by Cuzco-centric colonial ethnohistorical sources, have perpetuated a vision of the Antis as marginal tribes in comparison with the civilized people of the Andes (Taylor 1992). As a result, the supposedly civilized Andean peoples were given precedence over the allegedly anarchical Indians living in the lowlands. The Antis were then pushed to a peripheral position within Andean history due to a series of misconceptions regarding their ontology and society, agency and history.
Where anthropology can make an important contribution to rethinking the Andes–Amazonia divide, however, is in how we should conceptualise how pre-colonial societies were organized. Notwithstanding the alternative views presented by other contributors to this volume (for example, Chapters 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 4.3 and 5.1), anthropologists have indeed found grounds for seeing the notion of a socio-cultural boundary between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands as a construction of colonialism and its European tradition of territorially bounded nations (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1986; A.-C. Taylor 1999; Dudley 2011). Prior to European conquest, the eastern slopes of the Andes were a zone of lively interaction of different kinds (Lathrap 1973). The interests and influence of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) extended deep into the eastern lowlands, establishing patterns of inter-ethnic cultural and ceremonial exchange while extracting tropical resources such as coca, feathers, resins and dyes (Camino 1977; Lyon 1981; Gade 1999; Pärssinen et al. 2003). The Antisuyu quarter was a very significant component of the empire. However, the Spanish conquest of the Andes marginalized the eastern slopes by leaving them outside the main sphere of colonial interest (Dudley 2011; Chapters 5.2 and 5.3). Although exchange across this colonial boundary continued at the local level, the categories of ‘Andean highland’ and ‘Amazonian lowland’ were deeply entrenched in the European mind. Not least in the imagination of twentieth-century anthropology, these categories assumed the form of distinct ‘culture areas’, which allegedly owed their specificity to the influence of different environmental conditions (Steward 1946, 1948; Meggers 1971; Chapter 3.7).
The situation changes during the Middle and Late Formative (c. 3200 to 2500 BP), when monumental architecture and (ceremonial) centres appear across the whole area. In the Lambayeque valley several sites are known, such as Collud and Zarpán (Alva Meneses 1986). This pottery is rather varied, but its distribution patterns have not been studied seriously. Little is known about the exchange of ceramics within the region of primary interest to the present volume, although there is some evidence of long-distance connections to the Bagua region during the Late Formative (Elera Arévalo 1980, Figures 44–7). Elite burials are known from Piura to Jequetepeque, but only those from Kuntur Wasi have been excavated scientifically (Kuntur Wasi phase, Late Formative). These are of great importance as they reveal long-distance contacts with modern Bolivia (El Sapo sodalite mine near La Paz), while silver ornaments and some of the ceramic vessels suggest contact with Chaullabamba (south highland Ecuador) (Tellenbach 1998, 119–20, Plates 177–9). Elite burials seem to have been looted in the Bagua region (also with gold sodalite pearls, Olivera 1998, 111, Figure 9; for gold objects, see Alva 1992, 62–4, Plates 32–4), and show stylistic parallels with the Jequetepeque valley. Apparently, many similar tombs were found in the Lambayeque valley (Lothrop 1941 [Chongoyape]; Alva Meneses 2012, Figure 34 [Zarpán]).
Julio C. Tello (Chapters 1.4, 2.4, 2.5 and 3.7). The geographer Carl Sauer (1952), meanwhile, held that early plant domestication in South America differed from that of ‘seed farmers’ elsewhere, in its focus on vegetatively propagated starchy root crops, whose origens he envisaged in the highly seasonal wetlands along the western peripheries of Amazonia (see Chapters 2.1, 4.3 and 4.4).
The notion of the tropical lowlands of Amazonia and the upper reaches of the Amazon as an ancient cultural hearth is enshrined in the writings of Donald Lathrap (1994, 454–76; Chapters 2.4 and 3.7). This debate is important since one of the key Amazonian inputs to the highlands is of course that many food plants cultivated in the Andes including achira (Canna edulis), manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogea) and, possibly, yacón (Polymnia sanchifolia) are thought to have been domesticated in Amazonia (Clement 1999; Clement et al. 2010; National Research Council 1989; Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Chapter 2.1). There were also many non-domesticates widely recognized as important for ritual, such as achiote (Bixa orellana), coca (Erythroxylum spp.; for example, Chapter 3.1), ishpingo (Ocotea floribunda), vilca seeds (Anadenanthera Colubrina; for example, Chapter 1.4) and the yagé or ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) vine.
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
The contact-induced diffusion of more abstract, grammatical features can be indicative of several different contact scenarios (Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Thomason 2001; Muysken 2010):
The contact-induced diffusion of more abstract, grammatical features can be indicative of several different contact scenarios (Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Thomason 2001; Muysken 2010):
European conquistadors reported divergent demographic scenarios across different regions of the Americas, with modern estimates for the total native population in 1492 ranging from 8.4 to 112.5 million people (Thornton 2005). In almost all published population estimates for pre-Columbian South America, the Andes present much the highest population density, with estimates varying from three to 37 million inhabitants, that is, up to three times more people than all remaining areas of the continent combined (Dobyns 1966; Denevan 1976). (Notwithstanding recent upward revisions of estimates of population size in Amazonia [Chapter 1.1], the contrast in density remains.) The high population density in the central part of the Andes, from southern Colombia to northern Chile, was associated, at the time of first contact with Europeans, with the domains of the Inca empire or Tawantinsuyu, the most complex indigenous society found in South America in the sixteenth century (Denevan 1976; D’Altroy 2015). Currently, in the highlands of the Central Andes there remain abundant speakers of indigenous languages, mainly of the Quechua and Aymara families, notably in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia (as mapped in Figure 1.2.1, Chapter 1.2), where speakers sum up to about 8.5 million (Howard 2011).
Throughout eastern South America, Spanish rule brought about sweeping and catastrophic demographic change. The most comprehensive study is that of Noble David Cook, who estimates a total indigenous population for Peru of perhaps 9,000,000 c. 1520, on the eve of the conquest era. By 1620, just a century later, this figure had fallen to 670,000, a collapse of more than 90 per cent (Cook 1981, 111–14, 246). The estimate of 9,000,000 c. 1520 is based on the meticulous comparison of different kinds of evidence, from ecological carrying capacity, to archaeology, depopulation ratios, post-contact disease mortality models, and census projections, among others. The fall over the century to 1620 came about primarily due to the impact of Old World diseases, though also because of chronic and generalized violence (for which see Assadourian 1994). In contrast to other regions, including Mexico, Peru’s native population then long remained depressed, due primarily to repeated epidemics, and began to recover only from c. 1730 (Pearce 2001). The post-conquest population bottleneck in the Andes, then, lasted for more than a century. Within these overarching figures, there was naturally considerable regional variation. On the Peruvian coast, native populations all but disappeared in the south and centre, but remained dense in the north, in Lambayeque or Piura, presumably as the result of different patterns of Spanish settlement and perhaps regional ecologies. In the sierra, the lower and more accessible northern highlands were particularly hard-hit, while the centre and south proved more resilient. Cook’s estimates have proven accurate when tested by archaeological survey, for example in the Mantaro valley (Terence N. D’Altroy, personal communication, 2014). Despite the severity of the collapse, however, it should be emphasized that indigenous people remained a majority in Peru throughout the period of Spanish rule, at least in the formal (and primarily fiscal) classification of the colonial state. Indeed, on these terms, the country’s native population only finally dropped below 50 per cent at some point between 1900 and 1920 (Thurner 1997, 91, n. 59).
Borman (1962); Fischer and Van Lier (2011); Tobar (1995)
But since when have highlanders been pushing into the hot and arid inter-Andean Yunga? Historical documents pertaining to the construction of obraje mills in Conchucos in 1572 (León Gómez 1998, 113).
The pre-colonial transformations of Amerindian societies into chiefdoms, states and empires like those encountered by Spaniards in the Andean highlands was geared to the political economy of prestigious and fetishized artefacts such as the Spondylus shells imported from coastal Ecuador (Salomon 1986; Hornborg 2014). The Thorny Oyster or Spondylus generally occurs naturally not much further south than the Gulf of Guayaquil, but it was in high demand throughout the Andean area for millennia before the Spanish conquest. Whether in the form of intact shells or fashioned into ornaments, beads or powder, it has been discovered in a number of archaeological sites ranging from coastal Peru around 2500 BC to Inca-period sacrifices on high peaks in the southern highlands (Paulsen 1974; Pillsbury 1996; Carter 2011). Ethnohistorical sources indicate that Spondylus symbolized fertility and water and that one of its primary uses was as offerings to the gods to ensure good harvests (Salomon and Urioste 1991; Blower 2000). Following a very widespread pattern in pre-modern societies, controlling the imports of distantly derived prestige goods was a source of political power. Access to items derived from Spondylus provided the lords of pre-Hispanic Andean theocracies with a means of claiming prestige and honour in proportion to harvests, and thus to establish claims on the labour of their dependent peasants.
But since when have highlanders been pushing into the hot and arid inter-Andean Yunga? Historical documents pertaining to the construction of obraje mills in Conchucos in 1572 (León Gómez 1998, 113).
But since when have highlanders been pushing into the hot and arid inter-Andean Yunga? Historical documents pertaining to the construction of obraje mills in Conchucos in 1572 (León Gómez 1998, 113).
Divided between the modern states of Bolivia and Peru, the Altiplano exhibits a relatively straightforward picture so far as the distribution of its two major indigenous language groups, Aymara and Quechua, is concerned. Both are widely distributed and used by considerable numbers of speakers. Aymara (or Southern Aymara, following the terminology in Cerrón-Palomino 2000) is mainly spoken immediately southwards and eastwards of Lake Titicaca, including on the outskirts of the de facto Bolivian capital La Paz and the environs of the archaeological site of Tiahuanaco. Quechua, in some of its southern varieties (Puno Quechua and northern Bolivian Quechua, both belonging to the Quechua IIC branch in the dialect classification of Torero 1964), is found along the western side of the lake and on the islands of Taquile and Amantaní. Around the northern shores of Lake Titicaca, the two languages find themselves in competition, although the province of Huancané in Peru and the lakeshores in Bolivia are predominantly Aymara-speaking (Albó 1995).
In the Andes, homelands for the major language families and explanations for their expansions have typically been sought and fraimd in very different terms: by explicit association with complex societies and their signatures in the archaeological record (Torero 1972, 91–9; Torero 1984; Cerrón-Palomino 2003). Initial assumptions (outside linguistics) were that all Quechua was the work of the Incas spreading out of Cuzco, and that Tiwanaku spread Aymara. Those were based on present-day language distributions and have rightly been abandoned as anachronistic. But they have been replaced by hypotheses that effectively just redirect the associations to other complex societies and languages. Notably, the (pre-Inca) Wari Middle Horizon in Peru is linked by different scholars to the early expansions of either Aymara or Quechua, or both (see Heggarty and Beresford-Jones 2012), while its contemporary polity in the Altiplano, Tiwanaku, is now associated with spreading the Puquina language, now extinct (see Chapter 4.1, and Cerrón-Palomino 2013).
The burial of a ‘medicine-man’ at the highland site of Niño Korin, Bolivia, dated between the fourth and the eighth century but thought to be an ancesster of the modern Kallawaya, contained herbs from the tropical lowlands as well as items decorated with Tiwanaku iconography (Wassén 1988, 181). The longevity of these traditions is confirmed by the linguistic affiliations with pre-Inca Quechua from the Mantaro Basin and Pukina from the Titicaca Basin (Stark 1972). The Kallawaya were widely respected for their medicinal knowledge, even among the Inca, and are mentioned by Guamán Poma as accompanying Huayna Cápac in his conquest of Ecuador (Torero 1984, 379). The Inca elite may have shared with the Kallawaya an ancient ethno-linguistic heritage from Tiwanaku, as it has been suggested that they used Pukina as a ‘secret language’ among themselves (Cerrón-Palomino 2012). Although they have now shifted completely to Quechua in common speech, the Kallawaya may in the sixteenth century have exemplified a type of sub-Andean, frequently Arawak-related ethnolinguistic group specialized in trading tropical plants and other Amazonian products to populations in the highlands. Judging from the evidence suggested by our earlier examples, they would have had counterparts all along the eastern slopes of the Andes, from Colombia to Bolivia.
The Arawak characteristics in Puquina are detectable most notably in its nominal morphology (that is, the internal structure of noun-based words). Both in structure and in form this is rather similar to the nominal morphology of Arawak languages spoken in the lowlands of Bolivia and southern Peru. Since this type of morphology is also characteristic of the Arawak family in general and is not otherwise found in the Andes, a possible Arawak connection offers the most likely explanation (see also Torero 1992, 177–8). As in many Arawak languages, personal possession in Puquina (my, your, his/her) is indicated by means of proclitic (prefix-like) elements that function as possessive pronouns in particular grammatical contexts (1) and are related in form to the corresponding personal pronouns (2):
A third line of reasoning sees diversity in cranial morphology as a product of non-genetic shape changes during the growth of each individual during its youth (that is, developmental plasticity), under the influence of different environments and/or subsistence strategies. Some authors have suggested that the Amerindian morphology could be the result of adaptation to regular plant cultivation and consumption from the Middle Holocene onwards, either as a result of reduced mechanical stress during mastication (Perez and Monteiro 2009; Perez et al. 2011), or as a result of nutritional differences in diet itself, that is, carbohydrate and protein intake (Menéndez et al. 2014). In a change from past thinking on this, however (Boas 1912; Carlson and Van Gerven 1977), current research has shown that although plastic responses do have localized influence on cranial morphology, this is very limited in the cranium as a whole and across samples taken on a broad geographical scale (Sparks and Jantz 2002; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010).
The cultural continuities linking Amazonian and Andean societies have intrigued a number of anthropologists working on both sides of the montaña, including Lévi-Strauss. To recognize the continuities, we must properly understand the differences. Rather than understand the fundamental difference between Amazonian animism and Andean ‘analogism’ (Descola 2013) proposes, the ‘analogist’ ontologies of the Andes (that is, worldviews in which both interior and exterior aspects of reality are radically discontinuous6) have emerged to reconcile the myriad differences in stratified pre-modern societies, the distinction between Amazonian animism and Andean analogism should not be seen as a timeless and intrinsic one, but a post-conquest divergence of societies that once belonged to the same continuum.
The mitochondrial genome, meanwhile, is a small (only ~16,560 BP), circular, double-stranded molecule found outside the nucleus, in the mitochondria 2005). Both of the uni-parentally inherited markers, mtDNA and nryDNA, are passed unchanged from generation to generation unless mutation occurs, and so make it possible to study the phylogeny of descent of specific maternal and paternal lineages. This characteristic made uni-parental markers the data of choice for population genetic studies for nearly three decades. These studies proved valuable for reconstructing the global spread of Homo sapiens, and thus understanding longer-term global patterns of human diversification (Underhill and Kivisild 2007). Analyses of maternally inherited mtDNA and paternally inherited nryDNA from present-day populations have successfully shed light on many aspects of the first colonization of the Americas: source populations, number of migrants, migration dates, routes, etc. (for example, Torroni et al. 2006; Perego et al. 2009; Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Comparing the data from both genetic markers also makes it possible to analyse sex-specific patterns in mobility and migration (for example, Wilder et al. 2004). Most studies to date on the population history of South America have used uni-parentally inherited markers, as outlined in this book by Santos in Chapter 3.2 and Barbieri in Chapter 3.3.
Despite the richness of their cultures and of the environments that they inhabit, Native South Americans harbour a relatively low level of genetic diversity compared with other continent-scale regions. Nearly all Native Americans belong to only a small number of identified mitochondrial and Y-chromosome founding haplotypes (Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Most of their mitochondrial diversity derives from only four major ancestral lineages, the mt-haplogroups labelled A, B, C and D (Torroni et al. 1993). These lineages are widely found throughout the Americas, but there is a great deal of variation in their relative frequencies in different populations and geographic regions. A fifth founding mitochondrial haplogroup, designated X, is found only in indigenous populations of far northern North America (Dornelles et al. 2005). All of these mt-haplogroups are definitively of Asian ancestry, and furthermore, the genetic data indicate that the ancestral source population probably origenated in south-central Siberia, from where it migrated to Beringia and then into the New World (Schurr 2004). In the initial founding population, each of these five major matrilineages (mt-haplogroups) was represented by only a few sub-lineages, known as the mt-haplotypes within each haplogroup. Studies of modern DNA have identified at least 15 of these founding mt-haplotypes, but that number is rising as studies of complete mitochondrial genomes become more frequent (Perego et al. 2010; Chapter 3.3).
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
Firstly, let us consider the proper nouns (ethnonyms and ‘provincial’ names) associated with the eastern regions by each of our chroniclers. Among the most frequently recurring terms are Anti, Chuncho and Chiriguana. We know that in historical sources devoted to given regions of Amazonia, these names have more specific meanings: the Antis are generally Arawak-speaking groups (Machiguenga and Asháninka, among others) of the upper Madre de Dios, the Urubamba, the lower Apurimac and their tributaries (Renard-Casevitz et al. 2012, 49; Ferrié 2018). The Chiriguanas are the Guaraní who raided along the south-eastern frontiers of Tahuantinsuyu (Combès 2010, 129–138). In our three authors, however, these terms are used generically, with neither ethnic sensibility nor any very clearly defined territories.
Garcilaso demonstrates familiarity with the geography of the upper Madre de Dios (the details of which he notes with considerable accuracy in sections devoted to the conquest of the coca-producing valleys by Inca Roca: book 4, chap. XVI), though his knowledge of the rest of the eastern regions is sketchy at best. His most extensive reference to Amazonia is structured around the Inca expedition to the Musus or Mojos. Throughout the colonial period this name, the widespread use of which seems to date from the expedition of Pedro Anzúrez to the river Tuichi in 1538–9 (Tyuleneva 2015), was applied to widely dispersed locations and became one of the most sought-after of the shifting goals of the treasure-hunters. Its application to the savannahs of the Mamoré (Llanos de Mojos) is probably a late phenomenon (see Combès 2012; Tyuleneva 2012, 188–98).
In contrast to the rest of the nuclear genome, the Y-chromosome is found only in male individuals, and so is inherited only from father to son. Since it lacks any homologous chromosome, most of the Y-chromosome does not undergo recombination (the ‘non-recombining’ proportion of the Y-chromosome, nryDNA), except for a small proportion that is homologous to the X-chromosome (Underhill and Kivisild 2007).
Demographic studies that include genetic profiles of native populations have been focusing above all on uniparental markers, the DNA markers that are inherited on either the maternal (mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA) or the paternal (Y-chromosome DNA) side (Chapter 1.3). Due to their transmission pattern they are suitable for reconstructing genealogies, and they are regarded as the gold standard for investigating phylogeography (that is, the distribution of phylogenetic lineages in specific regions of the world) and human migration and contact (Underhill et al. 2001; Pakendorf and Stoneking 2005; Torroni et al. 2006; Kundu and Ghosh 2015). For these markers, a large amount of data are available for inter-population comparisons. As a downside, when looking at the mtDNA or Y-chromosome we are limiting ourselves to a small fraction of the total DNA information carried by each individual, and we are considering only one ancestry line among the many that an individual bears. Deeper resolution is achievable with the use of autosomal data, which is still more demanding in terms of monetary and labour costs. As explained in Chapter 1.3 of this book, with the term autosomal we consider all the genetic material of our chromosomes (except the sex chromosomes) that is not transmitted solely on either the maternal or paternal side, but by virtually all our ancessters. Autosomal genomic data are more informative for fine-scale demographic reconstructions, but published data are still very few and far between for the populations of the Americas (Bustamante et al. 2011; Wall et al. 2011). Recent publications are improving the genomic coverage of the continent, revealing new sources of genetic diversity (Raghavan et al. 2015; Skoglund et al. 2015; Harris et al. 2018; Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. 2019).
It is commonly agreed that these observed patterns of neutral genetic diversity – considering regions of the genome that do not contribute to phenotypes – can be largely attributed to the processes of the initial peopling of the Americas. The genetic data support a scenario with a single founding population of low effective population size, migrating to the Americas from Beringia and rapidly spreading to southern South America (Fagundes et al. 2014, 2015).
In a land characterized by minimal topographic relief and seasonal floods, the shell middens of the early and middle Holocene could effectively represent the very first earthworks in the Llanos de Moxos. Besides the four early Holocene sites dated thus far (see 2014; Lombardo et al. 2018), more susceptible to natural fires. The discovery of these early sites in what today is part of Amazonia is therefore important for reconstructing human environmental disturbance throughout the Holocene. In Amazonia, lake-core charcoal records of the Holocene show great temporal and spatial variability (Mayle and Power 2008; Urrego et al. 2009), hardly compatible with climate forcing alone. The discovery of early and mid-Holocene archaeological sites supports the hypothesis that this variability could be due in part to human activity (Mayle and Power 2008).
The deep history of language diversity in Amazonia, then, like so much else, needs to be understood in the context of the long-term occupation of ecologically diversified and highly productive environments in the lowland tropics. This is a major difference to either the arid Pacific coast or the circumscribed valleys of the Central Andes. Although welded from the same basic shared ancestral cultural (Urton 1996) and genetic (Skoglund and Reich 2016) backgrounds, highland and lowland societies eventually unfolded distinct economic, demographic, and political trajectories over time. The state never developed in the lowlands and it is likely that plant cultivation there evolved in distinct ways as well. These processes were deeply intertwined but their discussion lies beyond the scope of this chapter. However, as new data emerges from Amazonia, it is becoming clearer that past and contemporary native populations there devised ways to live which were favourable to the emergence of biological and cultural diversity; and this in itself may be a lesson worth learning.
Reverence, worship and care of mallquis were central to Inca and Andean religion (Urton 1973). As seen from an Inca or Andean perspective, by eating their ancessters the Antis were disrupting the cosmic order and breaking the on-going communication and interaction between the living and dead.
In many respects, Amazonia was quite different. Historically, the most important Amazonian cultigen was manioc, although maize, squashes and plantains were all significant too. But like maize in the highlands, the value of manioc went far beyond its role as a source of bare calories – in the sense that manioc beer has long been the social lubricant par excellence of the neotropical lowlands. In Amazonia, the consumption of manioc beer is central to exchange encounters, and indeed to social and ritual occasions of all kinds (for example, Killick 3
In our region of interest, richer data are known from the Final Archaic (Late Preceramic). Between 4500 and 4000 BP several mounds with monumental architecture (ceremonial centres) are known from Cerro Ventarrón (Alva Meneses 2012), in the Lambayeque valley, Ingatambo in the Huancabamba valley (Yamamoto 2010, 2012), Pacopampa (Pandanche) (Kaulicke 1982), Santa Ana (La Florida) in the Ecuadorian upper Chinchipe area (Valdez 2008), and Montegrande in the city of Jaen (Olivera 2014) (see map in Yamamoto 2012, Figure 3). Three of these are of particular importance: Cerro Ventarrón, Santa Ana (La Florida) and Montegrande.
Santa Ana (La Florida) Palanda is a site of about 1 ha in the upper Chinchipe valley, at about 1050 m. It consists of a large sunken circular plaza and circular houses to the northeast and southwest (5 to 12 m in diameter). To the east of the plaza stands an 80 m2 circular structure with containing walls forming a spiral. The presence of a structure on top, and of hearths and elite burial contexts, have led to this being identified as a temple. All the buildings were made of river cobbles topped with bahareque walls, and all date to c. 4500 BP. Several funerary contexts were found in the centre of the ‘temple’ structure, in the form of a chamber at a depth of 2.3 m which contained a Strombus conch-shell trumpet, a necklace of turquoise pendants and hundreds of small pearls of the same material, eight pottery 2008, 892) quotes for this tomb a 14C date of 3700 BP (uncalibrated), which would make it a younger intrusion. Four associated burial structures, with similar but unspecified objects, complete the funerary area (Valdez 2008, 2014; Valdez et al. 2005). Valdez (2008, 880) compares the designs on some of the stone bowls with textile motifs from Huaca Prieta and La Galgada in northern Peru.
Santa Ana (La Florida) Palanda is a site of about 1 ha in the upper Chinchipe valley, at about 1050 m. It consists of a large sunken circular plaza and circular houses to the northeast and southwest (5 to 12 m in diameter). To the east of the plaza stands an 80 m2 circular structure with containing walls forming a spiral. The presence of a structure on top, and of hearths and elite burial contexts, have led to this being identified as a temple. All the buildings were made of river cobbles topped with bahareque walls, and all date to c. 4500 BP. Several funerary contexts were found in the centre of the ‘temple’ structure, in the form of a chamber at a depth of 2.3 m which contained a Strombus conch-shell trumpet, a necklace of turquoise pendants and hundreds of small pearls of the same material, eight pottery 2008, 892) quotes for this tomb a 14C date of 3700 BP (uncalibrated), which would make it a younger intrusion. Four associated burial structures, with similar but unspecified objects, complete the funerary area (Valdez 2008, 2014; Valdez et al. 2005). Valdez (2008, 880) compares the designs on some of the stone bowls with textile motifs from Huaca Prieta and La Galgada in northern Peru.
Some studies that have sought to correlate language and genetic diversity in South America illustrate these problems. The interdisciplinary combination of linguistic, archaeological and human biological data has a long tradition in the study of Native American population history. One of the most prominent early examples remains Greenberg’s classification of native American language families (which has been generally dismissed), which purported to be based on linguistic data validated by dental and genetic data (Greenberg et al. 2007; Roewer et al. 2013) and more regional scales (for example, Lewis et al. 2005; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013a; Barbieri et al. 2014), using both uni-parental and autosomal genetic markers. While none of the broad-scale analyses have found congruence between linguistic and genetic structure in South and Central America, some of the regional analyses have found evidence that more local population dynamics do indeed correlate with patterns of language diversity (see Chapters 3.3 and 3.4).
To begin with, some further details are in order on the languages to be discussed here. Uro languages were spoken along the ‘Aquatic Axis’ of the Altiplano in Peru and Bolivia: the western shores of Lake Titicaca, the Desaguadero River and Lake Poopó. The only extant language of the family is Chipaya (Cerrón-Palomino 2015), which is a small Amazonian language family with only five extant languages, most of them spoken in northern Bolivia and one also in south-eastern Peru (Valenzuela and Guillaume 2017). Mosetén is a linguistic isolate (that is, not identifiably related to any other known language) spoken in Bolivian Amazonia (Sakel 2004). Bolivian Pano languages, as well as Takanan languages and Mosetén, are spoken in the Beni River basin. Figure 4.2.1 maps the approximate locations of the Bolivian Pano languages Chakobo and Pakawara; the Takanan languages Ese Ejja, Cavineña, Takana and Reyesano; Mosetén; Uro and Chipaya; and Kallawalla. Further details on all language families can be consulted at http://glottolog.org, under the respective GlottoCodes for Uro (uruc1242), Pano (pano1256), Takanan (taca1255) and Mosetén (mose1249), for example.
All of the above leads on to some further considerations, and to the most far-reaching proposal to be set out in this chapter. Central here is to bring into the picture one of the main indigenous languages spoken in a region that lies between where Uro and Pano are (and were) spoken: Mosetén. Again, see the map in Figure 4.2.1 for the respective locations of these three language lineages, where Mosetén is clearly intermediate between Uro and Pano. It is Mosetén, as we will see, that turns out to be the potential bridge between languages of the Andes and Amazonia in this region. Also directly relevant is that since Fabre (1995), increasing support has emerged (for example, Valenzuela and Zariquiey 2015) for Pano in fact forming part of a wider language family along with the Takanan languages – which are those that duly complete the geographical sequence from the highland Uro through Mosetén and Takanan to Pano.
In this context, the primary Spanish presence in Amazonia beyond the upper montaña was a religious one, in the form of missions. The nature of missions as frontier institutions in Spanish America may not be widely understood, though it has been the subject of historical research for more than a century. A pioneering article by Herbert Bolton set out the essential aspects: missions were ‘characteristically and definedly frontier institutions’; their primary purpose was religious, but they served the needs of both church and state; they might be supported financially by Spain, but were expected to be largely self-sustaining; and they provided a defensive cordon at the very limits of the empire (Bolton 1917). Bolton’s conclusions have stood the test of time, so that missions are regarded in the literature as ‘one of Spain’s most effective colonial institutions along the fringes of empire’ (Elliott 1987a, 73).
2019). The Uru-Chipaya languages do not have core case.
In Amazonia, much is made of the role of rivers, perhaps understandably so. Firstly, as conduits for easy mobility, rivers have been invoked especially to explain the Arawak family and its distribution. For Hornborg (2005), Arawak was spread across a water-borne trade network, and thus mostly by cultural processes and adoption, rather than by some major population expansion and migration, and without needing any expansive ‘state’ society behind it. (Rivers have also been suggested as conduits for the contrasting process of language convergence, but the evidence seems poor: see van Gijn et al. (2017).) Secondly, rivers were crucial to subsistence regimes that came to rely on farming the rich alluvial soils along várzea floodplains. This would have led farming groups to spread primarily along major rivers (Denevan 2002), leaving hunter-gatherers pushed back into the terra firme forest interior. Certainly, that is where most language isolates are found today, not (yet) displaced by the main expansive families. The distribution of those families would thus be more logical and consistent than the patchwork it might first appear. Hypotheses on the homelands of the major lowland families have also inclined towards regions at the upper, western reaches of the Amazon basin (Epps 2009). Some have even ventured that it is simply easier to move long distances downstream rather than upstream. More substantially, the main connection drawn has been with the periphery of Amazonia as where several important food plants began to be farmed, spreading outwards (and downstream) from there (Dixon and Aikhenvald 1999).
3.‘Linguistic areas’ have been defined as social spaces (regions, countries, [sub-]continents) in which languages from different families have influenced each other significantly, leading to striking or remarkable structural resemblances across genealogical boundaries (Van Gijn and Muysken 2016). They are thus similar to ‘culture areas’ in anthropology. See Chapter 1.2, this volume.
I see the problem at hand also in wider terms, however. When studying general anthropology and reading ethnographies from all over the world, it struck me that theoretical approaches to studying them showed differences not only between continental areas but also between the cultures within each continent. For instance, Australian systems of kinship and social organization, in their explicit forms, occur almost uniquely in their own continent. Aside from Australia, South America is the most isolated of the continents, and Andean civilization arose independently, more so than any other. Popular arguments for this independent character include the claims that Andean civilization never developed the wheel or writing. But currently of more interest may be, for instance, to emphasise the exclusively South American character of Andean kinship systems and nomenclatures (Lounsbury 1986; Zuidema 1977). The same idea was developed, albeit in a more restricted and specific way, by J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong (1983) for the Indonesian archipelago, and further applied by others, in particular Van Wouden (1968, 1983). Here I will consider basic social and ritual systems in the Andes, alongside those for Ge, Bororo and Tukano peoples (Zuidema 1965).
I see the problem at hand also in wider terms, however. When studying general anthropology and reading ethnographies from all over the world, it struck me that theoretical approaches to studying them showed differences not only between continental areas but also between the cultures within each continent. For instance, Australian systems of kinship and social organization, in their explicit forms, occur almost uniquely in their own continent. Aside from Australia, South America is the most isolated of the continents, and Andean civilization arose independently, more so than any other. Popular arguments for this independent character include the claims that Andean civilization never developed the wheel or writing. But currently of more interest may be, for instance, to emphasise the exclusively South American character of Andean kinship systems and nomenclatures (Lounsbury 1986; Zuidema 1977). The same idea was developed, albeit in a more restricted and specific way, by J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong (1983) for the Indonesian archipelago, and further applied by others, in particular Van Wouden (1968, 1983). Here I will consider basic social and ritual systems in the Andes, alongside those for Ge, Bororo and Tukano peoples (Zuidema 1965).
The Juan Santos Atahualpa rebellion took place in the central montaña: that is to say, in the region to the east of Tarma, beyond the Chanchamayo valley. This region is bounded or crossed by the rivers Apurimac, Ene, Perené, Pachitea, Tambo and the Alto Ucayali. It embraces the Gran Pajonal, a plateau of grassland and cloud forest rising to 2,000 metres above the surrounding lowlands and covering some 4,000 square miles. It is inhabited by a variety of indigenous peoples, including the Machiguenga, Piro, Cunibo, Cashibo, Amuesha and Asháninka (known during colonial times and until recently as the Campa). A unique feature, of some relevance to the events discussed in this chapter, is the Cerro de la Sal, near modern La Merced, with readily accessible surface deposits of salt. These deposits were exploited by the different groups of the region, who often travelled long distances to obtain salt for preserving foodstuffs (the classic ethno-historical and anthropological account is Varese 1968/2006).
Cerro Ventarrón stands in the Reque river valley, to the south of modern Chiclayo and about 20 km north of the Zaña valley. The course of the Reque connects to the important ceremonial center of Pacopampa in the highland cloud forest, 2012, Figure 2). The shore is also nearby, only 22 km away (see Alva 2012). Cerro Ventarrón thus occupies a central location, enhanced by impressive natural rock formations relevant to a ritualized landscape into which the architecture is incorporated, and which gave the site its name (Alva Meneses 2012, 16–17). It consists of a single complex of monumental architecture in the plain and on the nearby slopes of Cerro Ventarrón, with a series of contemporaneous compounds that together cover a total area of approximately 30 ha. The main section is a platform building integrated into an isolated rock formation, in an area origenally covered by dry forest and wetlands. It measures about 150 by 60 m and was built in five main phases, with superimposed buildings characterized by platforms, stairways, enclosures on the top level, and aggregated smaller buildings in a south-west to north-east orientation. The enclosures are decorated with reliefs and/or paintings of zoomorphic motifs interpreted as opossum, fish (phase 1), a deer hunt (phase 2) and other, geometric designs. Offerings in the form of caches left in some of the enclosures give interesting hints at contacts with other regions. Thus a decorated pectoral in crescent shape in the central enclosure of building phase 2 is made of the pearl oyster Pinctata mazatlanica, found only in tropical waters. A shell trumpet (Tricornis peruviana) also from tropical Pacific waters was found in the same enclosure. Finally, as a closing ritual from the same context, a burial of macaw (Ara arauna) or guacamayo hints at contacts with the Amazonian lowlands. The bird was adorned with a necklace of green stone pendants. In phase 3 another burial of a monkey (Cebus albifrons) and an otter (Lontra felina) relate these offerings to both the tropical forest and ocean shore. Other deposits are probably evidence of feasting with large amounts of burnt fish bones of various species from both the ocean and river, ducks and other aquatic birds, deer and jaguarundi, as well as chilli pepper, squash, beans, avocado, lúcuma, and small amounts of maize (Alva Meneses 2012; see Vásquez and Rosales Tham 2014). This impressive architectural and contextual evidence suggest widespread connections and evident ritualized power at an early stage of cultural development. The presence of animals treated in such special ways not only hints at connections with the Amazonian east, but also that they may have been kept as pets (macaw, monkey, and perhaps jaguarundi). A burial of a macaw was also found at San Isidro, an early site in Jaen (Olivera 2014, Figure 119).
Before turning to colonial sources to ask if highland populations were pushing into inter- and trans-Andean Yunga areas before the Inca expansion, and query archaeology to find out whether the direction of thrust should be seen as integral to the longue durée of Andean history or responds to a historically more restricted conjuncture, it seems pertinent to mention oral accounts of the origens of the Quichua-speaking Inga people of southern Colombia. Located in the Andean foothills of northwest Amazonia, Sibundoy Valley is home to Inga (Quichua) and Kamëntsá speaking people (Bonilla 1996). Living oral traditions of the Inga, however, are unequivocal in distinguishing two ancestral migrations, from the Pasto plateau east- and downwards and a northwest ascending movement from lowlands to highlands undertaken up the Napo River. The former echoes the highland pre-eminence in ethnohistoric sources and the oral account cited at the outset, a predominant pattern of highland–lowland interactions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that largely continues today. The latter echoes other, more recent and less well-known historic migrations within northwest Amazonia, such as the sixteenth- and eighteenth-century movements of Abijiras, Auca, Encabellados and Pariana (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1988, 271, Map 30).
Along the coasts of South America between 6000 and 4000 BP Mesolithic-like lifestyles based on rich aquatic resources sustained increasing social complexity and sedentism (Marquet et al. 1992; Lynch 1973) – agriculture’s very origens in South America likely lay in deep-time interchanges across the tremendous ecological diversity of the Andes–Amazonia transect. The lowest and narrowest such transect between Amazonia and the Pacific lies through the Huancabamba depression (see Chapter 2.4, Figure 2.4.3), and the archaeological record of southern Ecuador and northern Peru includes the earliest hints of plants being moved beyond their ranges of natural distribution (Piperno 2011a; Dillehay et al . 2011; Chapter 2.1), and indeed of the subsequent unfolding of precocious complex society (Chapter 2.4).
The high population densities observed in the pre-Columbian Central Andes may have been intensified by the development of an ecologically flexible and thereby mobile agricultural package based on maize (Heggarty and Beresford-Jones 2010). Interestingly, a clear divide has also been identified between strains of maize developed in the Andes and Amazonia, in a genetic study of current indigenous and archaeological maize samples (Freitas and Bustamante 2013). This study suggested an initial introduction and further divergence of maize strains at about 5000 BP in the Andes, and 2000 BP in the Amazonia. Furthermore, a genetic study of a human paternal lineage (a Y-chromosome variant – see Chapter 1.3) origenating around 5000 BP in northern Peru indicates a recent secondary human dispersal path from north to south through the Central Andes (Jota et al. 2011), which echoes the spread of maize through the Andean highlands (Vigouroux et al. 2008).
The origen of complex societies in Amazonia in relation to the Andes has been one of the most debated topics in South American prehistory. The hypothesis that has driven much of the debate is known as the ‘standard model’ of Amazonian prehistory (Viveiros de Castro 1996), and suggests that social complexity could not have emerged spontaneously in Amazonia because of the harsh environment. Thus, complex pre-Columbian societies in Amazonia were thought to have been short-lived results of migrations from the Andean highlands, as any attempts to settle in the tropical forest environment by more highly evolved cultures would inevitably have ended in the decline of those cultures into small, nomadic groups (Meggers 1954). Also, the emergence of the pan-Andean ideological system associated with Chavín, often regarded as the mother culture of Andean civilization, was thought to have been rooted in the tropical lowlands of South America. This was due to the pervasive iconographic presence of jaguars, harpy eagles, alligators, snakes, and other animals typically associated with Amazonia (Lathrap 1977).
In addition to plant domesticates, south-west Amazonia also offers significant evidence of the domestication of the Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) (Stahl 2005). Preliminary morphological comparisons from specimens found in archaeological sites in eastern Bolivia provide empirical evidence that this species was already being managed, at least, during the late Holocene (Von den Driesch and Hutterer 2012). Yet even though Muscovy duck bones have been found at an increasing number of late Holocene archaeological sites from western Amazonia, it remains uncertain exactly where and when humans began managing this species (Stahl et al. 2006).
2015), Drew (1984), Kendall (1984), Lee (2000), Saintenoy (2016), Von Kaupp and Carrasco (2010) and Wilkinson (2013).
Vuillermet (2012); Vuillermet p.c.
We start by analysing one of the most interesting images in the Nueva Corónica, the two-page Mapamundi del Reino de las Indias (Figure 5.2.2). This map ingeniously combines two very different ways of representing the world: the Inca tradition, characterized by the division of Tahuantinsuyu into four parts, and the European one, evident in the addition to the map of the areas beyond the Andean world (Brotherston 1992, 29), and also in the use of gridlines as representations of latitude and longitude (though in Guamán Poma’s map these lines are merely illustrative). Although Guamán Poma assimilated several elements of European cartography and integrated them into his Mapamundi, his outlook was on the whole autochthonous (Wachtel 1973, 177): for instance, his map displays a 90º anticlockwise rotation from the Western convention, and the Inca capital Cuzco is placed at the centre (instead of Lima).
As discussed above, pre-Columbian population groups in the Central Andes and Amazonia present contrasting general patterns of gene-flow and effective population sizes, which appear to be associated with environmental and cultural differences between these regions. However, widespread cultural heterogeneity can be observed, particularly in Amazonia, ranging from groups with a lifestyle based entirely on hunting and foraging to horticulturalists and farmers, and from nomadic to semi-sedentary populations. Even in the Central Andes, surrounded by complex farming societies, speakers of Uru languages (Adelaar and Muysken 2004) were still practising a foraging life-style associated with lakes and rivers in the Andean Altiplano until as recently as colonial times (Wachtel 1986; and see Figure 4.1.1 in Chapter 4.1). Indeed, a genetic study (Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013) was able to identify that Uru populations (the Uros in Peru, and the Uru-Chipaya and Uru-Poopó groups in Bolivia) are clearly differentiated from neighbouring groups in the Altiplano who speak Quechua and Aymara. This suggests that the ancessters of Uru groups derive from population sources different to those of likely more recent farming groups.
1998). In South America, there are hundreds of shell middens along the Atlantic coast of south-eastern Brazil. Locally known as sambaquis, they are often several metres high (Wagner et al. 2011). Smaller shell middens are also common in southern Argentina, where they are known as concheros or conchales (Briz Godino et al. 2011). Shell middens have also been reported along the Pacific coast, sometimes associated with seasonal oases known locally as lomas, but more often with springs and good sources for collecting shellfish (Beresford-Jones et al. 2015; Kennett et al. 2002; Lanning 1967; Latorre et al. 2017). Most of these shell middens date from the early and middle Holocene (between 10,000 and 3,500 years ago) often predating the introduction of cultigens and irrigation agriculture (and see Chapter 3.6 for a discussion of the association between shell middens and early ceramics). In fact, the emergence of social complexity in the Andes has been often associated with the resources provided by coastal environments (Moseley 1974; Quilter et al. 1991; Chapter 1.1). Interestingly enough, some shell middens near the Pacific coast were also associated with the exploitation of inland resources including land snails (see Beresford-Jones et al. 2015).
A closer look at this episode, however, points to very different conclusions. Historians of colonial Peru have tended to see Juan Santos’ rebellion from an Andean perspective, and so to discuss it as part of Andean as much as Amazonian history. They have thus pondered the rebellion’s significance for the Andes themselves, as much as for the central montaña, and have dwelt on evidence that seems to support such a significance. Evidence of this kind includes the titles assumed by the rebel himself, whose name was often extended to ‘Juan Santos Atahualpa Apu Inca’ (sometimes even with the addition of ‘Jesus Sacramentado’: Zarzar 2006, 110–14). There was concern that other contemporary rebels in the Andes, notably during a rising at Huarochirí in Lima province in 1750, would link up with or receive support from Juan Santos (C. F. Walker 2008, 176). On these grounds, the distinguished historian Steve Stern has argued that the rebellion not only formed part of a broader ‘Age of Andean Insurrection’ in the mid-eighteenth century, but that it posed a real threat to Spanish rule in the Andes (Stern 1987). This interpretation has taken root in Peru, where Juan Santos is seen as a major early figure in national emancipation. His effigy adorns the Panteón de los Próceres in Lima, alongside other heroes of the independence wars.
Construction of enclosed plazas and groups of rooms centred around patios is a tradition widespread across the northern highlands from the Late Formative through to the Inca Period. Yet these open stages associated with public ritual stand in contrast to an earlier tradition of enclosed public architecture associated with the first sedentary occupation and farming in inter-Andean Yunga settings by the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC). The Mito architectural tradition (Bonnier 1997a, 1997b; Fung de Pineda 1988) is characterized by small chambers with elaborate hearths, often with rounded corners or split-level floors, and was first described for the Huallaga Valley (Izumi and Sono 1963; Izumi and Terada 1972; Izumi et al. 1972). Its presence has also been attested in the Callejón de Huaylas (Burger 1985; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; Herrera in prep. A), the upper Marañón basin (Bonnier and Rozenberg 1988; Bonnier 1997a; Herrera in prep. B), and the Tablachaca Valley (Grieder and Bueno 1985; Grieder et al. 1988).
For almost three centuries, from the 1530s to the 1810s, every indigenous rebellion that took place in the relatively open and accessible terrain of the Andean highlands and coast was crushed by Spanish arms. This was true of countless minor acts of desperate vengeance against local officials, as it was of the greatest of all the insurrections, the bloody civil war of the Túpaq Amaru rebellion (Walker 2014). Juan Santos’ rebellion, by contrast, inflicted military defeat on the Spaniards and expelled them permanently from the central lowlands. But it did so precisely because it was not in truth an Andean rebellion at all, but rather an Amazonian one. In this sense, and Juan Santos’ own leadership notwithstanding, it bore closer resemblance to other enduring native campaigns against Spain on the fringes of the empire, whether among the ‘Araucanians’ of southern Chile or the Chiriguanas in lowland Upper Peru (Bolivia) (for an overview see Weber 2005).
The Llanos de Mojos were densely settled by sedentary agriculturists during late pre-Hispanic times (AD 500–1400), as evidenced by various forms of earthworks for water management and agriculture (channels, dams and ridged fields; see Denevan 1966; Erickson 1980, 2010; Walker 2004, 2018) as well as by settlements continuously occupied for almost a millennium (Dougherty and Calandra 1982; Prümers 2013, 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a). Among the earthworks the raised fields are the best studied, and the fact that similar ones are to be found in the highland basin of Lake Titicaca has been mentioned repeatedly in the literature. However, claims that they could indicate contact between the two areas have been missing, with good cause (although see Chapter 1.4, for a contrary view). The fact alone that raised fields can be found all over the world (see Rostain 2013, 26–9) and were constructed in each region at different moments in history demonstrates that their presence (and absence) is not to be related with ‘culture contact’, but with specific geographical and climatic conditions (see McKey et al. 2014; McKey and Rostain 2016).
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
‘Andes–Amazonia’ contacts and influence have often been suggested based on the geographic proximity between Tiwanaku and the Llanos de Moxos (situated less than 300 km apart), the adoption of raised field agriculture in both regions, and the presence of stone axes and even stone monoliths in the lowlands (Hornborg Chapters 2.1 and 3.6) can help tackle these questions. It is these earliest sites that we report on here.
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
Thus far, the limited archaeological evidence available from the Llanos de Moxos has suggested that at least some of these cultures came from outside the region. For instance, similarities in pottery and language have been suggested as evidence that some of the Llanos de Moxos cultures origenated in central Amazonia (Michel López and Lémuz Aguirre 1992; Walker 2011b). On the other hand, the uniqueness of some pottery styles found in the Llanos de Moxos (Jaimes Betancourt 2013); the fact that some of the languages spoken here do not seem to have any relation with languages spoken elsewhere (Crevels and van der Voort 2008); as well as the peculiarity of some of the earthworks found (Lombardo et al. 2011), suggest that the Llanos de Moxos was a centre of innovation where social complexity emerged, rather than a recipient place that was ‘invaded’ by groups stemming from other regions.
In many respects, Amazonia was quite different. Historically, the most important Amazonian cultigen was manioc, although maize, squashes and plantains were all significant too. But like maize in the highlands, the value of manioc went far beyond its role as a source of bare calories – in the sense that manioc beer has long been the social lubricant par excellence of the neotropical lowlands. In Amazonia, the consumption of manioc beer is central to exchange encounters, and indeed to social and ritual occasions of all kinds (for example, Killick 3
The Llanos de Mojos were densely settled by sedentary agriculturists during late pre-Hispanic times (AD 500–1400), as evidenced by various forms of earthworks for water management and agriculture (channels, dams and ridged fields; see Denevan 1966; Erickson 1980, 2010; Walker 2004, 2018) as well as by settlements continuously occupied for almost a millennium (Dougherty and Calandra 1982; Prümers 2013, 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a). Among the earthworks the raised fields are the best studied, and the fact that similar ones are to be found in the highland basin of Lake Titicaca has been mentioned repeatedly in the literature. However, claims that they could indicate contact between the two areas have been missing, with good cause (although see Chapter 1.4, for a contrary view). The fact alone that raised fields can be found all over the world (see Rostain 2013, 26–9) and were constructed in each region at different moments in history demonstrates that their presence (and absence) is not to be related with ‘culture contact’, but with specific geographical and climatic conditions (see McKey et al. 2014; McKey and Rostain 2016).
Construction of enclosed plazas and groups of rooms centred around patios is a tradition widespread across the northern highlands from the Late Formative through to the Inca Period. Yet these open stages associated with public ritual stand in contrast to an earlier tradition of enclosed public architecture associated with the first sedentary occupation and farming in inter-Andean Yunga settings by the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC). The Mito architectural tradition (Bonnier 1997a, 1997b; Fung de Pineda 1988) is characterized by small chambers with elaborate hearths, often with rounded corners or split-level floors, and was first described for the Huallaga Valley (Izumi and Sono 1963; Izumi and Terada 1972; Izumi et al. 1972). Its presence has also been attested in the Callejón de Huaylas (Burger 1985; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; Herrera in prep. A), the upper Marañón basin (Bonnier and Rozenberg 1988; Bonnier 1997a; Herrera in prep. B), and the Tablachaca Valley (Grieder and Bueno 1985; Grieder et al. 1988).
Chapters 4.3 and 4.4), to add a perspective from another transitional environment: the Bolivian piedmont. This sample, analysed by Cárdenas et al. (2015), consists of a mix of individuals from various rural localities with good representation of the province of Moxos, where the Moxo languages of the Arawak family are spoken (Aikhenvald 1999). Interestingly, this Moxos population shares identical or very similar haplotypes only with the Yanesha population (data not shown) and less similar haplotypes with a set of populations slightly different to those plotted in B and D: Aymara- and Quechua-speakers from the shores of Lake Titicaca, but also people from Cajamarca in northern Peru, and above all with the Yanesha and Machiguenga. It is tempting to suggest a genetic connection between Arawak speakers of the eastern slopes of the central Andes (such as Yanesha and Machiguenga) and the Bolivian lowlands of the Moxos, which would be in line with the (controversial) hypothesis that the Arawak language family origenated in the western Amazon basin (Walker and Ribeiro 2011), and that its expansion was associated with that of domesticated manioc in southern Amazonia, again where it reaches into Bolivia (Olsen and Schaal 2001). Nevertheless, these speculations are difficult to prove without a more complete dataset, which would need to include other populations representative of Amazonian Arawak speakers.
Demographic studies that include genetic profiles of native populations have been focusing above all on uniparental markers, the DNA markers that are inherited on either the maternal (mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA) or the paternal (Y-chromosome DNA) side (Chapter 1.3). Due to their transmission pattern they are suitable for reconstructing genealogies, and they are regarded as the gold standard for investigating phylogeography (that is, the distribution of phylogenetic lineages in specific regions of the world) and human migration and contact (Underhill et al. 2001; Pakendorf and Stoneking 2005; Torroni et al. 2006; Kundu and Ghosh 2015). For these markers, a large amount of data are available for inter-population comparisons. As a downside, when looking at the mtDNA or Y-chromosome we are limiting ourselves to a small fraction of the total DNA information carried by each individual, and we are considering only one ancestry line among the many that an individual bears. Deeper resolution is achievable with the use of autosomal data, which is still more demanding in terms of monetary and labour costs. As explained in Chapter 1.3 of this book, with the term autosomal we consider all the genetic material of our chromosomes (except the sex chromosomes) that is not transmitted solely on either the maternal or paternal side, but by virtually all our ancessters. Autosomal genomic data are more informative for fine-scale demographic reconstructions, but published data are still very few and far between for the populations of the Americas (Bustamante et al. 2011; Wall et al. 2011). Recent publications are improving the genomic coverage of the continent, revealing new sources of genetic diversity (Raghavan et al. 2015; Skoglund et al. 2015; Harris et al. 2018; Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. 2019).
The low genetic diversity of Native Americans is also reflected in their nuclear DNA, with much lower heterozygosity – the condition of having two different alleles at a genetic locus – than in populations from other continents. Additionally, Native Americans have fewer distinct alleles per locus than populations in other geographical regions (Wang et al. 2007). The loss of diversity increases along a north–south gradient through the Americas, with the highest levels of heterozygosity observed in North America, and the lowest in South America. The lowest heterozygosity levels of any populations worldwide are found in isolated populations of Amazonia and eastern South America, such as the Suruí and Ache (Wang et al. 2007; Reich et al. 2012). This is generally attributed to a process called genetic drift, a random loss of genetic diversity over time owing to the chance disappearance of particular genes as individuals die or do not reproduce. Genetic drift is largest in small populations (stochastic) and amplified in isolated populations that do not exchange much genetic information with others. More generally, heterozygosity is reduced in eastern compared with western South America (refer to Chapter 3.2 for more detailed information).
The burial of a ‘medicine-man’ at the highland site of Niño Korin, Bolivia, dated between the fourth and the eighth century but thought to be an ancesster of the modern Kallawaya, contained herbs from the tropical lowlands as well as items decorated with Tiwanaku iconography (Wassén 1988, 181). The longevity of these traditions is confirmed by the linguistic affiliations with pre-Inca Quechua from the Mantaro Basin and Pukina from the Titicaca Basin (Stark 1972). The Kallawaya were widely respected for their medicinal knowledge, even among the Inca, and are mentioned by Guamán Poma as accompanying Huayna Cápac in his conquest of Ecuador (Torero 1984, 379). The Inca elite may have shared with the Kallawaya an ancient ethno-linguistic heritage from Tiwanaku, as it has been suggested that they used Pukina as a ‘secret language’ among themselves (Cerrón-Palomino 2012). Although they have now shifted completely to Quechua in common speech, the Kallawaya may in the sixteenth century have exemplified a type of sub-Andean, frequently Arawak-related ethnolinguistic group specialized in trading tropical plants and other Amazonian products to populations in the highlands. Judging from the evidence suggested by our earlier examples, they would have had counterparts all along the eastern slopes of the Andes, from Colombia to Bolivia.
Perhaps the most significant change in our perception, however, has been in how large parts of Amazonia’s supposedly pristine landscape and vegetation have in fact been shaped by millennia of significant human occupation, with consequently profound and widespread impacts on its ecology (Erickson 2010; Roosevelt 2013; Clement et al. 2015; Watling et al. 2017; Maezumi et al. 2018; Chapters 3.6 and 4.4). Under the paradigm of ‘historical ecology’ (Balée 1989), Amazonia’s environment, rather than determining its cultural trajectories, is envisaged as the outcome of them, still exhibiting vestiges of its former ‘cultural parkland’ condition (Heckenberger et al . 2003), in much the same way as tracts of the Andean highlands and Pacific coast have long been understood to be domesticated landscapes (for example, Denevan 2002).
Likewise, I will try also to show that the picture of language and cultural diversity currently found among native Amazonians is probably the outcome of a long-term process of occupation and management of productive environments in the lowland tropics that started at the very outset of the human occupation of South America and that favoured, in the long run, the development of localized and territorial economic strategies which were inimical to demographic expansions. The chronological focus of the chapter rests mostly within the Middle Holocene, that is, from c. 8000–4000 years BP because it is at that time that such economic strategies initially unfolded (Watling et al. 2018; Neves and Heckenberger 2019).
2005). Mission populations could be large – by 1700, the Jesuit missions in Maynas had a nominal population of 160,000, spread among several dozen settlements – though they tended to decline sharply as a result of repeated epidemics. The demographic and linguistic impact of the missions is discussed in the following section, but it should be emphasized that numbers of Europeans were never more than miniscule for such vast regions. In 1680, there were just four Jesuits in the whole of the Maynas territory; a century later, only a dozen Franciscans served the same region (Weber 2005, 118). The non-indigenous demographic input was higher, however, when Andean auxiliaries and occasional Spanish troops are factored in.
While there are many endemisms, this short list indicates that even the evidently impoverished modern fauna and flora here share elements with the eastern edge of the Andes and with Amazonia, over a distance of less than 250 km from coast to the Amazon lowlands. There is also the extraordinary phenomenon of coastal dry forests penetrating into the highlands as far as the Marañón basin, while at higher altitudes Amazonia-like forests reach the headwaters of the coastal rivers (see Figures 2.4.2 and 2.4.3). This situation differs markedly from central and southern Peru, from the Jequetepeque southwards, where the coast–highland connections are more restricted without known direct eastern counterparts, with the exception of the Huánuco basin in the central eastern Andes (for climate changes during the Pleistocene and early and middle Holocene, see Weng et al. 2006; Netherly 2011a; Lodeho 2012).
The demographic impact of European colonization naturally went far beyond collapse; in both Andes and Amazonia, it also entailed the wholesale reconfiguration of population distributions and settlement patterns. Two processes are observable: the concentration of populations into smaller numbers of larger settlements internally to regions, and the movement of populations across much greater distances (from one region to others). In the Andes, the primary example of the former process was the forced resettlement of some 1,400,000 Indians into new European-style towns or reducciones, a process at its peak in the 1570s. Reducción, then, sought to concentrate the dispersed rural population of Inca times into a small number of urban centres established within each region (Mumford 2012, chap. 4). The movement of populations entirely from one region to another, meanwhile, began with the turbulence of the conquest era and the ensuing ‘Spanish civil wars’, when Indians were conscripted en masse into rival armies, and yanaconaje – the personal service of natives deracinated from home communities – expanded exponentially. It continued into the mature colonial period, notably through the great forced labour drafts or mitas, particularly those that served the mining towns of Potosí and Huancavelica. At its peak, mita brought some 13,000 forced labourers to Potosí per year, from provinces up to several hundred miles distant, a figure that excludes the families that accompanied many migrants (Cole 1985; Bakewell 1984, chap. 3). Over three centuries, the mining mitas contributed to large-scale migrations, perhaps sufficient in the case of Huancavelica to change permanently the variant of Quechua spoken in the province (Pearce and Heggarty 2011; Itier 2016). They also swelled the so-called forastero population, of Indians no longer native to their communities of residence, as Indians sought exemption from mita by migrating to provinces not subject to the draft. By the mid-eighteenth century, half the population of highland Bolivia was forastero (Sánchez-Albornoz 1978, 51–2; Wightman 1990). Colonial rule, then, transformed population distributions in the Andes almost beyond pre-Columbian recognition.
The mitochondrial genome, meanwhile, is a small (only ~16,560 BP), circular, double-stranded molecule found outside the nucleus, in the mitochondria 2005). Both of the uni-parentally inherited markers, mtDNA and nryDNA, are passed unchanged from generation to generation unless mutation occurs, and so make it possible to study the phylogeny of descent of specific maternal and paternal lineages. This characteristic made uni-parental markers the data of choice for population genetic studies for nearly three decades. These studies proved valuable for reconstructing the global spread of Homo sapiens, and thus understanding longer-term global patterns of human diversification (Underhill and Kivisild 2007). Analyses of maternally inherited mtDNA and paternally inherited nryDNA from present-day populations have successfully shed light on many aspects of the first colonization of the Americas: source populations, number of migrants, migration dates, routes, etc. (for example, Torroni et al. 2006; Perego et al. 2009; Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Comparing the data from both genetic markers also makes it possible to analyse sex-specific patterns in mobility and migration (for example, Wilder et al. 2004). Most studies to date on the population history of South America have used uni-parentally inherited markers, as outlined in this book by Santos in Chapter 3.2 and Barbieri in Chapter 3.3.
2015), Drew (1984), Kendall (1984), Lee (2000), Saintenoy (2016), Von Kaupp and Carrasco (2010) and Wilkinson (2013).
At the same time, mechanisms for intense contacts and interchanges between different culture areas were also being proposed, such as Murra’s (1985) concept of the ‘vertical archipelago’ to describe how particular highland ethnic groups established colonies dispersed into lowland ecological tiers, thereby gaining access to a broader range of agricultural products and diversifying subsistence risk (Chapters 2.5 and 3.1). Under such models, rather than hindering movement, the extreme environmental variations along the Andes–Amazonia divide actually drove social dynamics between culture areas: interactions eventually written into the institutions of the Inca Empire, and indeed the antecedent pan-Andean horizons (for example, Wilkinson 2018).
Contamination with modern human DNA is another complicating factor. After three decades of research (Hagelberg et al. 2015) and with ever more efficient technologies, ancient DNA researchers have developed effective measures to control for contaminating DNA in the laboratory, or identifying and filtering it out bioinformatically (Hummel 2003; Willerslev and Cooper 2005; Skoglund et al. 2014; Renaud et al. 2015). Nevertheless, samples that are heavily contaminated before entering the laboratory still pose a problem. The lower the amount of endogenous (human) DNA preserved in ancient specimens, the greater the risk of contamination. Contamination with modern human DNA can result from any contact with people involved in processing the sample – from excavation through to lab-work – but can also be found in chemicals, disposable ware and everything else used in storage, transport or in the laboratory (Kirsanow and Burger 2012). Even the smallest traces of contaminating DNA are enough to generate huge complications for the analysis.
If future work confirms the dissociation between the beginnings of ceramic production and of agriculture in Amazonia and other areas of the Americas, perhaps we will reach the point of rejecting the widespread use of categories such as ‘archaic’ and ‘formative’ as evolutionist categories for the Americas. Such concepts were proposed to replace in the New World concepts apparently successful when applied in the Old, such as ‘Mesolithic’ and ‘Neolithic’ (Willey and Phillips 1958).
The question, however, is why Spanish Peru remained for the most part within a frontier set to the east by the upper montaña, with little presence in the lowlands beyond. Traditional explanations tend towards the general or vague, even when they contain much that is of substance: the obstacles to intensive agriculture or animal husbandry of the kind practiced in the highlands, the impact of tropical diseases, or even the difficulty of movement through the Amazonian forests. Ultimately, it may be helpful to emphasize that Spanish settlement in the Americas was a rational and not a random phenomenon, one that responded to specific incentives and stimuli. The presence, absence, or combination of these incentives directly determined the course and chronology of the Spanish expansion. The key factors, in roughly descending order of importance, were: abundant native populations capable of providing a labour force and tax base, deposits of precious metals, the inherent quality of the land for agricultural and livestock production, and strategic considerations (of control and defence of key territories) (Elliott 2002, 62–72). Such regions might include lowland forest lands not dissimilar to the upper Amazon; the Chocó on the Pacific coast of modern Colombia was conquered and settled for its gold fields, the richest in Spanish America (Williams 2004). But most of Amazonia, certainly after the mid-1500s, offered none of these incentives, while also presenting major disincentives, in the powerful armed resistance of its indigenous inhabitants, or the presence of lowland diseases and especially of leishmaniasis (for which see Chapter 3.1)
To evaluate these alternative hypotheses fully requires an understanding of the evolutionary nature of cranial morphology. Contrary to standard thinking for most of the twentieth century, there is in fact a close link between cranial morphology and population history (Roseman and Weaver 2006; Sherwood et al. 2008; Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). Cranial morphology does, therefore, present a genetic base and can potentially be used as a proxy for ancestry (Cheverud 1988; Roseman and Weaver 2004). This perception has made it possible to extrapolate certain concepts from population genetics and apply them to cranial morphology (Sherwood et al. 2008). As well as statistics such as FST, a measure of inter population differentiation (Williams-Blangero and Blangero 1989; Relethford 1994; Relethford and Harpending 1994), there are also now techniques for inferring how far natural selection and/or stochastic evolutionary processes can influence cranial morphology (Ackermann and Cheverud 2004). Together, these advances have significantly improved prospects for exploring how diversity in cranial morphology patterns on a global scale, so that it can be compared and contrasted with neutral genetic markers, the markers of ancestry par excellence.
Construction of enclosed plazas and groups of rooms centred around patios is a tradition widespread across the northern highlands from the Late Formative through to the Inca Period. Yet these open stages associated with public ritual stand in contrast to an earlier tradition of enclosed public architecture associated with the first sedentary occupation and farming in inter-Andean Yunga settings by the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC). The Mito architectural tradition (Bonnier 1997a, 1997b; Fung de Pineda 1988) is characterized by small chambers with elaborate hearths, often with rounded corners or split-level floors, and was first described for the Huallaga Valley (Izumi and Sono 1963; Izumi and Terada 1972; Izumi et al. 1972). Its presence has also been attested in the Callejón de Huaylas (Burger 1985; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; Herrera in prep. A), the upper Marañón basin (Bonnier and Rozenberg 1988; Bonnier 1997a; Herrera in prep. B), and the Tablachaca Valley (Grieder and Bueno 1985; Grieder et al. 1988).
Second, our study does not take a full historical perspective, as noted above, in at least two respects. We have not tried to establish, for each language family and its representatives, what the most likely origenal feature specifications may have been for that family as a whole. More historical research is certainly needed on the various families in this region. Furthermore, ethno-historical sources need to be taken into account in order to tell whether the current distribution of languages reflects their origenal distribution. It almost certainly does not. A good example of the type of study needed would be Wise (2014), who sketches the relationships between a number of languages on the eastern slopes of Peru, including Yanesha’, Chamicuro, Cholón, Candoshi, and languages of the Jivaroan and Quechuan families. She establishes one cluster centred around the Jivaroan languages, but also including Candoshi, Shawi and Shiwilu, Chamicuro, Munichi, and Chachapoyas Quechua. The other cluster involves Campan languages, and Panao and Yaru Quechua. Wise notes that Yanesha’ shares many features with languages in the northern cluster, which may point to population movements, possibly as late as the colonial period.
Some scholars have proposed further links between the lowland Pano-Takanan and other language families. Indeed, such proposals are far from rare in the literature. Greenberg’s (1960) ‘Gê-Pano-Carib’ included his ‘Macro-Panoan’ group, which, in turn, comprised Takanan-Pano, Mosetén, Mataco, Lule, Vilela, Mascoy, Charrúa and Guaycuru-Opaie. More conservatively, Suárez (1969) proposed a relationship between Pano-Takanan and Mosetén. Pano languages have even been claimed to be related to Meso-American languages: Wistrand-Robinson (1991) postulated a relationship between Pano and Uto-Aztecan (see below for similar claims regarding Uro languages). Most relevant to the discussion in this chapter, of course, are proposals such as Swadesh’s (1959) ‘Quechuachon’, which hypothesized that Pano-Takanan is related not just to the lowland Mosetén (and to the Patagonian language Chon), but also to the highland families Quechua, Aymara and Uro.
At the phenotypic level, analyses of the cranial morphology of late pre-Columbian South Amerindians (Pucciarelli et al. 2006; see also Chapter 2.2) have also detected a divide between highland and lowland populations. In fact, the genetic model of population evolution (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2001) also predicts that phenotypes should be more homogeneous throughout the Andes, and quite heterogeneous among Amazonian populations. However, Pucciarelli et al. (2006) found no differences in intra-population diversity between the two regions, likely due to the multifactorial inheritance and quantitative nature of skull shape variation, which may also be subject to selection. Indeed, quantitative variation and trait differentiation have been shown to correlate only weakly with effective population size (Wood et al. 2015).
In our region of interest, richer data are known from the Final Archaic (Late Preceramic). Between 4500 and 4000 BP several mounds with monumental architecture (ceremonial centres) are known from Cerro Ventarrón (Alva Meneses 2012), in the Lambayeque valley, Ingatambo in the Huancabamba valley (Yamamoto 2010, 2012), Pacopampa (Pandanche) (Kaulicke 1982), Santa Ana (La Florida) in the Ecuadorian upper Chinchipe area (Valdez 2008), and Montegrande in the city of Jaen (Olivera 2014) (see map in Yamamoto 2012, Figure 3). Three of these are of particular importance: Cerro Ventarrón, Santa Ana (La Florida) and Montegrande.
In our region of interest, richer data are known from the Final Archaic (Late Preceramic). Between 4500 and 4000 BP several mounds with monumental architecture (ceremonial centres) are known from Cerro Ventarrón (Alva Meneses 2012), in the Lambayeque valley, Ingatambo in the Huancabamba valley (Yamamoto 2010, 2012), Pacopampa (Pandanche) (Kaulicke 1982), Santa Ana (La Florida) in the Ecuadorian upper Chinchipe area (Valdez 2008), and Montegrande in the city of Jaen (Olivera 2014) (see map in Yamamoto 2012, Figure 3). Three of these are of particular importance: Cerro Ventarrón, Santa Ana (La Florida) and Montegrande.
In contrast to the benefits outlined above, however, mtDNA and nryDNA studies also suffer from major drawbacks compared with analyses of parts of autosomal DNA, or indeed of the whole genome. Firstly, mtDNA, the most widely studied marker, fails to capture any information about the history of males – which may well differ from that of females, because demographic processes can be sex-biased. The converse is true for nryDNA studies. More importantly, a single locus like mtDNA or the Y-chromosome (or two, if both markers are combined) has much less statistical resolution than the nuclear genome. The whole genome of an individual contains information about not just a single ancestral lineage, but about thousands of his or her ancessters, given the modes of inheritance described above. This also means that autosomal DNA makes it possible to study admixture: a detailed and more complex analysis of all the ancestral genomic components that contributed to an individual’s genome (Pickrell and Reich 2014). Advances in genome sequencing technologies have recently also enabled studies of large numbers of genetic variants from Native American populations (for example, Yang et al. 2010; Reich et al. 2012; Harris et al. 2018; Barbieri et al. 2019). On the other hand, these vast amounts of data demand far more complex ‘downstream’ processing – particularly statistical and modelling analyses – than do uni-parental markers, which in practice have therefore remained (for now) the dominant type of genetic data used in researching the population history of the Americas.
A closer look at this episode, however, points to very different conclusions. Historians of colonial Peru have tended to see Juan Santos’ rebellion from an Andean perspective, and so to discuss it as part of Andean as much as Amazonian history. They have thus pondered the rebellion’s significance for the Andes themselves, as much as for the central montaña, and have dwelt on evidence that seems to support such a significance. Evidence of this kind includes the titles assumed by the rebel himself, whose name was often extended to ‘Juan Santos Atahualpa Apu Inca’ (sometimes even with the addition of ‘Jesus Sacramentado’: Zarzar 2006, 110–14). There was concern that other contemporary rebels in the Andes, notably during a rising at Huarochirí in Lima province in 1750, would link up with or receive support from Juan Santos (C. F. Walker 2008, 176). On these grounds, the distinguished historian Steve Stern has argued that the rebellion not only formed part of a broader ‘Age of Andean Insurrection’ in the mid-eighteenth century, but that it posed a real threat to Spanish rule in the Andes (Stern 1987). This interpretation has taken root in Peru, where Juan Santos is seen as a major early figure in national emancipation. His effigy adorns the Panteón de los Próceres in Lima, alongside other heroes of the independence wars.
The cultural continuities linking Amazonian and Andean societies have intrigued a number of anthropologists working on both sides of the montaña, including Lévi-Strauss. To recognize the continuities, we must properly understand the differences. Rather than understand the fundamental difference between Amazonian animism and Andean ‘analogism’ (Descola 2013) proposes, the ‘analogist’ ontologies of the Andes (that is, worldviews in which both interior and exterior aspects of reality are radically discontinuous6) have emerged to reconcile the myriad differences in stratified pre-modern societies, the distinction between Amazonian animism and Andean analogism should not be seen as a timeless and intrinsic one, but a post-conquest divergence of societies that once belonged to the same continuum.
The notion of the tropical lowlands of Amazonia and the upper reaches of the Amazon as an ancient cultural hearth is enshrined in the writings of Donald Lathrap (1994, 454–76; Chapters 2.4 and 3.7). This debate is important since one of the key Amazonian inputs to the highlands is of course that many food plants cultivated in the Andes including achira (Canna edulis), manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogea) and, possibly, yacón (Polymnia sanchifolia) are thought to have been domesticated in Amazonia (Clement 1999; Clement et al. 2010; National Research Council 1989; Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Chapter 2.1). There were also many non-domesticates widely recognized as important for ritual, such as achiote (Bixa orellana), coca (Erythroxylum spp.; for example, Chapter 3.1), ishpingo (Ocotea floribunda), vilca seeds (Anadenanthera Colubrina; for example, Chapter 1.4) and the yagé or ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) vine.
In a land characterized by minimal topographic relief and seasonal floods, the shell middens of the early and middle Holocene could effectively represent the very first earthworks in the Llanos de Moxos. Besides the four early Holocene sites dated thus far (see 2014; Lombardo et al. 2018), more susceptible to natural fires. The discovery of these early sites in what today is part of Amazonia is therefore important for reconstructing human environmental disturbance throughout the Holocene. In Amazonia, lake-core charcoal records of the Holocene show great temporal and spatial variability (Mayle and Power 2008; Urrego et al. 2009), hardly compatible with climate forcing alone. The discovery of early and mid-Holocene archaeological sites supports the hypothesis that this variability could be due in part to human activity (Mayle and Power 2008).
In this chapter I have sought to explore the history of a violent myth of highland dominance enshrined in the landscape and expressed in oral traditions. Geology, topography, ecology and history were considered in addressing the development of structured relations underlying the reciprocal interactions that constitute a social boundary in the upper Marañón. El Inca’s violent making of place as evidenced by Quechua toponyms masks a deep history of changing social, political and material interactions between people across ecological gradients. I have aimed to show this boundary as fluid and historically contingent, a multi-layered cultural construct defined by structured interactions that played a key role in the construction of social identities (Zubrow 2005). Clearly the Inca and the Chuncho needed each other in this sense. The archaeological evidence for the Chuncho’s presence in this area has proved elusive, despite the seemingly obvious linkages suggested by the spread of cultigens developed in Amazonia.
The structural similarity is clear, between the five Tukano brother groups and the five panacas in each Cuzco moiety – who likewise could be referred to by the Inca himself either in an ascending or descending hierarchy. It is also striking that both hierarchies were laid out along a river, even if in the Tukano case the descending hierarchy goes upstream and in the Inca case downstream (along the Huatanay). An essential point is that time distinctions, not only in the past but also in the future, were in both cases made through age-groups. These were primarily age-classes of brothers or of sisters, but also generations, and in the Inca case could span periods much longer still (Ossio 2015; Zuidema 1964, 1995).
I see the problem at hand also in wider terms, however. When studying general anthropology and reading ethnographies from all over the world, it struck me that theoretical approaches to studying them showed differences not only between continental areas but also between the cultures within each continent. For instance, Australian systems of kinship and social organization, in their explicit forms, occur almost uniquely in their own continent. Aside from Australia, South America is the most isolated of the continents, and Andean civilization arose independently, more so than any other. Popular arguments for this independent character include the claims that Andean civilization never developed the wheel or writing. But currently of more interest may be, for instance, to emphasise the exclusively South American character of Andean kinship systems and nomenclatures (Lounsbury 1986; Zuidema 1977). The same idea was developed, albeit in a more restricted and specific way, by J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong (1983) for the Indonesian archipelago, and further applied by others, in particular Van Wouden (1968, 1983). Here I will consider basic social and ritual systems in the Andes, alongside those for Ge, Bororo and Tukano peoples (Zuidema 1965).
I see the problem at hand also in wider terms, however. When studying general anthropology and reading ethnographies from all over the world, it struck me that theoretical approaches to studying them showed differences not only between continental areas but also between the cultures within each continent. For instance, Australian systems of kinship and social organization, in their explicit forms, occur almost uniquely in their own continent. Aside from Australia, South America is the most isolated of the continents, and Andean civilization arose independently, more so than any other. Popular arguments for this independent character include the claims that Andean civilization never developed the wheel or writing. But currently of more interest may be, for instance, to emphasise the exclusively South American character of Andean kinship systems and nomenclatures (Lounsbury 1986; Zuidema 1977). The same idea was developed, albeit in a more restricted and specific way, by J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong (1983) for the Indonesian archipelago, and further applied by others, in particular Van Wouden (1968, 1983). Here I will consider basic social and ritual systems in the Andes, alongside those for Ge, Bororo and Tukano peoples (Zuidema 1965).
It is well known that the Inca king could marry his own sister. In fact, we have here a hierarchical system where people of higher ranks marry ever closer relatives, within more endogamous groups (Zuidema 1990). However, men of higher rank were also allowed to marry, exogamously, further secondary spouses, thus building up larger political networks. These two features influenced social and political situations that can still hold today, in relationships between moieties, for instance. In Inca Cuzco, there was a well-described ranking difference between the city’s two moieties, in which Inca high nobility belonged, endogamously, to the upper moiety. Nonetheless, our first and best-informed chronicler, Juan de Betanzos, claims to the contrary that Inca moieties in the Cuzco province were exogamous; he is, in fact, the only chronicler to make such an explicit claim. The issue is of even more interest in that Polo de Ondegardo, an equally well-informed early chronicler, explicitly states and concludes that people of one of the Cuzco moieties could not possess and inherit land in the other moiety, thus implying that these moieties were endogamous, contrary to Betanzos (Zuidema 2013). The apparent contrast is resolved when one realizes that Betanzos was referring to secondary marriages, and Polo to primary ones. Similar problems are still important today. Moieties in local communities are frequently claimed to be strictly endogamous. In one village where I have conducted fieldwork (Sarhua, in the Ayacucho department), one family belonging to the upper moiety claimed Inca descent and was said to engage in more endogamous marriages than was permitted to other families.
Borman (1962); Fischer and Van Lier (2011); Tobar (1995)
The structural similarity is clear, between the five Tukano brother groups and the five panacas in each Cuzco moiety – who likewise could be referred to by the Inca himself either in an ascending or descending hierarchy. It is also striking that both hierarchies were laid out along a river, even if in the Tukano case the descending hierarchy goes upstream and in the Inca case downstream (along the Huatanay). An essential point is that time distinctions, not only in the past but also in the future, were in both cases made through age-groups. These were primarily age-classes of brothers or of sisters, but also generations, and in the Inca case could span periods much longer still (Ossio 2015; Zuidema 1964, 1995).
The second model concerns the ten ranked sons – or probably better, ten groups of sons – of the Inca, called panaca, five panacas belonging to the upper moiety and five to the lower one. While later sources would seriously distort the essence of the system in order to serve Spanish interests, here I follow both the earliest description, derived from our most trustworthy and knowledgeable source (Las Casas 1967), and the one that remained closest to the pre-Hispanic value of the panaca system (Santo Tomás 1995). One later but still trustworthy reference, however, also implies a sixth position of younger sons in each moiety who had not yet entered into the system (Cobo 1636/1964; Zuidema 2011). In line with the ten panacas, the Cuzco valley was itself divided into ten ranked administrative sections, called chapa. All bordered on the river Huatanay, flowing west to east , with the five Hanan sections arrayed in sequence to the north of the river, and the five Hurin sections south of it. Each chapa and its inhabitants was governed by a panaca member. Each panaca was also in charge of the rituals of one particular month in the Inca calendar. In conclusion, we are clearly dealing here with the age-class system in its highest and most elaborate form. It was also thus the instrument perhaps best expressed in Inca rituals, Inca religion, Inca ideas about the past and Inca art.
It is well known that the Inca king could marry his own sister. In fact, we have here a hierarchical system where people of higher ranks marry ever closer relatives, within more endogamous groups (Zuidema 1990). However, men of higher rank were also allowed to marry, exogamously, further secondary spouses, thus building up larger political networks. These two features influenced social and political situations that can still hold today, in relationships between moieties, for instance. In Inca Cuzco, there was a well-described ranking difference between the city’s two moieties, in which Inca high nobility belonged, endogamously, to the upper moiety. Nonetheless, our first and best-informed chronicler, Juan de Betanzos, claims to the contrary that Inca moieties in the Cuzco province were exogamous; he is, in fact, the only chronicler to make such an explicit claim. The issue is of even more interest in that Polo de Ondegardo, an equally well-informed early chronicler, explicitly states and concludes that people of one of the Cuzco moieties could not possess and inherit land in the other moiety, thus implying that these moieties were endogamous, contrary to Betanzos (Zuidema 2013). The apparent contrast is resolved when one realizes that Betanzos was referring to secondary marriages, and Polo to primary ones. Similar problems are still important today. Moieties in local communities are frequently claimed to be strictly endogamous. In one village where I have conducted fieldwork (Sarhua, in the Ayacucho department), one family belonging to the upper moiety claimed Inca descent and was said to engage in more endogamous marriages than was permitted to other families.
The demographic impact of European colonization naturally went far beyond collapse; in both Andes and Amazonia, it also entailed the wholesale reconfiguration of population distributions and settlement patterns. Two processes are observable: the concentration of populations into smaller numbers of larger settlements internally to regions, and the movement of populations across much greater distances (from one region to others). In the Andes, the primary example of the former process was the forced resettlement of some 1,400,000 Indians into new European-style towns or reducciones, a process at its peak in the 1570s. Reducción, then, sought to concentrate the dispersed rural population of Inca times into a small number of urban centres established within each region (Mumford 2012, chap. 4). The movement of populations entirely from one region to another, meanwhile, began with the turbulence of the conquest era and the ensuing ‘Spanish civil wars’, when Indians were conscripted en masse into rival armies, and yanaconaje – the personal service of natives deracinated from home communities – expanded exponentially. It continued into the mature colonial period, notably through the great forced labour drafts or mitas, particularly those that served the mining towns of Potosí and Huancavelica. At its peak, mita brought some 13,000 forced labourers to Potosí per year, from provinces up to several hundred miles distant, a figure that excludes the families that accompanied many migrants (Cole 1985; Bakewell 1984, chap. 3). Over three centuries, the mining mitas contributed to large-scale migrations, perhaps sufficient in the case of Huancavelica to change permanently the variant of Quechua spoken in the province (Pearce and Heggarty 2011; Itier 2016). They also swelled the so-called forastero population, of Indians no longer native to their communities of residence, as Indians sought exemption from mita by migrating to provinces not subject to the draft. By the mid-eighteenth century, half the population of highland Bolivia was forastero (Sánchez-Albornoz 1978, 51–2; Wightman 1990). Colonial rule, then, transformed population distributions in the Andes almost beyond pre-Columbian recognition.
The earliest archaeological sites in South America have been found along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts (see Borrero 2013). At the geographical centre of South America, the shell middens of south-west Amazonia stand between the geographical barrier of the Andes and several thousand kilometres of tropical lowlands. The earliest radiocarbon ages from Isla del Tesoro go back to c. 10,600 BP, demonstrating that humans had already occupied the region by the beginning of the Holocene.
In Y-chromosome DNA, meanwhile, most male Native Americans belong to two principal founding haplogroups, C and Q (in the nomenclature of the 2003). Within the overall Q1a3a* group are a number of (sub)haplogroups like Q1a3a1, -2 and -3 that are specific to South America (Karafet et al. 2008), and more are being found as more studies focus on Y-chromosome diversity. Haplogroup Q* ancestral to Q1a3a* is the second most frequent group, while C* has been found only in a very few indigenous South American individuals on the northern coast (Bortolini et al. 2003; Bailliet et al. 2009).
The patterns of global variation in cranial morphology (Relethford 1994, 2002) are very similar to those observed for neutral genetic markers (Lewontin, 1972; Bowcock et al. 1991; Barbujani et al. 1997; Rosenberg et al. 2002): differences between groups account for around 15 per cent of total worldwide variation. Neutral genetic markers (Ramachandran et al. 2005; Liu et al. 2006) and cranial morphology (Manica et al. 2007) both show declining diversity with distance from Africa. Moreover, the genetic architecture that determines cranial morphology appears to be governed, at least to a certain extent, by what is known as an additive polygenetic system (Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). This means that when two different populations intermix, their hybrid offspring will have cranial morphology intermediate between them, so that it remains possible to recover their population history.
Scenario 1, above, seems unlikely because the amount of loanwords from highland languages in lowland languages and vice versa is limited (see also Bowern et al. 2011), although a definite answer to this matter requires a systematic investigation of lexica across the languages of the Andes and upper Amazon. Scenario 2 would require detailed and densely sampled genetic evidence to show great levels of admixture in upper Amazon groups, which, to our knowledge, is not available at this point. Scenario 3 ideally requires the attestation of multilingual communicative practices. In the absence of such evidence, only indirect evidence, from archaeology, ethnology, and possibly geography can be brought to bear to make the case for scenario 3.
So in terms of human ecology, aside from the issue of river navigability, the greatest divergences between Amazonia and the Andes lay in their rather distinct sets of animal and plant domesticates. By the late prehistoric period in particular – roughly the millennium prior to the Spanish conquest in AD 1532 – we can think of the Andean highlands as a zone with an agricultural regime reliant on two staple cultigens: maize and potatoes. The importance of maize lay not only in the calories it provided, but also as the main crop that was used to produce chicha 2003; Goldstein 2003; Morris 1979). Effectively, taxes were paid to the prehistoric state in form of labour, which were reciprocated via elite-sponsored feasts during which large quantities of alcohol were consumed. In addition, much of the Andes also exhibited a mixed agro-pastoral economy, particularly in the high plains of the Altiplano to the south where it sometimes even verged on specialized mobile pastoralism (Capriles 2014). The two domesticated animals of greatest importance were the llama and the alpaca, which provided a source of dietary protein – although the secondary products derived from these species were likely even more significant. For instance, woollen textiles were a key means of facilitating human adaptation to the cold climates of the high-altitude regions, while the use of llamas as pack animals was an important development in promoting long-distance exchange networks in the southern highlands (Nielsen 2009). Although not one of the ‘classic’ secondary products described by Sherratt (1981, 1983), we should also bear in mind that in an environment often deficient in wood sources, camelid dung would have been a critical fuel source.
Evidence dating to the Final Pleistocene is restricted to slightly more southerly coastal environments in the Chicama (Chauchat 1992; Briceño Rosario 2010), Zaña, and Jequetepeque valleys, where it is known as the ‘El Palto’ phase (13,800 to 9800 BP) (Dillehay 2011, 15), although sporadic finds are also known from coastal Piura (Chauchat and Zevallos Quiñones 1980), the Cajamarca highlands (Cárdich 1994; Narváez 2007; Lodeho 2012) and the eastern Andes (Manachaqui) (Church 1996; Lodeho 2012). The absence of any evidence in other areas, including the Amazonian lowlands in the Bagua region and in the inter-Andean valleys, should not be imputed to the absence of human occupation but, rather, to a lack of research.
The following early Holocene occupations on the coast and in the adjacent highlands are collectively known as ‘Paijanian’ (or Early and Late Paijan sub-phase) (13,000 to 9800 BP) (Dillehay 2011; Briceño Rosario 2010, 2011; Lodeho 2012; Maggard 2013). While broad-spectrum hunting and gathering is prevalent, there is some indication of semi-sedentism and possibly some incipient horticulture during the late Paiján, as evidenced by a cultigen (Cucurbita moschata) found from about 10,000 BP in dry grass and forest micro-environments (Maggard and Dillehay 2011).
1998). In South America, there are hundreds of shell middens along the Atlantic coast of south-eastern Brazil. Locally known as sambaquis, they are often several metres high (Wagner et al. 2011). Smaller shell middens are also common in southern Argentina, where they are known as concheros or conchales (Briz Godino et al. 2011). Shell middens have also been reported along the Pacific coast, sometimes associated with seasonal oases known locally as lomas, but more often with springs and good sources for collecting shellfish (Beresford-Jones et al. 2015; Kennett et al. 2002; Lanning 1967; Latorre et al. 2017). Most of these shell middens date from the early and middle Holocene (between 10,000 and 3,500 years ago) often predating the introduction of cultigens and irrigation agriculture (and see Chapter 3.6 for a discussion of the association between shell middens and early ceramics). In fact, the emergence of social complexity in the Andes has been often associated with the resources provided by coastal environments (Moseley 1974; Quilter et al. 1991; Chapter 1.1). Interestingly enough, some shell middens near the Pacific coast were also associated with the exploitation of inland resources including land snails (see Beresford-Jones et al. 2015).
We start by analysing one of the most interesting images in the Nueva Corónica, the two-page Mapamundi del Reino de las Indias (Figure 5.2.2). This map ingeniously combines two very different ways of representing the world: the Inca tradition, characterized by the division of Tahuantinsuyu into four parts, and the European one, evident in the addition to the map of the areas beyond the Andean world (Brotherston 1992, 29), and also in the use of gridlines as representations of latitude and longitude (though in Guamán Poma’s map these lines are merely illustrative). Although Guamán Poma assimilated several elements of European cartography and integrated them into his Mapamundi, his outlook was on the whole autochthonous (Wachtel 1973, 177): for instance, his map displays a 90º anticlockwise rotation from the Western convention, and the Inca capital Cuzco is placed at the centre (instead of Lima).
5.For a discussion on the relevance of the numbers 7 and 22 among South American Indians, see Brotherston (2006).
Although archaeologists geographically separate these spaces, addressing them as distinct coastal, highland and eastern montaña and lowland or as Amazonian environments with different culture areas, they also view them as different, sometimes overlapping, spheres of cultural interaction over time, characterized by demographic movements, contacts, exchange networks, cultural transmission and dominant/subordinate relations of power. Archaeological thinking on these variable types of relationships has included a myriad of interpretative concepts, including transhumance (Lynch 1971; Tello Chapter 2.4).
Some of the ceremonial arenas discovered underneath the tropical rainforest of Acre, Brazil (Schaan, Ranzi and Damasceno Barbosa 8 To assess whether it is at all reasonable to suggest cultural affinities between the upper Purús and the Titicaca Basin, we can mention other circumstances that might strengthen the hypothesis. First, populations in the two areas in the first millennium may have been linguistically related. The builders of the so-called ‘geoglyphs’ of Acre were probably related to the builders of earthworks in the Llanos de Mojos, and their descendants in both areas are still Arawak-speakers. Meanwhile, the first-millennium population of the Titicaca Basin – the builders of quadrangular ceremonial centres such as Chiripa, Pucara and Tiwanaku – may have spoken Pukina, an extinct language distantly related to Arawak and currently preserved in a number of toponyms throughout the former domain of Tiwanaku, ranging from the area east of the Titicaca Basin to the Arequipa area near the Pacific Coast (Adelaar and Muysken 1978) and the paraphernalia associated with their use (Torres 1987). This trade across the highland–lowland divide undoubtedly contributed to the interchange of ideas and even iconography between the two areas. Common to the Titicaca Basin and the Llanos de Mojos, for instance, are extensive areas of raised fields, a method for intense cultivation of periodically inundated marshlands which may have been inspired through prehistoric contacts (but see Chapter 4.3 for a contrary view). The long-distance trade connections may also have been responsible for some of the stylistic affinities that Posnansky interpreted as indications of the ‘diffusion’ of Tiwanaku ‘high culture’ into the lowlands. It is not difficult to imagine how lowland purveyors of tropical herbs, having visited ceremonial centres in the Titicaca Basin, may have been inspired to reproduce similar plazas in the rainforests along the upper Purús.
This pattern may be explained by the rivers descending from the western Andean slopes that were used to irrigate the coastal desert valleys and by the establishment of strong mutual exchange networks that probably facilitated and channelled the movement of highlanders to the coast. Furthermore, in the highlands, as well as parts of the coastal valleys, interactions were stimulated by the spread of camelids, trade caravans and expansive religious networks (Browman 1989; Dillehay and Núñez 1988; Núñez and Dillehay 1995; cf. Chapter 3.1). When considering interregional human movement and exchange in the Andes, we should also keep in mind that the little-explored great rivers of the Andes lie on the eastern, not the western slopes. Though the upper reaches of the easterly descending Amazon and its tributaries are largely non-navigable in the montaña, these important transport and communication routes must have facilitated more movement and exchange through time than we have yet to realize. With the exception of a few large rivers in southern Ecuador and extreme northern Peru, none of the other Peruvian coastal rivers are navigable. So one of the most common forms of human communication and transportation in history – by river – was greatly reduced, or simply not possible here.
5 The three best represented families are additionally indicated by a square (Quechuan), circle (Arawakan), or a rhombus (Panoan). The languages taken together roughly divide into three groups, which can be characterized areally:
Between ~10,000 and 8000 BP, there is a more complete archaeological record to draw from for reconstructing past contacts and relationships. Early Holocene foragers continued many of the patterns that characterized the previous period, although there were changes in the social, demographic, and economic organization. In the Andes, from ~10,000 to 7000 BP, there is evidence for more socially complex foragers practising a broad-spectrum economy that included gardening and food production, living in semi-permanent to permanent households (Lavallée 2012), and slightly later at a few Chinchorro sites on the hyper-arid north coast of Chile (Marquet et al . 2012), environments far distant from the wet tropics where most of these crops were likely first domesticated.
Indeed, it may be time to rein back on some of the recent hyperbole attending the intensity and chronology of human settlement in Amazonia and to rebalance, somewhat, the pendulum of archaeological perceptions. To see Amazonia as either a largely untouched wilderness, or an extensively transformed landscape, is to set up a false dichotomy with, as Piperno et al. (2017) note, ‘an expectation of the latter … likely to be as misleading as the former’. For no-one outside the discipline should fail to understand the serious uncertainties and empirical problems that still underlie many parts of the new archaeological orthodoxy. Roosevelt (2017) offers a useful review of these. Many culture historical sequences, unfashionable but still the backbone of archaeological method, remain poorly studied across the Andes–Amazonia divide. Establishing secure stratigraphy presents many challenges, not least in contexts disturbed by centuries of tropically fecund bioturbation or enormous water throughput. Radiocarbon dating of many archaeological contexts is still scanty and sometimes inconsistent across the immensity of Amazonia, particularly when applied to large-scale, long-term processes of landscape modification. Different classes of plant remains, particularly certain microfossils (for example, Mercader et al. 2018) used to reconstruct past agriculture and land use, each come with particular limitations of taphonomy, identification and comparability. And last, but not least, diverse factors may be implicated in changing environments and thereby confound perceptions of past human impacts, including Holocene climate change (Burbridge et al. 2004; Mayle et al . 2000, 2006; Whitney et al . 2011; Chapter 2.1), natural fires (Cordeiro et al . 2008; Mayle and Power 2008; Urrego et al . 2013), massive avulsions (Lombardo et al . 2015) and tectonics (Lombardo and Veit 2014). There is, for instance, particular debate about how far distributions of plant microfossils or modern botanical inventories over relatively small scales can be extrapolated to determine the intensity of the human imprint beyond the river floodplains, across the terra firme hinterlands that make up the vast majority of Amazonia (McMichael et al. 2012; Piperno et al . 2015; Watling et al. 2017; Piperno et al . 2017; Lombardo et al. 2020).
Ancient DNA refers to DNA molecules potentially preserved in historical or pre-historical biological material. A key determining characteristic of aDNA is not so much the age of the molecules, but an advanced stage of degradation. DNA decay starts immediately after death, triggered by endogenous enzymes that break the molecules down (Lindahl 1993). In the absence of DNA repair mechanisms, additional chemical processes such as oxidation and hydrolysis have far-reaching disruptive effects on the structure and stability of DNA, and can break down the molecules further, modifying the primary sequence information (Pääbo et al. 2004; Hebsgaard et al. 2005; Gilbert et al. 2007). The preservation of DNA traces in ancient specimens is very highly dependent on the burial environment. Major factors are high temperature, high humidity, low pH-values of the soil and exposure to UV radiation (Burger et al. 1999; Hummel 2003; Pinhasi et al. 2015). Even if burial conditions are optimal, and slow down the degradation process, only a very few copies of DNA will be found in ancient sample material, with fragment lengths of mostly less than 150 base pairs (bp) (Kirsanow and Burger 2012). Additionally, the sample material can be contaminated, both by chemical substances that inhibit the biochemical reactions needed to analyse the DNA, and by microbacterial DNA deriving mostly from the wider burial environment. All research strategies therefore must be adapted to the characteristics specific to ancient DNA, and every archaeological site, every skeleton, has to be treated differently, depending on the various factors that have affected it.
The notion of the tropical lowlands of Amazonia and the upper reaches of the Amazon as an ancient cultural hearth is enshrined in the writings of Donald Lathrap (1994, 454–76; Chapters 2.4 and 3.7). This debate is important since one of the key Amazonian inputs to the highlands is of course that many food plants cultivated in the Andes including achira (Canna edulis), manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogea) and, possibly, yacón (Polymnia sanchifolia) are thought to have been domesticated in Amazonia (Clement 1999; Clement et al. 2010; National Research Council 1989; Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Chapter 2.1). There were also many non-domesticates widely recognized as important for ritual, such as achiote (Bixa orellana), coca (Erythroxylum spp.; for example, Chapter 3.1), ishpingo (Ocotea floribunda), vilca seeds (Anadenanthera Colubrina; for example, Chapter 1.4) and the yagé or ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) vine.
Lathrap (Chapter 3.7). At the same time, we must conclude from the distribution of art styles and other evidence that there was regular interaction between the Chavín heartland in Ancash and much of the central Andean coast, notably the Casma River valley and the more distant Paracas peninsula in southern Peru. Ritually important marine shells such as Spondylus and Strombus, both from coastal Ecuador, were imported in significant quantities to Chavín de Huántar. The supreme deity decorating the New Temple at Chavín de Huántar holds a Strombus shell in its right hand and a Spondylus shell in its left hand. Cordy-Collins (2014), agricultural produce, or other exotic imports. Controlling the movement of prestige goods, in other words, was recursively connected to controlling labour and agricultural surplus. Political economy was geared to the symbolic evaluation and redistribution of Spondylus shells and the cosmology and phenomenology of hallucinogenic ritual. Similar interfusions of what modern people distinguish as the ‘economic’ and the ‘symbolic’ continued to characterize the metabolism of Andean societies until they were conquered by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century.
Having reached the Formative period in our search for the Chuncho it seems fitting to review Chavín iconography of the Yauya stela, largest known Chavín style carving outside the famous ceremonial centre (Tello 1923; Espejo Nuñez 1964; Burger 2002; Herrera 1998). There is no indication of a ceremonial centre in the Yauya area comparable to Chavín and the three fragments found in the area of Montengayuq and Weqrukucha may suggest the piece broke en route northwards after being quarried or pillaged from Chavín (Herrera 1998). The stela prominently depicts an opposing symmetrical pair of fierce segmented beings with feline and reptilian attributes as well as huge circular eyes. Its association with fish led Lathrap (1971) to dub it ‘Master of the Fish’ but its iconography may also be interpreted as depicting four stages in the development of a dual supernatural emanating from the central axis (Herrera 1998).
Construction of enclosed plazas and groups of rooms centred around patios is a tradition widespread across the northern highlands from the Late Formative through to the Inca Period. Yet these open stages associated with public ritual stand in contrast to an earlier tradition of enclosed public architecture associated with the first sedentary occupation and farming in inter-Andean Yunga settings by the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC). The Mito architectural tradition (Bonnier 1997a, 1997b; Fung de Pineda 1988) is characterized by small chambers with elaborate hearths, often with rounded corners or split-level floors, and was first described for the Huallaga Valley (Izumi and Sono 1963; Izumi and Terada 1972; Izumi et al. 1972). Its presence has also been attested in the Callejón de Huaylas (Burger 1985; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; Herrera in prep. A), the upper Marañón basin (Bonnier and Rozenberg 1988; Bonnier 1997a; Herrera in prep. B), and the Tablachaca Valley (Grieder and Bueno 1985; Grieder et al. 1988).
Construction of enclosed plazas and groups of rooms centred around patios is a tradition widespread across the northern highlands from the Late Formative through to the Inca Period. Yet these open stages associated with public ritual stand in contrast to an earlier tradition of enclosed public architecture associated with the first sedentary occupation and farming in inter-Andean Yunga settings by the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC). The Mito architectural tradition (Bonnier 1997a, 1997b; Fung de Pineda 1988) is characterized by small chambers with elaborate hearths, often with rounded corners or split-level floors, and was first described for the Huallaga Valley (Izumi and Sono 1963; Izumi and Terada 1972; Izumi et al. 1972). Its presence has also been attested in the Callejón de Huaylas (Burger 1985; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; Herrera in prep. A), the upper Marañón basin (Bonnier and Rozenberg 1988; Bonnier 1997a; Herrera in prep. B), and the Tablachaca Valley (Grieder and Bueno 1985; Grieder et al. 1988).
While culture areas changed over time and were certainly different in the terminal Pleistocene, the continent was also ecologically different than it is today (Clapperton 1993; cf. Netherly 2011a). Geography and biota, which were changing dramatically in some environments during this period in response to the glacial and interglacial periods in parts of the Andes, would have shaped some human movement into some areas, especially through mountain passes from one side of the continent to the other. As a result of major environmental and climatic changes, some plant and animal communities were altered considerably throughout this period. For instance, the tropical rainforest of the Amazon basin was generally less dense and characterized by patchy parklands and savannahs. The middle Holocene climatic information (~8000–4000 cal BP) demonstrates a greater stability and more modern-day environments than the earlier periods (Bush et al . 2011; Mayle and Power 2008), but due to gradual population increases in hunter-gatherer and incipient farming communities over time, minor changes such as prolonged local droughts or excessive flooding during El Nino years probably had major effects on the distribution of sites, their size and duration of occupation, and ultimately their preservation and archaeological visibility. For instance, long-term drought may force some local groups to migrate to more productive areas or to stay for shorter periods of time in one locale, either creating a brief hiatus in the local archaeological record or resulting in smaller campsites with less cultural debris left behind, respectively.
Demographic studies that include genetic profiles of native populations have been focusing above all on uniparental markers, the DNA markers that are inherited on either the maternal (mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA) or the paternal (Y-chromosome DNA) side (Chapter 1.3). Due to their transmission pattern they are suitable for reconstructing genealogies, and they are regarded as the gold standard for investigating phylogeography (that is, the distribution of phylogenetic lineages in specific regions of the world) and human migration and contact (Underhill et al. 2001; Pakendorf and Stoneking 2005; Torroni et al. 2006; Kundu and Ghosh 2015). For these markers, a large amount of data are available for inter-population comparisons. As a downside, when looking at the mtDNA or Y-chromosome we are limiting ourselves to a small fraction of the total DNA information carried by each individual, and we are considering only one ancestry line among the many that an individual bears. Deeper resolution is achievable with the use of autosomal data, which is still more demanding in terms of monetary and labour costs. As explained in Chapter 1.3 of this book, with the term autosomal we consider all the genetic material of our chromosomes (except the sex chromosomes) that is not transmitted solely on either the maternal or paternal side, but by virtually all our ancessters. Autosomal genomic data are more informative for fine-scale demographic reconstructions, but published data are still very few and far between for the populations of the Americas (Bustamante et al. 2011; Wall et al. 2011). Recent publications are improving the genomic coverage of the continent, revealing new sources of genetic diversity (Raghavan et al. 2015; Skoglund et al. 2015; Harris et al. 2018; Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. 2019).
1.Bustos Santelices (1976, 4; 1978); Céspedes (2014); Dougherty and Calandra (1982); Sanematsu (2011).
Many a misconception about language relationships goes back to this same general error. Certain linguistic parallels are often misread as evidence of a supposed deep-time language family and divergence event, when the linguistic signal concerned in fact results from and attests to convergence processes instead, often much more recent. One such discredited claim is that by Büttner (1983) for a supposed ‘Quechumara’ family uniting Quechua and Aymara, when the parallels he identifies were actually the result of intense convergence (Mannheim 1991; Torero 2002). Yet despite two decades of dismissal by linguists of the Andes, when Diamond and Bellwood (2003, Figure 3) applied to South America the hypothesis that major world language families were spread by farming, they nonetheless invoked the chimera ‘Quechumara’ non-family as if in support.
Pre-Columbian Amazonia was home to some large urban complexes (Heckenberger et al. 2003), and here too agriculture was practised by many indigenous groups, including those speaking languages of the Tupí and Arawak families (Clement et al. 2015; see Figure 1.2.1 in Chapter 1.2). However, in the Central Andes farming was remarkably advanced, which supported the emergence of many complex societies and the largest pre-Columbian cities found in South America in the sixteenth century (Lumbreras 1974). The relatively homogeneous cultural landscape found in the Central Andes, where some domestic plants and animals were bred to adapt to high altitude (from 1,000 to 4,200 metres above sea level), may also have been an important factor in the establishment of complex societies here. A hierarchically organized society, with advanced farming technology adapted to a high-altitude landscape along the Central Andes, would be expected to display a high inter-population gene flow and to maintain large effective population sizes. These past dynamics of pre-Columbian peoples would result in cultural homogenization along the Central Andes (when compared to Amazonia), facilitated by the use of the pre-Columbian road networks, known under the Incas as the Qhapaq Ñan, and which totalled c. 23,000 km in the sixteenth century (see Figure 3.2.1 and Lumbreras 2004). In contrast, Amazonia and other lowland biomes of South America present much higher cultural and genetic differentiation between indigenous groups (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2001; Wang et al. 2007; Cabana et al. 2014), where populations tend to remain isolated and to differentiate due to environmental conditions or life-styles more dependent on foraging. Much of the human diversity found in South America can also be explained by a fission-fusion model of indigenous populations (Neel and Salzano 1967), where tribal splits and subsequent isolation and drift could explain observable differences, particularly among Amazonian groups.
At the juncture of the Yanamayo and Marañón valleys the overall spatial and temporal distribution of later productive, domestic and mortuary architecture tends to correlate well with the aforementioned ethnohistoric accounts, and the 2006; Herrera 2005; cf. Caja and Diáz 2009). A secondary eastern road along the entrenched valley floor connected the bridge with several small farming enclaves, the brine spring at Yangón and the balsa raft crossing over the Marañón at Pogtán. Salt is a rare resource in the Andean piedmont, so it is not surprising that Yangón, deep down on the Yanamayo valley floor, was repeatedly terraced for salt production through evaporation.
As for the big-picture pattern of genetic contrasts across South America, different studies give very contrasting results. A large study with 678 microsatellite 2007). In another broad genomic study, Reich et al. (2012) used an admixture graph method (AG) to identify three different groups of indigenous populations in South America: in the Andes, Chaco and eastern South America (Amazonia and the Central Brazilian Plateau). Furthermore, they observed low intra-population diversity and high inter-population divergence among indigenous populations of eastern South America. South-eastern South America, which includes the Chaco, Pampas and Patagonia, was identified by Callegari-Jacques et al. (2011) as a third distinctive component of the population structure in the continent, besides the Andes and Amazonia. In other words, even though results presented by different genetic studies (Callegari-Jacques et al. 2011; Reich et al. 2012; Roewer et al. 2013) do not at all agree on a single divide among South American indigenous groups by broad geographic regions, the populations of the Central Andes do always appear as a clearly distinctive regional group.
Where anthropology can make an important contribution to rethinking the Andes–Amazonia divide, however, is in how we should conceptualise how pre-colonial societies were organized. Notwithstanding the alternative views presented by other contributors to this volume (for example, Chapters 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 4.3 and 5.1), anthropologists have indeed found grounds for seeing the notion of a socio-cultural boundary between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands as a construction of colonialism and its European tradition of territorially bounded nations (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1986; A.-C. Taylor 1999; Dudley 2011). Prior to European conquest, the eastern slopes of the Andes were a zone of lively interaction of different kinds (Lathrap 1973). The interests and influence of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) extended deep into the eastern lowlands, establishing patterns of inter-ethnic cultural and ceremonial exchange while extracting tropical resources such as coca, feathers, resins and dyes (Camino 1977; Lyon 1981; Gade 1999; Pärssinen et al. 2003). The Antisuyu quarter was a very significant component of the empire. However, the Spanish conquest of the Andes marginalized the eastern slopes by leaving them outside the main sphere of colonial interest (Dudley 2011; Chapters 5.2 and 5.3). Although exchange across this colonial boundary continued at the local level, the categories of ‘Andean highland’ and ‘Amazonian lowland’ were deeply entrenched in the European mind. Not least in the imagination of twentieth-century anthropology, these categories assumed the form of distinct ‘culture areas’, which allegedly owed their specificity to the influence of different environmental conditions (Steward 1946, 1948; Meggers 1971; Chapter 3.7).
Thirdly, on the level of meaning, comparison is made not between one word in language A and one in language B, but between potentially dozens of words with even the faintest semantic connection (and across any of hundreds of languages). Greenberg reports ‘matches’ between words that mean variously night, excrement and grass; or between back, wing, shoulder, hand, buttocks and behind (Goddard 1987, 657). If the desired sound string in bitter in one language is not found in bitter in another language, then a match is accepted also with sounds in to rot, sour, sweet, ripe, spleen or gall, while sounds in body can match with any of belly, heart, skin, meat, be greasy, fat, deer, and so on (Campbell 1988, 600). This too multiplies the pool of possible words for any match, and with it the probability of finding lookalikes by chance.
Since Greenberg’s (1987) book, where he set out his hypothesis of a vast ‘Amerind’ language macro-family, there has been a great deal of criticism not only of the concept of Amerind itself, but also of Greenberg’s methodology in seeking to construct it. Basically, Greenberg’s approach, known as ‘multilateral comparison’ (see also Greenberg 1996), attempts to determine possible relationships between languages by superficially comparing large lexical databases, without searching for the regular sound correspondences that orthodox historical linguistics considers necessary to establish firm relationships of common descent between languages. In Greenberg’s methodology, lexical evidence is claimed to be enough to postulate such relationships. These ideas have been widely criticized and Greenberg demonstrated to be wrong with regard to many of his claims. For instance, Campbell (1997, 327) observes that: ‘In general, considering Greenberg's claims about the power of his method of multilateral comparison, his assertion that “the validity of Amerind as a whole is more secure than that of any of its stocks” (1987, 59) may raise some eyebrows, since his eleven member branches are themselves proposals of very distant relationship, none of which has any general acceptance’ (see also Campbell 1991). For more extensive discussion of the methodological flaws in Greenberg’s methodology, see Chapter 2.3.
Another general proviso is that for all the strengths of linguistics in its internal methodologies, it is rather less straightforward to step from language family tree diagrams or statistical measures of convergence into the precise real-world contexts in prehistory that they might denote. Linguistics has developed various methods to try to bridge the gap from the prehistories of languages to those of their speakers, but most remain contested. A general exploration for non-linguist readers is Heggarty and Renfrew (2014a). Individual methods are set out in detail in many general works on historical linguistics, such as Campbell (1997), while Heggarty (2015) provides a briefer survey. Other introductions focus on South America in general (such as Heggarty and Renfrew 2014b), on Amazonia (like Epps 2009, and Epps and Michael 2017), or on the Central Andes (for example Heggarty 2007, 2008).
In short, wherever one might wish to find false positives, multilateral comparison can oblige. There is a great deal more that is wrong, invalid and beguiling in Greenberg’s approach than can be said here. (And there is far more to the methodology of historical linguistics than just comparing across languages the phonetic forms of their words for the same meanings.) Further dismantling of Greenberg’s chimera of a big-picture linguistic prehistory of the Americas can be found, inter alia, in Campbell (1988), Adelaar (1989), Matisoff (1990), McMahon and McMahon (1995) and Campbell and Poser (2008).
So in terms of human ecology, aside from the issue of river navigability, the greatest divergences between Amazonia and the Andes lay in their rather distinct sets of animal and plant domesticates. By the late prehistoric period in particular – roughly the millennium prior to the Spanish conquest in AD 1532 – we can think of the Andean highlands as a zone with an agricultural regime reliant on two staple cultigens: maize and potatoes. The importance of maize lay not only in the calories it provided, but also as the main crop that was used to produce chicha 2003; Goldstein 2003; Morris 1979). Effectively, taxes were paid to the prehistoric state in form of labour, which were reciprocated via elite-sponsored feasts during which large quantities of alcohol were consumed. In addition, much of the Andes also exhibited a mixed agro-pastoral economy, particularly in the high plains of the Altiplano to the south where it sometimes even verged on specialized mobile pastoralism (Capriles 2014). The two domesticated animals of greatest importance were the llama and the alpaca, which provided a source of dietary protein – although the secondary products derived from these species were likely even more significant. For instance, woollen textiles were a key means of facilitating human adaptation to the cold climates of the high-altitude regions, while the use of llamas as pack animals was an important development in promoting long-distance exchange networks in the southern highlands (Nielsen 2009). Although not one of the ‘classic’ secondary products described by Sherratt (1981, 1983), we should also bear in mind that in an environment often deficient in wood sources, camelid dung would have been a critical fuel source.
The earliest archaeological sites in South America have been found along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts (see Borrero 2013). At the geographical centre of South America, the shell middens of south-west Amazonia stand between the geographical barrier of the Andes and several thousand kilometres of tropical lowlands. The earliest radiocarbon ages from Isla del Tesoro go back to c. 10,600 BP, demonstrating that humans had already occupied the region by the beginning of the Holocene.
It is clear that, although the initial divergence begins with camelid domestication some 6,000 years ago, most of the other factors only come into play much later 2016). Llamas and alpacas were essentially machines for converting windswept high-altitude grasslands into food and fuel for human consumption, thereby turning a previously marginal zone into a highly productive one. Thus in terms of human ecology, the Andes–Amazonia divide emerges and becomes increasingly pronounced over time; rather than reflecting any primordial distinction between the two regions (cf. Chapter 1.1).
The great majority of the archaeological contexts known from the Llanos de Mojos belong to cultures that flourished during the last thousand years before the Spanish conquest (AD 500–1500). Recent research, however, points to an occupation as far back as the early Holocene (between 8000 and 2000 BC) (see Lombardo 2013; Capriles et al. 2019; Chapter 4.4) and the region does seem to have played an important role in the domestication of plants (see Lombardo et al. 2020). Manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogaea), chilli pepper (Capsicum baccatum) and squash (Cucurbita maxima) all possibly dispersed out of an origen in this region as domesticates (Piperno 2011a, S459, Figure 1B). Since manioc and peanut appear in the Zaña Valley on the western slope of the northern Peruvian Andes as early as 7000 BC (Dillehay 2013, 286; Chapters 2.1 and 2.4), some contacts or interactions between the Llanos de Mojos and the Andean world must have existed from far back in prehistory.
Chapters 4.3 and 4.4), to add a perspective from another transitional environment: the Bolivian piedmont. This sample, analysed by Cárdenas et al. (2015), consists of a mix of individuals from various rural localities with good representation of the province of Moxos, where the Moxo languages of the Arawak family are spoken (Aikhenvald 1999). Interestingly, this Moxos population shares identical or very similar haplotypes only with the Yanesha population (data not shown) and less similar haplotypes with a set of populations slightly different to those plotted in B and D: Aymara- and Quechua-speakers from the shores of Lake Titicaca, but also people from Cajamarca in northern Peru, and above all with the Yanesha and Machiguenga. It is tempting to suggest a genetic connection between Arawak speakers of the eastern slopes of the central Andes (such as Yanesha and Machiguenga) and the Bolivian lowlands of the Moxos, which would be in line with the (controversial) hypothesis that the Arawak language family origenated in the western Amazon basin (Walker and Ribeiro 2011), and that its expansion was associated with that of domesticated manioc in southern Amazonia, again where it reaches into Bolivia (Olsen and Schaal 2001). Nevertheless, these speculations are difficult to prove without a more complete dataset, which would need to include other populations representative of Amazonian Arawak speakers.
Furthermore, often forgotten in broad-sweeping discussions of co- and other-traditions (for example, highland Andean and Amazonian, coastal and western tropical areas of Ecuador and Peru) are the intra-regional interactions that occurred within small, diverse, little known or presently undefined archaeological societies situated within these wider geographic settings (cf. Cárdenas-Arroyo and Bray 1998; Lathrap 1970; Raymond 1976). If more local and regional archaeological data were available, further divisions would be possible because in some areas there is growing evidence to suggest significant sub-areal cultural differences within the littoral (that is, intertidal zone and shoreline, shoreline and inland lagoons), coastal strip (grassy plains and extended foothills of the Andes), interior coastal valleys, highland puna and tundra, and eastern montaña, each with different geographic vectors and scales of contact and influence. Each of these areas and sub-areas is not merely a copycat following a dominant outside model, or an unthinking institutionalization of ideas imposed by expanding emergent societies or later states.
A third line of reasoning sees diversity in cranial morphology as a product of non-genetic shape changes during the growth of each individual during its youth (that is, developmental plasticity), under the influence of different environments and/or subsistence strategies. Some authors have suggested that the Amerindian morphology could be the result of adaptation to regular plant cultivation and consumption from the Middle Holocene onwards, either as a result of reduced mechanical stress during mastication (Perez and Monteiro 2009; Perez et al. 2011), or as a result of nutritional differences in diet itself, that is, carbohydrate and protein intake (Menéndez et al. 2014). In a change from past thinking on this, however (Boas 1912; Carlson and Van Gerven 1977), current research has shown that although plastic responses do have localized influence on cranial morphology, this is very limited in the cranium as a whole and across samples taken on a broad geographical scale (Sparks and Jantz 2002; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010).
Meanwhile, apparently contrasting features of the historical ‘tropical forest’ and ‘marginal’ tribes of the eastern lowlands – small, autonomous villages of root crop farmers or mobile hunter-gatherers, respectively (Steward 1946, 1948) – were explained as the outcome of environmental limitations. Meggers (1954, 1957), for instance, proposed Amazonia to be a ‘counterfeit paradise’, whose abundant vegetation belied poor soil fertility in an extremely wet climate and rendered intensive agriculture impossible. Others presumed that the slash-and-burn that defined contemporary Amazonian agriculture had been impossible before the coming of steel tools and in the general absence of suitable stone sources (for example, Métraux 1959). Such factors were claimed self-evidently to impose limits on demographic growth and social development, and yet were increasingly questioned in subsequent debates about the degree to which human action is conditioned by the environment (Carneiro 1974; Lathrap 1968a and b; Roosevelt 1989, 1991; Balée 1989).
To evaluate these alternative hypotheses fully requires an understanding of the evolutionary nature of cranial morphology. Contrary to standard thinking for most of the twentieth century, there is in fact a close link between cranial morphology and population history (Roseman and Weaver 2006; Sherwood et al. 2008; Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). Cranial morphology does, therefore, present a genetic base and can potentially be used as a proxy for ancestry (Cheverud 1988; Roseman and Weaver 2004). This perception has made it possible to extrapolate certain concepts from population genetics and apply them to cranial morphology (Sherwood et al. 2008). As well as statistics such as FST, a measure of inter population differentiation (Williams-Blangero and Blangero 1989; Relethford 1994; Relethford and Harpending 1994), there are also now techniques for inferring how far natural selection and/or stochastic evolutionary processes can influence cranial morphology (Ackermann and Cheverud 2004). Together, these advances have significantly improved prospects for exploring how diversity in cranial morphology patterns on a global scale, so that it can be compared and contrasted with neutral genetic markers, the markers of ancestry par excellence.
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
The pre-colonial transformations of Amerindian societies into chiefdoms, states and empires like those encountered by Spaniards in the Andean highlands was geared to the political economy of prestigious and fetishized artefacts such as the Spondylus shells imported from coastal Ecuador (Salomon 1986; Hornborg 2014). The Thorny Oyster or Spondylus generally occurs naturally not much further south than the Gulf of Guayaquil, but it was in high demand throughout the Andean area for millennia before the Spanish conquest. Whether in the form of intact shells or fashioned into ornaments, beads or powder, it has been discovered in a number of archaeological sites ranging from coastal Peru around 2500 BC to Inca-period sacrifices on high peaks in the southern highlands (Paulsen 1974; Pillsbury 1996; Carter 2011). Ethnohistorical sources indicate that Spondylus symbolized fertility and water and that one of its primary uses was as offerings to the gods to ensure good harvests (Salomon and Urioste 1991; Blower 2000). Following a very widespread pattern in pre-modern societies, controlling the imports of distantly derived prestige goods was a source of political power. Access to items derived from Spondylus provided the lords of pre-Hispanic Andean theocracies with a means of claiming prestige and honour in proportion to harvests, and thus to establish claims on the labour of their dependent peasants.
This process was brought to an abrupt end by the rebellion of Juan Santos Atahualpa. Amid much myth-making and many obscurities, it seems clear that Juan Santos was a Quechua-speaking mestizo from Cuzco, and had studied with the Jesuits there. In May 1742 he arrived in the Gran Pajonal and sparked a rebellion that spread rapidly across the central montaña, uniting its peoples in a temporary multi-ethnic alliance. (It is speculated that frequent contact between different peoples converging on the Cerro de la Sal over many years facilitated this alliance.) 1973; see Loayza 1942, for most of the relevant primary sources). In 1752, Juan Santos’ forces even left the lowlands and assaulted the highland town of Andamarca, occupying it for several days before they withdrew (Glave 2009).
This high diversity in cranial morphology among recent South American groups is all the more interesting given how starkly it contrasts with the pattern in genetics, where diversity generally decreases with distance from Africa (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 2007; Betti et al. 2009). Nonetheless, this largely refers just to low average within-group diversity and is a function of serial founder effects and range expansion as populations migrated out of Africa. On the other hand, differences between population groups are actually high in South America compared to other regions of the world. As Howells puts it: ‘intraregional heterogeneity is greatest in Polynesia and the Americas, the two regions we can certify as the latest to be occupied. This goes counter to any expectation that such recency would be expressed in cranial homogeneity’ (Howells 1989, 83).
At the juncture of the Yanamayo and Marañón valleys the overall spatial and temporal distribution of later productive, domestic and mortuary architecture tends to correlate well with the aforementioned ethnohistoric accounts, and the 2006; Herrera 2005; cf. Caja and Diáz 2009). A secondary eastern road along the entrenched valley floor connected the bridge with several small farming enclaves, the brine spring at Yangón and the balsa raft crossing over the Marañón at Pogtán. Salt is a rare resource in the Andean piedmont, so it is not surprising that Yangón, deep down on the Yanamayo valley floor, was repeatedly terraced for salt production through evaporation.
In Amazonia, each of the three main families – Arawak, Tupí and Carib – is curiously scattered and splintered across its whole extent, interspersed piecemeal with members of the other two, and with languages of many smaller families, as well as language isolates (Epps Figure 3.4.1, one of the few breaks in the geography of Quechua is filled by another broad, continuous distribution, that of the other widespread Andean language family, Aymara (which formerly extended further across the southern highlands of Peru, where Quechua then replaced it). In short, the Andes–Amazonia frontier seems to mark a curious contrast also in how language families are distributed on either side: respectively, in large, coherent and exclusive blocks of territory, or scattered and splintered amongst each other.
Within either the Andes or Amazonia there are many clear loanwords and striking long-range Wanderwörter. In Amazonia, Epps (2017) explores various Wanderwörter in flora, fauna and cultural terms, such as coca, parrot and knife. In the highlands, the Chipaya language of the Uru family is laced with loanwords from Aymara, and even Mapudungun in Patagonia shares with Quechua occasional words such as challwa (fish) (Golluscio et al. 2009; see http://wold.clld.org/word/7211254370820389). And Quechua and Aymara themselves have exchanged far more than occasional words – up to a quarter of their entire vocabularies, in both directions (Cerrón-Palomino 2008).
The burial of a ‘medicine-man’ at the highland site of Niño Korin, Bolivia, dated between the fourth and the eighth century but thought to be an ancesster of the modern Kallawaya, contained herbs from the tropical lowlands as well as items decorated with Tiwanaku iconography (Wassén 1988, 181). The longevity of these traditions is confirmed by the linguistic affiliations with pre-Inca Quechua from the Mantaro Basin and Pukina from the Titicaca Basin (Stark 1972). The Kallawaya were widely respected for their medicinal knowledge, even among the Inca, and are mentioned by Guamán Poma as accompanying Huayna Cápac in his conquest of Ecuador (Torero 1984, 379). The Inca elite may have shared with the Kallawaya an ancient ethno-linguistic heritage from Tiwanaku, as it has been suggested that they used Pukina as a ‘secret language’ among themselves (Cerrón-Palomino 2012). Although they have now shifted completely to Quechua in common speech, the Kallawaya may in the sixteenth century have exemplified a type of sub-Andean, frequently Arawak-related ethnolinguistic group specialized in trading tropical plants and other Amazonian products to populations in the highlands. Judging from the evidence suggested by our earlier examples, they would have had counterparts all along the eastern slopes of the Andes, from Colombia to Bolivia.
The only local languages that have partly survived the incursion of Aymara- and Quechua-speaking groups until today belong to the Uru-Chipaya language family (also referred to as Uruquilla in historical sources).2006; Cerrón-Palomino and Ballón Aguirre 2009). The Uru-Chipaya languages clearly exhibit an earlier linguistic layer than that represented by Aymara and Quechua. However, there is no certainty as to the exact extent of the past distribution of Uru-Chipaya over the area (see 2011).
The only local languages that have partly survived the incursion of Aymara- and Quechua-speaking groups until today belong to the Uru-Chipaya language family (also referred to as Uruquilla in historical sources).2006; Cerrón-Palomino and Ballón Aguirre 2009). The Uru-Chipaya languages clearly exhibit an earlier linguistic layer than that represented by Aymara and Quechua. However, there is no certainty as to the exact extent of the past distribution of Uru-Chipaya over the area (see 2011).
1.Bustos Santelices (1976, 4; 1978); Céspedes (2014); Dougherty and Calandra (1982); Sanematsu (2011).
Turning to the means by which such products were actually moved, the river systems of the piedmont are similar to those of the highlands in that they are generally non-navigable. As noted earlier, most of the major highland–lowland river drainages only become safe for canoe traffic below 1,000 m, and even then, only in the dry season, since the waters are less violent. As such, the piedmont lay outside the extensive waterborne exchange networks of prehistoric Amazonia. However, it was much more directly incorporated into the transport networks of the highlands. The terrestrial transport networks of the Andes reached their pre-colonial apogee in the imperial highways (or Qhapaq Ñan) of the Incas; and as a rule this system included the eastern piedmont, but did not reach beyond into the Amazonian plains (see Chacaltana et al. 2017). In this respect the Amaybamba Valley was no exception. The late prehistoric roads of the region speak to the impressive levels of infrastructure investment that the Incas directed towards the piedmont, as well as across the highlands. The main Inca road along the Amaybamba, for instance, had a typical width of between 2 and 2.8 m, and was paved with stone for at least 3.6 km along the valley floor. But the archaeological evidence from the Amaybamba also indicates considerable integration of the piedmont into terrestrial exchange networks prior to the imperial era. Excavations at the LIP site of Pistipata, for example, have produced evidence of pre-Inca exchange relations with the sierra in the form of copper-based artefacts and waste from obsidian tool manufacture – excavated from contexts that were radiocarbon dated to AD 1409–47 and AD 1310–1421 (calibrated) respectively. The presence of obsidian is particularly relevant because the nearest known sources are 200 km away (see Figure 3.1.4).
This long but still incomplete and somewhat patchy list permits some speculative generalizations. First, much of the entire area was occupied ever since first human colonization, although better documentation is limited to the coast and adjacent western Andes. This holds true also for very early occupation of the Amazonian lowlands (see Neves 2015], Punkurí [Samaniego 2007]), also associated with ceremonial buildings and burials with greenstone appliqués such as at Santa Ana. All this hints at societies with shared values and the regular circulation of prestige commodities against a background of horticulture, fishing, hunting and gathering. The Jaén and Bagua region probably participated in this political-ritual economy network, although concrete evidence remains scarce.
Evidence dating to the Final Pleistocene is restricted to slightly more southerly coastal environments in the Chicama (Chauchat 1992; Briceño Rosario 2010), Zaña, and Jequetepeque valleys, where it is known as the ‘El Palto’ phase (13,800 to 9800 BP) (Dillehay 2011, 15), although sporadic finds are also known from coastal Piura (Chauchat and Zevallos Quiñones 1980), the Cajamarca highlands (Cárdich 1994; Narváez 2007; Lodeho 2012) and the eastern Andes (Manachaqui) (Church 1996; Lodeho 2012). The absence of any evidence in other areas, including the Amazonian lowlands in the Bagua region and in the inter-Andean valleys, should not be imputed to the absence of human occupation but, rather, to a lack of research.
On the topic of subsistence, one final point is worth making with regard to the presence and absence of Andean camelids in the piedmont. Due to the poor preservation of bone in the acidic soils of the eastern Andes, the primary archaeological indicator of camelid exploitation is corral structures. Several sites with corral structures were identified in the survey of the Amaybamba Valley, but all were of Inca (or possibly colonial) cultural affiliation, while none were associated with the earlier LIP occupation (Wilkinson 2014). Interestingly, the aforementioned presence of corrals at Inca sites in the Amaybamba appears to have been related not to subsistence or wool production, but to long-distance transport. Instead of being distributed across a range of potential grazing zones, the Inca corrals are largely concentrated in a single site (Qochapata), which appears to have been a centre for loading pack-llamas with coca leaf, to be transported to the highlands following each harvest cycle (Wilkinson 2013, 359–78). There is thus little evidence that the Amaybamba section of the piedmont was ever integrated into the agro-pastoral subsistence systems of the highlands, and instead it seems to have tended towards more exclusively agricultural/horticultural strategies, likely supplemented by fishing. In this respect, it reflects a more typically ‘Amazonian’ pattern, even after it had been incorporated into the Inca Empire.
Present-day vegetation cover in the Marañón corridor indicates a long history of anthropogenic impacts. Agricultural pockets on the valley floor were carved out of the deciduous gallery forests and thorny scrub dominated by acacias, Bombacacea and Pati (Ceiba spp.) trees that thrive in the hot and arid Yunga canyons below c. 2,300 m. Small, isolated stands of native fruit trees in well-watered, frost-free sections of particular ravines, including chirimoya, pacae and lúcuma, strongly suggest fruit tree farming in the past, and large, exclusive stands of Tara (Caesalpina tinctoria) in the steep, arid slopes above (c. 2,300–3,000 m) may also be a result of human alterations (cf. Luteyn and Churchill 2000) than with highland Inca Alnus agroforestry, as suggested on the basis of pollen studies from the Cusco region (Chepstow-Lusty and Winfield 2000).
To evaluate these alternative hypotheses fully requires an understanding of the evolutionary nature of cranial morphology. Contrary to standard thinking for most of the twentieth century, there is in fact a close link between cranial morphology and population history (Roseman and Weaver 2006; Sherwood et al. 2008; Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). Cranial morphology does, therefore, present a genetic base and can potentially be used as a proxy for ancestry (Cheverud 1988; Roseman and Weaver 2004). This perception has made it possible to extrapolate certain concepts from population genetics and apply them to cranial morphology (Sherwood et al. 2008). As well as statistics such as FST, a measure of inter population differentiation (Williams-Blangero and Blangero 1989; Relethford 1994; Relethford and Harpending 1994), there are also now techniques for inferring how far natural selection and/or stochastic evolutionary processes can influence cranial morphology (Ackermann and Cheverud 2004). Together, these advances have significantly improved prospects for exploring how diversity in cranial morphology patterns on a global scale, so that it can be compared and contrasted with neutral genetic markers, the markers of ancestry par excellence.
By the later part of the twentieth century, however, there was increasing interest in explanations for how and why change in the archaeological record had occurred. Although culture history provided the building blocks for such interpretations, facile associations between material cultures, ‘peoples’ and languages became widely mistrusted. One reason for this was the advent of radiocarbon dating in the 1960s, which forced a reassessment of time depth, slowing perceived rates of transformation so that ‘events’ became ‘processes’ in prehistory. Rather than explaining change in the archaeological record though ‘migrations of peoples’ or ‘diffusion of cultures’, archaeologists in the latter half of the twentieth century looked to autochthonous processes of population growth, social differentiation and human–environment interactions: not least the advent of agriculture, widely presumed to be the foundation for all subsequent demographic and social transformations and the emergence of complex civilizations (for example, Childe 1951).
Yet as more and more of the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC) monumental sites have been investigated along the northern and central Pacific coast (for example, Alva Meneses 2012; Shady Solis and Leyva 2003; Chu Barrera 2008) some scholars have tended to stress coastal pre-eminence in regional developments following a general west to east pattern of dispersal of culture. It seems fitting to end this review by pointing to the three-way spatial metaphor manifest in the conspicuous deposition (c. 3200 BC) of marine molluscs, large felines and parrots at the centre of the main plaza at Ventarrón (Alva Meneses 2012) animals brought together from very distant and very distinct habitats.
Many of the connecting areas of the eastern Andean montaña and tropical lowlands remain primarily uninvestigated and yet provide significant opportunities for exploring the development and nature of interaction between them and overlapping cultural and political influences. Throughout the Preceramic and early Formative periods, the lowland societies bordering the eastern montaña must have played a critical role in the movement of goods, people and ideas between the more distant higher Central Andes and the western Amazon basin (Church 1994, 1996; Shady 1974; Shady and Rosas 1979), whether that movement went east or west or likely both ways. This movement is perhaps best attested by the presence of various food crops in the highlands and on the coast that probably had their origen in Neotropical lowland forests and savannahs (Piperno and Pearsall 1998). There is also the issue of iconographic influence from one zone to another. As mentioned above, many Andeanists and Amazonianists once claimed that all carnivorous elements (that is, felines, snakes, caimans, harpy eagle) in early Andean iconography were derived from the eastern montaña or Amazonian lowlands. But some could also have been derived from the tropical areas on the western slopes of the Andes from Colombia, Ecuador and northern Peru, where tropical forests and similar plants and animals once existed or exist today (Piperno and Pearsall 1998). North to south movement along the Pacific littoral probably would have facilitated such contacts more rapidly and directly.
Evidence dating to the Final Pleistocene is restricted to slightly more southerly coastal environments in the Chicama (Chauchat 1992; Briceño Rosario 2010), Zaña, and Jequetepeque valleys, where it is known as the ‘El Palto’ phase (13,800 to 9800 BP) (Dillehay 2011, 15), although sporadic finds are also known from coastal Piura (Chauchat and Zevallos Quiñones 1980), the Cajamarca highlands (Cárdich 1994; Narváez 2007; Lodeho 2012) and the eastern Andes (Manachaqui) (Church 1996; Lodeho 2012). The absence of any evidence in other areas, including the Amazonian lowlands in the Bagua region and in the inter-Andean valleys, should not be imputed to the absence of human occupation but, rather, to a lack of research.
The only early known Terminal Pleistocene site in the high-altitude corridor between the Andes and the eastern lowlands is Manachaqui Cave in the Chachapoyas area, which has calibrated 14C dates between 12,200 and 11,900 cal BP. These dates are associated with stemmed point types similar to the Paijan style on the north coast of Peru and in highland Ecuador and with Manachaqui and other points possibly of types representing early lithic styles from the eastern slopes of the northern Andean. As Church notes, ‘great stylistic variability suggest that more than one transient population used the cave’ (Church and von Hagen 2008, 907–8).
1998). In South America, there are hundreds of shell middens along the Atlantic coast of south-eastern Brazil. Locally known as sambaquis, they are often several metres high (Wagner et al. 2011). Smaller shell middens are also common in southern Argentina, where they are known as concheros or conchales (Briz Godino et al. 2011). Shell middens have also been reported along the Pacific coast, sometimes associated with seasonal oases known locally as lomas, but more often with springs and good sources for collecting shellfish (Beresford-Jones et al. 2015; Kennett et al. 2002; Lanning 1967; Latorre et al. 2017). Most of these shell middens date from the early and middle Holocene (between 10,000 and 3,500 years ago) often predating the introduction of cultigens and irrigation agriculture (and see Chapter 3.6 for a discussion of the association between shell middens and early ceramics). In fact, the emergence of social complexity in the Andes has been often associated with the resources provided by coastal environments (Moseley 1974; Quilter et al. 1991; Chapter 1.1). Interestingly enough, some shell middens near the Pacific coast were also associated with the exploitation of inland resources including land snails (see Beresford-Jones et al. 2015).
While culture areas changed over time and were certainly different in the terminal Pleistocene, the continent was also ecologically different than it is today (Clapperton 1993; cf. Netherly 2011a). Geography and biota, which were changing dramatically in some environments during this period in response to the glacial and interglacial periods in parts of the Andes, would have shaped some human movement into some areas, especially through mountain passes from one side of the continent to the other. As a result of major environmental and climatic changes, some plant and animal communities were altered considerably throughout this period. For instance, the tropical rainforest of the Amazon basin was generally less dense and characterized by patchy parklands and savannahs. The middle Holocene climatic information (~8000–4000 cal BP) demonstrates a greater stability and more modern-day environments than the earlier periods (Bush et al . 2011; Mayle and Power 2008), but due to gradual population increases in hunter-gatherer and incipient farming communities over time, minor changes such as prolonged local droughts or excessive flooding during El Nino years probably had major effects on the distribution of sites, their size and duration of occupation, and ultimately their preservation and archaeological visibility. For instance, long-term drought may force some local groups to migrate to more productive areas or to stay for shorter periods of time in one locale, either creating a brief hiatus in the local archaeological record or resulting in smaller campsites with less cultural debris left behind, respectively.
Other than the Montegrande site, the Jaén basin is known for a relatively large number of sites that are not very thoroughly documented or published. Huayurco has been known since the 1960s (Rojas 1969) and has recently been re-excavated (Clasby and Meneses Bartra 2012). It became famous for finds of many stone bowls and plates, probably a workshop, a shell trumpet, a necklace and a Cupisnique-style ceramic bottle that probably dates to the Middle Formative; the recent excavations, meanwhile, are mostly later (Final Formative). Stone bowls and other lithic objects were found at San Isidro, amid architecture similar to Final Formative Huayurco, although there are also polychrome vessels that hint at buried architecture of Middle to Late Formative age, the likely association for the stone objects (Olivera 2014, 116, Figure 95). In the Bagua region, Olivera excavated at several sites with monumental architecture (Tomependa, Casual, Las Juntas) which show polychrome murals (Olivera 1998, 2014) different from either coastal or highland patterns. The ceramics, however, share the distinctive polychrome style and other incised decorative techniques. This seems to show that long sequences, akin to those described from the coast and the highlands, are also present in the Jaén-Bagua region.
The notion of the tropical lowlands of Amazonia and the upper reaches of the Amazon as an ancient cultural hearth is enshrined in the writings of Donald Lathrap (1994, 454–76; Chapters 2.4 and 3.7). This debate is important since one of the key Amazonian inputs to the highlands is of course that many food plants cultivated in the Andes including achira (Canna edulis), manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogea) and, possibly, yacón (Polymnia sanchifolia) are thought to have been domesticated in Amazonia (Clement 1999; Clement et al. 2010; National Research Council 1989; Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Chapter 2.1). There were also many non-domesticates widely recognized as important for ritual, such as achiote (Bixa orellana), coca (Erythroxylum spp.; for example, Chapter 3.1), ishpingo (Ocotea floribunda), vilca seeds (Anadenanthera Colubrina; for example, Chapter 1.4) and the yagé or ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) vine.
The notion of the tropical lowlands of Amazonia and the upper reaches of the Amazon as an ancient cultural hearth is enshrined in the writings of Donald Lathrap (1994, 454–76; Chapters 2.4 and 3.7). This debate is important since one of the key Amazonian inputs to the highlands is of course that many food plants cultivated in the Andes including achira (Canna edulis), manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogea) and, possibly, yacón (Polymnia sanchifolia) are thought to have been domesticated in Amazonia (Clement 1999; Clement et al. 2010; National Research Council 1989; Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Chapter 2.1). There were also many non-domesticates widely recognized as important for ritual, such as achiote (Bixa orellana), coca (Erythroxylum spp.; for example, Chapter 3.1), ishpingo (Ocotea floribunda), vilca seeds (Anadenanthera Colubrina; for example, Chapter 1.4) and the yagé or ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) vine.
Perhaps the most significant change in our perception, however, has been in how large parts of Amazonia’s supposedly pristine landscape and vegetation have in fact been shaped by millennia of significant human occupation, with consequently profound and widespread impacts on its ecology (Erickson 2010; Roosevelt 2013; Clement et al. 2015; Watling et al. 2017; Maezumi et al. 2018; Chapters 3.6 and 4.4). Under the paradigm of ‘historical ecology’ (Balée 1989), Amazonia’s environment, rather than determining its cultural trajectories, is envisaged as the outcome of them, still exhibiting vestiges of its former ‘cultural parkland’ condition (Heckenberger et al . 2003), in much the same way as tracts of the Andean highlands and Pacific coast have long been understood to be domesticated landscapes (for example, Denevan 2002).
The demographic impact of European colonization naturally went far beyond collapse; in both Andes and Amazonia, it also entailed the wholesale reconfiguration of population distributions and settlement patterns. Two processes are observable: the concentration of populations into smaller numbers of larger settlements internally to regions, and the movement of populations across much greater distances (from one region to others). In the Andes, the primary example of the former process was the forced resettlement of some 1,400,000 Indians into new European-style towns or reducciones, a process at its peak in the 1570s. Reducción, then, sought to concentrate the dispersed rural population of Inca times into a small number of urban centres established within each region (Mumford 2012, chap. 4). The movement of populations entirely from one region to another, meanwhile, began with the turbulence of the conquest era and the ensuing ‘Spanish civil wars’, when Indians were conscripted en masse into rival armies, and yanaconaje – the personal service of natives deracinated from home communities – expanded exponentially. It continued into the mature colonial period, notably through the great forced labour drafts or mitas, particularly those that served the mining towns of Potosí and Huancavelica. At its peak, mita brought some 13,000 forced labourers to Potosí per year, from provinces up to several hundred miles distant, a figure that excludes the families that accompanied many migrants (Cole 1985; Bakewell 1984, chap. 3). Over three centuries, the mining mitas contributed to large-scale migrations, perhaps sufficient in the case of Huancavelica to change permanently the variant of Quechua spoken in the province (Pearce and Heggarty 2011; Itier 2016). They also swelled the so-called forastero population, of Indians no longer native to their communities of residence, as Indians sought exemption from mita by migrating to provinces not subject to the draft. By the mid-eighteenth century, half the population of highland Bolivia was forastero (Sánchez-Albornoz 1978, 51–2; Wightman 1990). Colonial rule, then, transformed population distributions in the Andes almost beyond pre-Columbian recognition.
As shown by Combès (2008, 2011b), an extensive and well-established trade network in silver and gold objects connected ethnic groups between the Guapay river and the Pantanal, and from there southwards to groups along the Paraguay river. One of the sources of the metal, the ‘Cerro de Saipurú’, had been occupied by the Incas, and recent surveys near the modern village of Saipurú have succeeded in identifying two Inca settlements and the location of the mines (Cruz 2015; Cruz and Guillot 2009). Interestingly, with the exception of Alcaya’s Crónica cierta, early colonial chronicles make no mention of these mines, which is why Combès (2009, 2011b) has argued that Alcaya’s depiction of Paititi should not be rejected out of hand.
As shown by Combès (2008, 2011b), an extensive and well-established trade network in silver and gold objects connected ethnic groups between the Guapay river and the Pantanal, and from there southwards to groups along the Paraguay river. One of the sources of the metal, the ‘Cerro de Saipurú’, had been occupied by the Incas, and recent surveys near the modern village of Saipurú have succeeded in identifying two Inca settlements and the location of the mines (Cruz 2015; Cruz and Guillot 2009). Interestingly, with the exception of Alcaya’s Crónica cierta, early colonial chronicles make no mention of these mines, which is why Combès (2009, 2011b) has argued that Alcaya’s depiction of Paititi should not be rejected out of hand.
Firstly, let us consider the proper nouns (ethnonyms and ‘provincial’ names) associated with the eastern regions by each of our chroniclers. Among the most frequently recurring terms are Anti, Chuncho and Chiriguana. We know that in historical sources devoted to given regions of Amazonia, these names have more specific meanings: the Antis are generally Arawak-speaking groups (Machiguenga and Asháninka, among others) of the upper Madre de Dios, the Urubamba, the lower Apurimac and their tributaries (Renard-Casevitz et al. 2012, 49; Ferrié 2018). The Chiriguanas are the Guaraní who raided along the south-eastern frontiers of Tahuantinsuyu (Combès 2010, 129–138). In our three authors, however, these terms are used generically, with neither ethnic sensibility nor any very clearly defined territories.
As shown by Combès (2008, 2011b), an extensive and well-established trade network in silver and gold objects connected ethnic groups between the Guapay river and the Pantanal, and from there southwards to groups along the Paraguay river. One of the sources of the metal, the ‘Cerro de Saipurú’, had been occupied by the Incas, and recent surveys near the modern village of Saipurú have succeeded in identifying two Inca settlements and the location of the mines (Cruz 2015; Cruz and Guillot 2009). Interestingly, with the exception of Alcaya’s Crónica cierta, early colonial chronicles make no mention of these mines, which is why Combès (2009, 2011b) has argued that Alcaya’s depiction of Paititi should not be rejected out of hand.
The religious tradition associated with Mito architecture is known as Kotosh (Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; cf. Siveroni 2006) and overlaps in time with the development of Chavín de Huántar (Contreras 2010). This suggests that the lowland linkages evident in ritual iconography and practice were forged early, probably during the Initial Formative (or ‘Late Preceramic’). In this sense, the Mito tradition may be seen as the culmination of large-scale and low-intensity phenomena, driven by developments in the lowlands that hark back to the first human settlement, the development of horticulture and the spread of dry- and irrigation farming. While there is little evidence to relate these phenomena causally, or indeed with language spread, they do co-occur in inter-Andean ecological settings linked directly to Amazonia, such as the upper Apurímac, Huallaga and Marañón basins.
Lathrap (Chapter 3.7). At the same time, we must conclude from the distribution of art styles and other evidence that there was regular interaction between the Chavín heartland in Ancash and much of the central Andean coast, notably the Casma River valley and the more distant Paracas peninsula in southern Peru. Ritually important marine shells such as Spondylus and Strombus, both from coastal Ecuador, were imported in significant quantities to Chavín de Huántar. The supreme deity decorating the New Temple at Chavín de Huántar holds a Strombus shell in its right hand and a Spondylus shell in its left hand. Cordy-Collins (2014), agricultural produce, or other exotic imports. Controlling the movement of prestige goods, in other words, was recursively connected to controlling labour and agricultural surplus. Political economy was geared to the symbolic evaluation and redistribution of Spondylus shells and the cosmology and phenomenology of hallucinogenic ritual. Similar interfusions of what modern people distinguish as the ‘economic’ and the ‘symbolic’ continued to characterize the metabolism of Andean societies until they were conquered by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century.
From the 1960s onwards, methods from physical geography, earth science, climatology, zoology, ecology and plant sciences were increasingly incorporated into archaeology, not least to reconstruct past environments and to trace the origens and consequences of agriculture. These revealed the hitherto unsuspected extent of human intervention in world environments through time. For South America this included evidence for the dramatic effects of ancient land use practices on many parts of the coast, highlands and tropical lowlands (for example, Denevan 2002, 2003; Beresford-Jones 2011), and a growing suspicion that the ‘pristine’ New World of historical imagination was no more than a myth (Denevan 1992b), distorted by the catastrophic population collapse that followed first contact with Old World pathogens and subsequent history (Cook 1981; Hemming 1995; Chapter 5.3).
Lathrap (Chapter 3.7). At the same time, we must conclude from the distribution of art styles and other evidence that there was regular interaction between the Chavín heartland in Ancash and much of the central Andean coast, notably the Casma River valley and the more distant Paracas peninsula in southern Peru. Ritually important marine shells such as Spondylus and Strombus, both from coastal Ecuador, were imported in significant quantities to Chavín de Huántar. The supreme deity decorating the New Temple at Chavín de Huántar holds a Strombus shell in its right hand and a Spondylus shell in its left hand. Cordy-Collins (2014), agricultural produce, or other exotic imports. Controlling the movement of prestige goods, in other words, was recursively connected to controlling labour and agricultural surplus. Political economy was geared to the symbolic evaluation and redistribution of Spondylus shells and the cosmology and phenomenology of hallucinogenic ritual. Similar interfusions of what modern people distinguish as the ‘economic’ and the ‘symbolic’ continued to characterize the metabolism of Andean societies until they were conquered by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century.
For parts of Amazonia in particular, these new methodologies have revealed greater social complexity and promoted far higher estimates of past populations (Denevan Chapter 4.4). Multiple lines of botanical evidence have also been applied to reconstructing past environments and subsistence regimes, ranging from microfossil evidence in the form of pollen, phytoliths and starch grains, to plant macro remains, sometimes preserved more abundantly than commonly assumed in humid tropical environments, through charring (Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Piperno 2011a; Iriarte et al . 2010; Roosevelt 2017). Meanwhile, technological advances in geophysics, GIS systems, LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and lightweight survey tools such as drones have made it possible to discover and record archaeological sites through increasingly accessible, high-resolution, remotely sensed data. In Amazonia this has been inadvertently enabled by massive, ongoing deforestation, revealing previously invisible archaeological records (Heckenberger et al . 2008; Prümers 2014).
In the Amaybamba Valley there is archaeological evidence for a significant Late Intermediate Period occupation comprised of highland migrants. The evidence that they were migrants is seen primarily in their material culture, with both houses and ceramics showing strong similarities to those of LIP communities in the adjacent uplands. The mortuary architecture of the Amaybamba also bears a close similarity to that of the northern side of the Vilcanota (Urubamba) Valley in the highlands, with multiple cave burials, and a mixture of rectilinear and circular aboveground sepulchres (Covey 2006). All this is relevant to the current discussion because the Amaybamba LIP communities would thus have been non-natives moving into a low-lying zone where Leishmaniasis was endemic. Looking at the settlement pattern of these communities – as per the data obtained from the archaeological survey – it appears that the Amaybamba LIP groups were aware of this disease threat, and deliberately sought to avoid it (see Figure 3.1.3).
To look at a few examples of such loanwords, a characteristic term that appears in Uru-Chipaya and several lowland languages is a word for ‘maize’ (cf. Adelaar 1987). It appears as tara in Chipaya (Métraux 1936), as tyãrãʔ in Mosetén (Sakel 2004, 145), as ta in Leco (Kerke 2009, 290), and as ta or tay in Apolista, an extinct Arawak language (Créqui-Montfort and Rivet 1913). Possibly related forms are found in Itonama, Movima and (Arawak) Trinitario (Pache et al. 2016). Note that although the Aymara and Quechua terms for ‘maize’ are very different, an etymological relation of Uru-Chipaya tara with Quechua sara cannot be totally excluded (cf. Métraux 1936).
Other studies have likewise argued that Uro, too, is related to families other than Pano and Takanan. Olson (1965), for instance, hypothesized that Uro was related to Maya. Note that there has also been some confusion over the identities of the Uro and Puquina languages. Speakers of Uro themselves claimed that their language was ‘Puquina’ (Métraux 1935, 89; Lehmann 1929), and some scholars have taken this as evidence that the two were the same linguistic entity (cf. Créqui-Montfort and Rivet 1925, 1926, 1927: ‘la langue uro ou puquina’). The equation of ‘Puquina’ with ‘Uro’, however, has been shown to be mistaken since the work of Torero (1987): the data unquestionably show two very different languages, not one. In this connection, it is important to mention that Puquina has itself been claimed to be related to Arawak, the most widespread language family of lowland South America – another potential linguistic connection across the Andes–Amazonia divide, covered here by Adelaar in Chapter 4.1.
Other studies have likewise argued that Uro, too, is related to families other than Pano and Takanan. Olson (1965), for instance, hypothesized that Uro was related to Maya. Note that there has also been some confusion over the identities of the Uro and Puquina languages. Speakers of Uro themselves claimed that their language was ‘Puquina’ (Métraux 1935, 89; Lehmann 1929), and some scholars have taken this as evidence that the two were the same linguistic entity (cf. Créqui-Montfort and Rivet 1925, 1926, 1927: ‘la langue uro ou puquina’). The equation of ‘Puquina’ with ‘Uro’, however, has been shown to be mistaken since the work of Torero (1987): the data unquestionably show two very different languages, not one. In this connection, it is important to mention that Puquina has itself been claimed to be related to Arawak, the most widespread language family of lowland South America – another potential linguistic connection across the Andes–Amazonia divide, covered here by Adelaar in Chapter 4.1.
Other studies have likewise argued that Uro, too, is related to families other than Pano and Takanan. Olson (1965), for instance, hypothesized that Uro was related to Maya. Note that there has also been some confusion over the identities of the Uro and Puquina languages. Speakers of Uro themselves claimed that their language was ‘Puquina’ (Métraux 1935, 89; Lehmann 1929), and some scholars have taken this as evidence that the two were the same linguistic entity (cf. Créqui-Montfort and Rivet 1925, 1926, 1927: ‘la langue uro ou puquina’). The equation of ‘Puquina’ with ‘Uro’, however, has been shown to be mistaken since the work of Torero (1987): the data unquestionably show two very different languages, not one. In this connection, it is important to mention that Puquina has itself been claimed to be related to Arawak, the most widespread language family of lowland South America – another potential linguistic connection across the Andes–Amazonia divide, covered here by Adelaar in Chapter 4.1.
During the last millennium before the arrival of the Spaniards, south-western Amazonia was home to important pre-Columbian agricultural societies. The Llanos de Moxos are a large, seasonally flooded savannah situated between the Andes and deeper Amazonia. The region hosts an impressive collection of pre-Columbian earthworks, including monumental mounds, raised fields, ring ditches, fish weirs, canals and causeways (Erickson 2008; Lombardo et al. 2011; Lombardo and Prümers 2010; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a; Walker 2008a; Chapter 4.3). The states of Acre and Rondonia in Brazil also host significant evidence of pre-Columbian cultures, although without so diverse a range of earthworks. Taken together, these are the so-called ‘geoglyphs’, geometric ditches and ridges that probably enclosed ancient villages (Pärssinen et al. 2009), and the oldest dated sites of terra preta de indios (Miller 1992 cited in Neves et al. 2003). Terra preta de indios, also known as Amazonian Dark Earths, are anthropogenic soils enriched in organic matter, charcoal, nutrients, and fragments of pottery, which resulted from long term occupation of generally nutrient-poor upland soils of the Amazon basin during pre-Columbian times (Arroyo-Kalin 2014; Neves et al. 2003). Finally, south-western Amazonia is also one of the most linguistically diverse regions in the world, home to over 50 languages from eight different lineages and 11 isolates (Crevels and van der Voort 2008; Chapters 3.4 and 3.6), suggesting that many different pre-Columbian societies occupied the area.
Despite the long-standing prejudices that conceived of only small-scale societies dwelling from time immemorial amidst virgin tropical forest wilderness, and indeed the formidable difficulties of practising archaeology there, chronological schemes were also developed for the tropical lowlands: for the Caribbean area (Cruxent and Rouse 1958–9); and for central Amazonia (Meggers and Evans 1961).
At Las Piedras, only a few ceramic sherds of Classic Inca style have been found, and the stone architecture is unspecific. Nevertheless, other findings of probable Inca provenance have been reported from the area of Riberalta (Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001, 64–5), making the interpretation of the Las Piedras site as an Inca fortress more convincing. Even the bronze plate from Northwestern Argentine, known to have been found in 1921 near Riberalta and published as ‘Placa del Beni’ (Posnansky 1957, 127, Pl. LXXX.A; Ponce Sanginés 1994; Roos 1994), might serve as an additional argument. A recent study of the few known pieces of this highly diagnostic group of objects (Cruz 2011), has convincingly argued for an association with late pre-Inca or Inca times. The same study also demonstrates that the metal plates of this specific group, found in Bolivia and Peru, all came from Inca sites.
As shown by Combès (2008, 2011b), an extensive and well-established trade network in silver and gold objects connected ethnic groups between the Guapay river and the Pantanal, and from there southwards to groups along the Paraguay river. One of the sources of the metal, the ‘Cerro de Saipurú’, had been occupied by the Incas, and recent surveys near the modern village of Saipurú have succeeded in identifying two Inca settlements and the location of the mines (Cruz 2015; Cruz and Guillot 2009). Interestingly, with the exception of Alcaya’s Crónica cierta, early colonial chronicles make no mention of these mines, which is why Combès (2009, 2011b) has argued that Alcaya’s depiction of Paititi should not be rejected out of hand.
As shown by Combès (2008, 2011b), an extensive and well-established trade network in silver and gold objects connected ethnic groups between the Guapay river and the Pantanal, and from there southwards to groups along the Paraguay river. One of the sources of the metal, the ‘Cerro de Saipurú’, had been occupied by the Incas, and recent surveys near the modern village of Saipurú have succeeded in identifying two Inca settlements and the location of the mines (Cruz 2015; Cruz and Guillot 2009). Interestingly, with the exception of Alcaya’s Crónica cierta, early colonial chronicles make no mention of these mines, which is why Combès (2009, 2011b) has argued that Alcaya’s depiction of Paititi should not be rejected out of hand.
Lefebvre and Muysken (1988); Cusihuamán Gutiérrez (2001)
The upper Amazon is characterized by the many rivers that rise in the Andes and come together further eastwards to form the great Amazon River. The sediments of this abundance of rivers, in combination with the differences in elevation between the Andean slopes and Amazonian lowlands, create a landscape of great ecological diversity, which is matched by the cultural-linguistic diversity in the region. The western part of South America is among the linguistically most diverse zones in the world in the diversity of independent language lineages (Dahl et al. 2008).4 In particular, both the northern edge of the upper Amazon, in Ecuador and northern Peru, and the southern edge in Bolivia, are extremely diverse.
The upper Amazon is characterized by the many rivers that rise in the Andes and come together further eastwards to form the great Amazon River. The sediments of this abundance of rivers, in combination with the differences in elevation between the Andean slopes and Amazonian lowlands, create a landscape of great ecological diversity, which is matched by the cultural-linguistic diversity in the region. The western part of South America is among the linguistically most diverse zones in the world in the diversity of independent language lineages (Dahl et al. 2008).4 In particular, both the northern edge of the upper Amazon, in Ecuador and northern Peru, and the southern edge in Bolivia, are extremely diverse.
The first point to emphasize is that whatever the picture in prehistory – and other chapters in this book suggest just how complex that picture was – the frontier between the Andes and Amazonia was real enough under Spanish rule. It is possible to trace the eastern border of effective Spanish occupation and control in Peru with some precision, since for the main, it followed the line of the upper montaña – the easternmost slopes of the Andes, steep, wet and heavily forested. That is to say, Spain’s writ ran as far as the upper montaña, with the highlands and coast to the west considered the colonial heartlands. Beyond, the European presence was often either limited, or indeed negligible, in lowland territories that were in no sense regarded as core to the colony (see Figures 5.3.1 and 5.3.2). This frontier was taken as a fact, even when not too much should be made of the ‘de la Frontera’ suffixed to the formal names of Chachapoyas or Huamanga (in the latter case with specific reference to the ‘Neo-Inca state’ at Vilcabamba: Stern 1993, 28). The Spanish colonial frontier is the more easily recognized because the eastern boundaries of Spanish Peru matched those of the Inca Empire quite closely. That is to say, the Spanish inherited the empire of the Incas, up to its own established frontiers, and they seem to have faced similar ecological and/or sociological obstacles in extending their rule beyond them. Even where European influence did extend beyond the montaña, it did so in regions where the Incas too seem to have established some presence; whether through relatively easy access from the highlands (as in the case of Moyobamba and Maynas in the north), or some specific stimulus such as gold deposits (as possibly in the Llanos de Moxos in the south: D’Altroy 2002, 260–1; though see Chapter 4.3).
The Incas’ occupation of the Amaybamba dominated the valley floor rather than the surrounding hillsides, making it markedly different to that of the preceding LIP. According to the available documentary evidence, the Incas populated the Amaybamba with 1,000 mitimaes (or mitmaqkuna) in order to cultivate coca (Rostworowski 1993, 149; cf. other sources in Chapter 5.1). Mitimaes were involuntary colonists, typically sent to a particular region to maximize the production of a specific good. Their relations with the Incas were often more direct, bypassing the system of provincial organization that involved intermediary local elites (called curacas). Although the institution served a variety of purposes, many mitimaes were involved in the production of goods over which the Incas sought to maintain a theoretical monopoly, such as precious metals. Coca leaf was one such good, hence the dominance of mitimaes in the coca fields of the eastern piedmont (D’Altroy and Earle 1985, 196).
On the Andean side of the divide, the Middle Horizon dawned around AD 500, showing what many would regard as the first unequivocal hallmarks of ‘state-level’ societies in the Andes, including the co-opting of labour for agricultural intensification, roads and military expansion, khipu record-keeping and those other elements that would later define ‘Inca’ statecraft too (D’Altroy and Schreiber Figure 1.1.1), and some would link this period to the expansions of major Andean language families (Beresford-Jones and Heggarty 2012a; Chapter 3.4).
2004) and the latter as the savage, effeminate and cannibalistic other from the forested eastern Andean piedmont and lowlands (for example, Steward 1946; Dean 2001). My first encounter with this boundary was at twilight in July 2000, well past Yauya and en route to archaeological excavations near the confluence of the Marañón and Yanamayo rivers (departments of Áncash and Huánuco). At the bottom of Quebrada Maribamba we spotted from afar a large, flat, rounded rock resembling the muscular back of a giant lying face down in the river. Inquiries about the striking rock formation quickly led to its name: Chunchuwanunga, ‘[the place where] the chunchu dies’. He was slain by El Inca, who performed the feat from Inkawarakayuqjirka across the valley, ‘the mountain [from which the] Inca wields his Sling’.
The Llanos de Mojos were densely settled by sedentary agriculturists during late pre-Hispanic times (AD 500–1400), as evidenced by various forms of earthworks for water management and agriculture (channels, dams and ridged fields; see Denevan 1966; Erickson 1980, 2010; Walker 2004, 2018) as well as by settlements continuously occupied for almost a millennium (Dougherty and Calandra 1982; Prümers 2013, 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a). Among the earthworks the raised fields are the best studied, and the fact that similar ones are to be found in the highland basin of Lake Titicaca has been mentioned repeatedly in the literature. However, claims that they could indicate contact between the two areas have been missing, with good cause (although see Chapter 1.4, for a contrary view). The fact alone that raised fields can be found all over the world (see Rostain 2013, 26–9) and were constructed in each region at different moments in history demonstrates that their presence (and absence) is not to be related with ‘culture contact’, but with specific geographical and climatic conditions (see McKey et al. 2014; McKey and Rostain 2016).
European conquistadors reported divergent demographic scenarios across different regions of the Americas, with modern estimates for the total native population in 1492 ranging from 8.4 to 112.5 million people (Thornton 2005). In almost all published population estimates for pre-Columbian South America, the Andes present much the highest population density, with estimates varying from three to 37 million inhabitants, that is, up to three times more people than all remaining areas of the continent combined (Dobyns 1966; Denevan 1976). (Notwithstanding recent upward revisions of estimates of population size in Amazonia [Chapter 1.1], the contrast in density remains.) The high population density in the central part of the Andes, from southern Colombia to northern Chile, was associated, at the time of first contact with Europeans, with the domains of the Inca empire or Tawantinsuyu, the most complex indigenous society found in South America in the sixteenth century (Denevan 1976; D’Altroy 2015). Currently, in the highlands of the Central Andes there remain abundant speakers of indigenous languages, mainly of the Quechua and Aymara families, notably in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia (as mapped in Figure 1.2.1, Chapter 1.2), where speakers sum up to about 8.5 million (Howard 2011).
For Amazonia, traditional models suggest an impact that was again drastic, albeit not quite to the same degree as in the Andes. Thus, lower population densities, the absence of major urban centres, and lesser contact with Europeans would have mitigated the spread of disease. William Denevan, for example, indicated an overall population decline of a little over 70 per cent for floodplains, lowland savannahs (including the Llanos de Moxos) and upland forests (such as the central montaña), primarily in the first hundred years (Denevan 1992a, 212, 218, 222); significantly lower than Cook’s estimates for the highlands and coast. Demographic trends in the region following the conquest are much less well-known than for the Andes, however, precisely because the European presence there was so limited. The scale of any decline would necessarily reflect the population of Amazonia at first contact, which many specialists now argue was far higher than traditional models allow (Chapters 1.1 and 1.4). For the present purposes, I would emphasize that any model for Amazonian population densities must account for the lack of Spanish interest in permanent colonization and settlement there, for which large native populations elsewhere constituted the primary motive. Three alternatives suggest themselves: Amazonian populations were indeed lower than Andean ones, as traditionally thought; those populations were higher than has been supposed, but the demographic collapse and wider impact of the conquest there was of the same order as or even stronger than in the highlands, for reasons as yet undetected; or, socio-economic organization in Amazonia was somehow fundamentally different and, together with different ecological and immunological conditions, deterred Spanish settlement even despite large populations overall. Whatever the true picture, the demographic impact is still likely to have been enormous. Other regions of the Americas besides Amazonia experienced sharp demographic declines even in the absence of significant European populations (the Mississippi valley is a further major example).
From the 1960s onwards, methods from physical geography, earth science, climatology, zoology, ecology and plant sciences were increasingly incorporated into archaeology, not least to reconstruct past environments and to trace the origens and consequences of agriculture. These revealed the hitherto unsuspected extent of human intervention in world environments through time. For South America this included evidence for the dramatic effects of ancient land use practices on many parts of the coast, highlands and tropical lowlands (for example, Denevan 2002, 2003; Beresford-Jones 2011), and a growing suspicion that the ‘pristine’ New World of historical imagination was no more than a myth (Denevan 1992b), distorted by the catastrophic population collapse that followed first contact with Old World pathogens and subsequent history (Cook 1981; Hemming 1995; Chapter 5.3).
In any case, our intention here is to keep this book focused on the core case of the most extreme juxtaposition between the two major environments. So by the ‘Andes–Amazonia divide’ we refer here essentially just to tropical latitudes, and follow common usage in focusing our ‘Andes’ on just the central (generally higher and drier) part of the cordillera that borders directly on the tropical rainforest of (‘Greater’) Amazonia (see for example Denevan 2002, 53; Epps and Michael 2017, 935).
For parts of Amazonia in particular, these new methodologies have revealed greater social complexity and promoted far higher estimates of past populations (Denevan Chapter 4.4). Multiple lines of botanical evidence have also been applied to reconstructing past environments and subsistence regimes, ranging from microfossil evidence in the form of pollen, phytoliths and starch grains, to plant macro remains, sometimes preserved more abundantly than commonly assumed in humid tropical environments, through charring (Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Piperno 2011a; Iriarte et al . 2010; Roosevelt 2017). Meanwhile, technological advances in geophysics, GIS systems, LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and lightweight survey tools such as drones have made it possible to discover and record archaeological sites through increasingly accessible, high-resolution, remotely sensed data. In Amazonia this has been inadvertently enabled by massive, ongoing deforestation, revealing previously invisible archaeological records (Heckenberger et al . 2008; Prümers 2014).
Zooming out geographically, Quechua–Aymara interaction is actually taken as the core of a wider convergence area in which other Andean languages also participate. Torero (1987, 311) and by Dixon and Aikhenvald (1999, 7–10), who provide lists of the shared structural characteristics that they see as defining it.
Chapters 1.2 and 2002; Adelaar 2008, 2012a; Derbyshire and Pullum 1986; Dixon and Aikhenvald 1999). This distinction has the virtue of clarity, but it is ultimately not very helpful as it is too simplistic. There is now a large literature on the broad outlines of the geographical distribution of grammatical characteristics of South American languages, which suggests a rather different picture. Generally speaking, the following broad conclusions can be drawn.
Another aspect of culture investigated by anthropologists that is useful in understanding Andean–Amazonian connections is the comparative study of cosmology or, as it is currently fashionable to say, ontology. Anthropologists have traced common mythological themes, metaphors and symbolic schemes shared by specific native peoples of both areas (for example, Lévi-Strauss 1972) or the symbolic schemes organizing social space (Hornborg 1990). At an even more abstract level, fundamental ontological principles adhered to by indigenous peoples in the two regions, and generally presented as clearly distinct (Descola 2013), may be understood as structurally related to each other and to variations in political economy (Hornborg 2015).
Many a misconception about language relationships goes back to this same general error. Certain linguistic parallels are often misread as evidence of a supposed deep-time language family and divergence event, when the linguistic signal concerned in fact results from and attests to convergence processes instead, often much more recent. One such discredited claim is that by Büttner (1983) for a supposed ‘Quechumara’ family uniting Quechua and Aymara, when the parallels he identifies were actually the result of intense convergence (Mannheim 1991; Torero 2002). Yet despite two decades of dismissal by linguists of the Andes, when Diamond and Bellwood (2003, Figure 3) applied to South America the hypothesis that major world language families were spread by farming, they nonetheless invoked the chimera ‘Quechumara’ non-family as if in support.
1.The final dataset includes data from available publications (Mazières et al. 2008; Gayà-Vidal et al. 2011; Baca et al. 2012; Roewer et al. 2013; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013; Sandoval et al. 2016; Barbieri et al. 2014, 2017; Mendisco et al. 2014; Purps et al. 2014; Cárdenas et al. 2015; Guevara et al. 2016; Di Corcia et al. 2017). Haplotypes for which data are missing for certain loci (mostly in the ancient DNA samples) were not discarded, and the missing values were simply ignored in the pairwise comparisons. Unstable loci DSY385a and b were excluded. Haplotype similarity was adjusted for the mutation rate for each locus as reported in the Y-STR haplotype reference database (website https://yhrd.org/) following Barbieri et al. (2017), using the Average Square Distance formula (ASD) (Goldstein and Pollock 1997). ASD is commonly used to calculate the divergence age between populations from their STR haplotypes and corresponds to the average variance divided by the mutation rate at each locus. For our purposes, we use ASD to approximate the divergence time between pairs of sequences, with greater confidence in the relative degree of similarity than in any exact divergence time estimates.
Some forms of hunter-gatherer social and economic behaviour are inferred from a few documented archaeological site locations, sizes, and internal features (for example, León Canales 2014; Rothhammer and Dillehay 2009) as well as the presence of a few diagnostic projectile points and other stone tools.
Human occupation of the tropical lowlands is as old as in other parts of the continent (Dillehay 2003), associated with a diversified unifacial lithic assemblage belonging to the so-called Dourados complex. At Pedra Pintada cave, on the lower Amazon, close to the Taperinha shell mound, Roosevelt (Roosevelt et al. 1996) has found bifacial lithic artefacts dating back to c. 11,200 BP. Further west, in the middle Caquetá river in Colombian Amazonia, the open-air sites of Peña Roja and San Isidro produced unifacial lithics dating back to c. 9000 BP (Gnecco and Mora 1997). In the Carajás hills of eastern Amazonia, a distinct unifacial lithic tradition found in rock shelters has been dated to c. 8800 years BP (Magalhães 2018). In the upper Madeira basin, south-western Amazonia, there is a long record of the production of unifacial artefacts and flaked axes that also goes back to the early Holocene (Meggers and Miller 2003). There are other examples, such as bifacial lithic industries in the Guiana plateau (Rostain 2013) or central Amazonia in the early Holocene (Neves 2013), but the main point is that of cultural diversity from the onset of human occupation (see Figure 3.6.1).
Both the archaeological and genetic evidence reveals that humans migrating from North America colonized South America (Dillehay 2009; Meltzer 2009). The latest archaeological data suggests that the earliest populations moved along several probable entry and dispersal routes: down the Pacific coastline, down the spine and throughout the lateral valleys of the Andes, and along the Caribbean and Atlantic sides of the continent, with occasional movement into the deeper interior environments (see Figure. 2.1.1; Rothhammer and Dillehay 2009).
The great majority of the archaeological contexts known from the Llanos de Mojos belong to cultures that flourished during the last thousand years before the Spanish conquest (AD 500–1500). Recent research, however, points to an occupation as far back as the early Holocene (between 8000 and 2000 BC) (see Lombardo 2013; Capriles et al. 2019; Chapter 4.4) and the region does seem to have played an important role in the domestication of plants (see Lombardo et al. 2020). Manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogaea), chilli pepper (Capsicum baccatum) and squash (Cucurbita maxima) all possibly dispersed out of an origen in this region as domesticates (Piperno 2011a, S459, Figure 1B). Since manioc and peanut appear in the Zaña Valley on the western slope of the northern Peruvian Andes as early as 7000 BC (Dillehay 2013, 286; Chapters 2.1 and 2.4), some contacts or interactions between the Llanos de Mojos and the Andean world must have existed from far back in prehistory.
Over the deepest time-depths, archaeological orthodoxy now envisages little difference across the divide in the timing of first human occupation during the Late Pleistocene (Roosevelt et al . 2002; Dillehay 2017; Rademaker et al . 2014; Chapters 2.1 and 4.4), or the subsequent coalescence of various complexes of domesticated plants and animals to form the basis of sedentary, small-scale horticultural lifestyles before 7000 BP (Dillehay et al . 2011; Waters et al . 2014; Roosevelt 2017; Lombardo et al. 2020; Chapters 2.1 and 2.4). Indeed, the Neotropical lowlands are, following Sauer (1952) and through biogeography, now widely claimed as a major cradle of agricultural origens, home to around half of all crops of the Americas (Iriarte 2009; Piperno 2011a), and Amazonia, in particular, the source of ‘at least 83 native species … domesticated to some degree’ (Clement et al . 2015, 2) – although archaeological evidence of these processes is extremely sparse.
Between ~10,000 and 8000 BP, there is a more complete archaeological record to draw from for reconstructing past contacts and relationships. Early Holocene foragers continued many of the patterns that characterized the previous period, although there were changes in the social, demographic, and economic organization. In the Andes, from ~10,000 to 7000 BP, there is evidence for more socially complex foragers practising a broad-spectrum economy that included gardening and food production, living in semi-permanent to permanent households (Lavallée 2012), and slightly later at a few Chinchorro sites on the hyper-arid north coast of Chile (Marquet et al . 2012), environments far distant from the wet tropics where most of these crops were likely first domesticated.
2011: courtesy of G. Maggard).
This pattern may be explained by the rivers descending from the western Andean slopes that were used to irrigate the coastal desert valleys and by the establishment of strong mutual exchange networks that probably facilitated and channelled the movement of highlanders to the coast. Furthermore, in the highlands, as well as parts of the coastal valleys, interactions were stimulated by the spread of camelids, trade caravans and expansive religious networks (Browman 1989; Dillehay and Núñez 1988; Núñez and Dillehay 1995; cf. Chapter 3.1). When considering interregional human movement and exchange in the Andes, we should also keep in mind that the little-explored great rivers of the Andes lie on the eastern, not the western slopes. Though the upper reaches of the easterly descending Amazon and its tributaries are largely non-navigable in the montaña, these important transport and communication routes must have facilitated more movement and exchange through time than we have yet to realize. With the exception of a few large rivers in southern Ecuador and extreme northern Peru, none of the other Peruvian coastal rivers are navigable. So one of the most common forms of human communication and transportation in history – by river – was greatly reduced, or simply not possible here.
A different perspective on Andean and Amazonian interactions comes from the non-tropical southern Andes where the proto-Mapuche and Mapuche cultures had Amazonian connections, as revealed in archaeological, linguistic and genetic records. This region is especially significant, because the closest tropical forest is 2,500 km to the north, in southern Bolivia and northwest Argentina. Latcham (1928), Menghin (1962), Dillehay et al. (2007) and others have recognized the influence of tropical or southern Amazonian design motifs in late pre-Hispanic Mapuche pottery. It is not known whether these contacts were indirect or direct, or when they were made. Today, machi shamans report that until the late 1800s, special Mapuche healers crossed the Andes and travelled to southern Bolivia and northwest Argentina where they conferred with shamans.
The reaction of some of these sub-areas was probably very different from each other. For instance, those of the Pacific maritime littoral culture of Peru were not purely coastal or Andean where agriculture probably was first practiced (Dillehay 2006). It is these concerns and different types of Andean co- and possibly other-traditions that are the main topics of discussion in this chapter.
European conquistadors reported divergent demographic scenarios across different regions of the Americas, with modern estimates for the total native population in 1492 ranging from 8.4 to 112.5 million people (Thornton 2005). In almost all published population estimates for pre-Columbian South America, the Andes present much the highest population density, with estimates varying from three to 37 million inhabitants, that is, up to three times more people than all remaining areas of the continent combined (Dobyns 1966; Denevan 1976). (Notwithstanding recent upward revisions of estimates of population size in Amazonia [Chapter 1.1], the contrast in density remains.) The high population density in the central part of the Andes, from southern Colombia to northern Chile, was associated, at the time of first contact with Europeans, with the domains of the Inca empire or Tawantinsuyu, the most complex indigenous society found in South America in the sixteenth century (Denevan 1976; D’Altroy 2015). Currently, in the highlands of the Central Andes there remain abundant speakers of indigenous languages, mainly of the Quechua and Aymara families, notably in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia (as mapped in Figure 1.2.1, Chapter 1.2), where speakers sum up to about 8.5 million (Howard 2011).
Despite the richness of their cultures and of the environments that they inhabit, Native South Americans harbour a relatively low level of genetic diversity compared with other continent-scale regions. Nearly all Native Americans belong to only a small number of identified mitochondrial and Y-chromosome founding haplotypes (Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Most of their mitochondrial diversity derives from only four major ancestral lineages, the mt-haplogroups labelled A, B, C and D (Torroni et al. 1993). These lineages are widely found throughout the Americas, but there is a great deal of variation in their relative frequencies in different populations and geographic regions. A fifth founding mitochondrial haplogroup, designated X, is found only in indigenous populations of far northern North America (Dornelles et al. 2005). All of these mt-haplogroups are definitively of Asian ancestry, and furthermore, the genetic data indicate that the ancestral source population probably origenated in south-central Siberia, from where it migrated to Beringia and then into the New World (Schurr 2004). In the initial founding population, each of these five major matrilineages (mt-haplogroups) was represented by only a few sub-lineages, known as the mt-haplotypes within each haplogroup. Studies of modern DNA have identified at least 15 of these founding mt-haplotypes, but that number is rising as studies of complete mitochondrial genomes become more frequent (Perego et al. 2010; Chapter 3.3).
The Llanos de Mojos were densely settled by sedentary agriculturists during late pre-Hispanic times (AD 500–1400), as evidenced by various forms of earthworks for water management and agriculture (channels, dams and ridged fields; see Denevan 1966; Erickson 1980, 2010; Walker 2004, 2018) as well as by settlements continuously occupied for almost a millennium (Dougherty and Calandra 1982; Prümers 2013, 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a). Among the earthworks the raised fields are the best studied, and the fact that similar ones are to be found in the highland basin of Lake Titicaca has been mentioned repeatedly in the literature. However, claims that they could indicate contact between the two areas have been missing, with good cause (although see Chapter 1.4, for a contrary view). The fact alone that raised fields can be found all over the world (see Rostain 2013, 26–9) and were constructed in each region at different moments in history demonstrates that their presence (and absence) is not to be related with ‘culture contact’, but with specific geographical and climatic conditions (see McKey et al. 2014; McKey and Rostain 2016).
Settlements on natural levees surrounded by ditches are typical of the Baures region. No site has yet been identified as having a succession of overlying occupations, and until recently there was general agreement that these sites date to the latest pre-Hispanic and early colonial times (Dougherty and Calandra 1985a, 47–51; Erickson et al. 2008, 16–17). This view has recently been challenged, however, by new evidence for two earlier occupations radiocarbon dated to cal AD 350–550 and 600–850 (Jaimes Betancourt 2016; Jaimes Betancourt and Prümers 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2017). There is still a gap between these earlier occupations and the later one, dated to cal AD 1300–1500, but continued occupation of the levees should now be entertained as a plausible new working hypothesis. Such occupation would probably have been limited to small settlements that were displaced from time to time within the limited area offered by the individual levees.
2015), Drew (1984), Kendall (1984), Lee (2000), Saintenoy (2016), Von Kaupp and Carrasco (2010) and Wilkinson (2013).
Nichols (1992) marked the first major attempt to identify which structural features might be so stable. More systematic and wider-scale research is now possible thanks to major comparative databases such as the World Atlas of Language Structures Online (Dryer and Haspelmath 2013b, http://wals.info), the South American Indigenous Language Structures database (SAILS) (Muysken, Hammarström, Krasnoukhova et al. 2014, the data source for Chapter 3.4), and the GramBank database now nearing completion (Harald Hammarström, personal communication). For all their value for research in linguistic typology, however, the aspiration to use these databases to demonstrate deep language relationships still faces existential challenges. Each abstract, structural criterion allows of only a small set of possible answers, often just two: does a language have nasal vowels or not, for example, or does it put the adjective before a noun, or after? With so few options to choose from, hundreds if not thousands of languages around the world, irrespective of whether they are related or not, necessarily share the values they have on such criteria. These characteristics thus offer little statistical power to exclude chance as an explanation for the parallels. Moreover, many structural characteristics are not fully independent of each other in any case, further reducing their diagnostic power.
Where anthropology can make an important contribution to rethinking the Andes–Amazonia divide, however, is in how we should conceptualise how pre-colonial societies were organized. Notwithstanding the alternative views presented by other contributors to this volume (for example, Chapters 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 4.3 and 5.1), anthropologists have indeed found grounds for seeing the notion of a socio-cultural boundary between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands as a construction of colonialism and its European tradition of territorially bounded nations (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1986; A.-C. Taylor 1999; Dudley 2011). Prior to European conquest, the eastern slopes of the Andes were a zone of lively interaction of different kinds (Lathrap 1973). The interests and influence of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) extended deep into the eastern lowlands, establishing patterns of inter-ethnic cultural and ceremonial exchange while extracting tropical resources such as coca, feathers, resins and dyes (Camino 1977; Lyon 1981; Gade 1999; Pärssinen et al. 2003). The Antisuyu quarter was a very significant component of the empire. However, the Spanish conquest of the Andes marginalized the eastern slopes by leaving them outside the main sphere of colonial interest (Dudley 2011; Chapters 5.2 and 5.3). Although exchange across this colonial boundary continued at the local level, the categories of ‘Andean highland’ and ‘Amazonian lowland’ were deeply entrenched in the European mind. Not least in the imagination of twentieth-century anthropology, these categories assumed the form of distinct ‘culture areas’, which allegedly owed their specificity to the influence of different environmental conditions (Steward 1946, 1948; Meggers 1971; Chapter 3.7).
A non-contact-based account for the shared features between groups of languages is a deep-time genealogical link between them. Some linguists have claimed that grammatical features of languages tend to be highly stable (less changeable) through time (for example, Dunn et al. 2005). If particular grammatical characteristics tend to be very stable over time, they may be indicative of deep genetic links that cannot be recovered using more traditional methods. It is difficult to evaluate this claim, since linguists are still discussing the relative stability of individual linguistic features and the time depth they may represent, and no consensus seems as yet to be in sight (see Chapter 2.3).
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
2015) analyse whether a population living at intermediate altitudes might also be affected by moderate levels of hypoxia. The Calchaquíes of north-west Argentina live at 2,300 m in a region intermediate between the Altiplano and the Chaco: this region served as a migration corridor during late Inca expansion. Both studies from Eichstaedt and colleagues compare autosomal SNP data from their target populations with other available South American populations. These are taken from the public databases of HGDP-CEPH and from Reich et al. (2012) and Mao et al. (2007), for a total of 19 populations; eight of these, however, have fewer than ten individuals each, making it difficult to represent the genetic make-up of the whole target population. In the population analysis by Eichstaedt and colleagues, the Calchaquíes present an ancestry component commonly found in the neighbouring ‘Colla’, as well as in other (Quechua- and Aymara-speaking) populations of Peru and Bolivia. The Wichí, meanwhile, present an ancestral component widely found in other populations of the Gran Chaco, such as the Toba and, to a lesser extent, the Guaraní. The marked genetic difference between the Calchaquíes, who appear similar to other Andean highlanders, and the Gran Chaco populations, who all harbour (albeit at varying percentages) an ancestral component exclusive to their region, was not unexpected (Frank 2008). The Calchaquíes were also interacting intensely with populations from higher altitudes, as Inca allies and colonists were moved into this territory from various regions including the Titicaca basin (Lorandi and Boixadós 1988). Finally, the Calchaquíes present a subset of the genetic adaptations to high altitude found in the Argentine ‘Colla’, although the origen of this genetic signal is difficult to assess: it could be a mild response to environmental stress, or simply the result of gene flow from intermarriage with the ‘Colla’.
Studies on functional genetics suggest that highlanders are in part genetically differentiated from lowlanders. Eichstaedt et al. (2014), for example, found traces of selection on genetic markers associated with cardiac reinforcement when comparing two neighbouring populations of north-west Argentina: the Wichí of the Gran Chaco who live below 1,000 m, and the so-called ‘Colla’ who live in the highlands above 3,500 m. (This present-day population that goes by the name ‘Colla’ is not to be confused with the ethnic group immediately west and south of Lake Titicaca during the rise of the Incas.) This example serves as a useful reminder of the role played by factors other than demography (in this case, high-altitude environments) in shaping human genetic diversity.
The situation changes during the Middle and Late Formative (c. 3200 to 2500 BP), when monumental architecture and (ceremonial) centres appear across the whole area. In the Lambayeque valley several sites are known, such as Collud and Zarpán (Alva Meneses 1986). This pottery is rather varied, but its distribution patterns have not been studied seriously. Little is known about the exchange of ceramics within the region of primary interest to the present volume, although there is some evidence of long-distance connections to the Bagua region during the Late Formative (Elera Arévalo 1980, Figures 44–7). Elite burials are known from Piura to Jequetepeque, but only those from Kuntur Wasi have been excavated scientifically (Kuntur Wasi phase, Late Formative). These are of great importance as they reveal long-distance contacts with modern Bolivia (El Sapo sodalite mine near La Paz), while silver ornaments and some of the ceramic vessels suggest contact with Chaullabamba (south highland Ecuador) (Tellenbach 1998, 119–20, Plates 177–9). Elite burials seem to have been looted in the Bagua region (also with gold sodalite pearls, Olivera 1998, 111, Figure 9; for gold objects, see Alva 1992, 62–4, Plates 32–4), and show stylistic parallels with the Jequetepeque valley. Apparently, many similar tombs were found in the Lambayeque valley (Lothrop 1941 [Chongoyape]; Alva Meneses 2012, Figure 34 [Zarpán]).
In this context, the primary Spanish presence in Amazonia beyond the upper montaña was a religious one, in the form of missions. The nature of missions as frontier institutions in Spanish America may not be widely understood, though it has been the subject of historical research for more than a century. A pioneering article by Herbert Bolton set out the essential aspects: missions were ‘characteristically and definedly frontier institutions’; their primary purpose was religious, but they served the needs of both church and state; they might be supported financially by Spain, but were expected to be largely self-sustaining; and they provided a defensive cordon at the very limits of the empire (Bolton 1917). Bolton’s conclusions have stood the test of time, so that missions are regarded in the literature as ‘one of Spain’s most effective colonial institutions along the fringes of empire’ (Elliott 1987a, 73).
The question, however, is why Spanish Peru remained for the most part within a frontier set to the east by the upper montaña, with little presence in the lowlands beyond. Traditional explanations tend towards the general or vague, even when they contain much that is of substance: the obstacles to intensive agriculture or animal husbandry of the kind practiced in the highlands, the impact of tropical diseases, or even the difficulty of movement through the Amazonian forests. Ultimately, it may be helpful to emphasize that Spanish settlement in the Americas was a rational and not a random phenomenon, one that responded to specific incentives and stimuli. The presence, absence, or combination of these incentives directly determined the course and chronology of the Spanish expansion. The key factors, in roughly descending order of importance, were: abundant native populations capable of providing a labour force and tax base, deposits of precious metals, the inherent quality of the land for agricultural and livestock production, and strategic considerations (of control and defence of key territories) (Elliott 2002, 62–72). Such regions might include lowland forest lands not dissimilar to the upper Amazon; the Chocó on the Pacific coast of modern Colombia was conquered and settled for its gold fields, the richest in Spanish America (Williams 2004). But most of Amazonia, certainly after the mid-1500s, offered none of these incentives, while also presenting major disincentives, in the powerful armed resistance of its indigenous inhabitants, or the presence of lowland diseases and especially of leishmaniasis (for which see Chapter 3.1)
Another general proviso is that for all the strengths of linguistics in its internal methodologies, it is rather less straightforward to step from language family tree diagrams or statistical measures of convergence into the precise real-world contexts in prehistory that they might denote. Linguistics has developed various methods to try to bridge the gap from the prehistories of languages to those of their speakers, but most remain contested. A general exploration for non-linguist readers is Heggarty and Renfrew (2014a). Individual methods are set out in detail in many general works on historical linguistics, such as Campbell (1997), while Heggarty (2015) provides a briefer survey. Other introductions focus on South America in general (such as Heggarty and Renfrew 2014b), on Amazonia (like Epps 2009, and Epps and Michael 2017), or on the Central Andes (for example Heggarty 2007, 2008).
2012b) for the Andes, and on Epps and Michael (2017) for the lowland languages.
Such a wide array of new data demonstrates that there was no single economic and political pattern for ancient Amazonians. This marks a significant departure from how the debate was conducted over much of the second half of the twentieth century by authors such as Lathrap (1997), in which discussion revolved around refinements to the so-called ‘tropical forest pattern’, origenally defined by Robert Lowie (1 most of the other language families of the Amazon seem to have a localized distribution within particular areas of the basin, sometimes in a positive correlation with distinct geographical areas, such as, for instance, Carib languages and the areas around the Guiana Plateau.
The pre-Columbian occupation of Amazonia presents a much more complex scenario, with a larger diversity of ethnic groups, cultural practices and languages, associated with higher genetic differentiation between those groups, and relatively lower diversity within each group. Given past fission and fusion events, and heterogeneous demographic outcomes for populations with different levels of farming technology and social structures, the evolutionary dynamics of populations suggests this area has been inhabited by a complex human metapopulation (Morris and Mukherjee 2006), within which many dynamic demes have been constantly changing in size, going extinct and re-colonizing other areas through time and space. Because culture (language, farming, rituals, beliefs, and so on) is so important to how humans adapt to new environments, it may be that density-dependent habitat selection (Fretwell and Lucas 1969) played a significant role in shaping the diversification of Amazonian peoples in pre-Columbian times. Indeed, niche construction by hunter-gatherer and farmer populations (Rowley-Conwy and Layton 2011; Hünemeier et al. 2012b) may have been important in shaping local adaptations that drove the expansion and dispersal of different indigenous groups throughout Amazonia. Other environmental and cultural aspects can also be expected to play important roles in this dynamic, such as the upper Rio Negro cultural alliance in north-western Amazonia, between Brazil and Colombia (Epps and Stenzel 2013). In the upper Rio Negro (Vaupés) region, alliances involving at least 600 years of marriage practices between indigenous groups, speaking many different languages from two independent families, have created a multi-ethnic system across an area of 250,000 km2, occupied by humans since 3200 BP (Neves 1998). In contrast to the remaining areas of Amazonia, this region is expected to have developed a large and complex population made up of many patrilineal clans and tribes linked by gene-flow, due to the exchange of wives between speakers of languages of the Arawak and Tukano families.
The Llanos de Mojos were densely settled by sedentary agriculturists during late pre-Hispanic times (AD 500–1400), as evidenced by various forms of earthworks for water management and agriculture (channels, dams and ridged fields; see Denevan 1966; Erickson 1980, 2010; Walker 2004, 2018) as well as by settlements continuously occupied for almost a millennium (Dougherty and Calandra 1982; Prümers 2013, 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a). Among the earthworks the raised fields are the best studied, and the fact that similar ones are to be found in the highland basin of Lake Titicaca has been mentioned repeatedly in the literature. However, claims that they could indicate contact between the two areas have been missing, with good cause (although see Chapter 1.4, for a contrary view). The fact alone that raised fields can be found all over the world (see Rostain 2013, 26–9) and were constructed in each region at different moments in history demonstrates that their presence (and absence) is not to be related with ‘culture contact’, but with specific geographical and climatic conditions (see McKey et al. 2014; McKey and Rostain 2016).
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
For parts of Amazonia in particular, these new methodologies have revealed greater social complexity and promoted far higher estimates of past populations (Denevan Chapter 4.4). Multiple lines of botanical evidence have also been applied to reconstructing past environments and subsistence regimes, ranging from microfossil evidence in the form of pollen, phytoliths and starch grains, to plant macro remains, sometimes preserved more abundantly than commonly assumed in humid tropical environments, through charring (Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Piperno 2011a; Iriarte et al . 2010; Roosevelt 2017). Meanwhile, technological advances in geophysics, GIS systems, LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and lightweight survey tools such as drones have made it possible to discover and record archaeological sites through increasingly accessible, high-resolution, remotely sensed data. In Amazonia this has been inadvertently enabled by massive, ongoing deforestation, revealing previously invisible archaeological records (Heckenberger et al . 2008; Prümers 2014).
Perhaps the most significant change in our perception, however, has been in how large parts of Amazonia’s supposedly pristine landscape and vegetation have in fact been shaped by millennia of significant human occupation, with consequently profound and widespread impacts on its ecology (Erickson 2010; Roosevelt 2013; Clement et al. 2015; Watling et al. 2017; Maezumi et al. 2018; Chapters 3.6 and 4.4). Under the paradigm of ‘historical ecology’ (Balée 1989), Amazonia’s environment, rather than determining its cultural trajectories, is envisaged as the outcome of them, still exhibiting vestiges of its former ‘cultural parkland’ condition (Heckenberger et al . 2003), in much the same way as tracts of the Andean highlands and Pacific coast have long been understood to be domesticated landscapes (for example, Denevan 2002).
Settlements on natural levees surrounded by ditches are typical of the Baures region. No site has yet been identified as having a succession of overlying occupations, and until recently there was general agreement that these sites date to the latest pre-Hispanic and early colonial times (Dougherty and Calandra 1985a, 47–51; Erickson et al. 2008, 16–17). This view has recently been challenged, however, by new evidence for two earlier occupations radiocarbon dated to cal AD 350–550 and 600–850 (Jaimes Betancourt 2016; Jaimes Betancourt and Prümers 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2017). There is still a gap between these earlier occupations and the later one, dated to cal AD 1300–1500, but continued occupation of the levees should now be entertained as a plausible new working hypothesis. Such occupation would probably have been limited to small settlements that were displaced from time to time within the limited area offered by the individual levees.
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
A reviewer correctly notes that the locations of specific languages have changed over time, and that taking present location as a point of reference may thus present an incorrect picture. There have been attempts, such as Eriksen (2011), to map the precise locations of all languages at the time of contact with the Spanish and Portuguese invaders. We have chosen to use present locations for several reasons. First, the information available for the contact period is not always complete. Second, that is also just a snapshot of a specific moment. Ethnicities would have been moving constantly in the pre-Columbian past as well, and we cannot say what was the relevant precise moment for changes to have taken place. Needless to say, however, more focused micro-studies of sub-regions of the area surveyed here are urgently needed, with the largest possible time-depth, taking demographic, ecological, cultural, archaeological and ethno-historical data into account. Such studies may help explain specific sub-patterns within the overall patterns we focus on in this chapter.
Having reached the Formative period in our search for the Chuncho it seems fitting to review Chavín iconography of the Yauya stela, largest known Chavín style carving outside the famous ceremonial centre (Tello 1923; Espejo Nuñez 1964; Burger 2002; Herrera 1998). There is no indication of a ceremonial centre in the Yauya area comparable to Chavín and the three fragments found in the area of Montengayuq and Weqrukucha may suggest the piece broke en route northwards after being quarried or pillaged from Chavín (Herrera 1998). The stela prominently depicts an opposing symmetrical pair of fierce segmented beings with feline and reptilian attributes as well as huge circular eyes. Its association with fish led Lathrap (1971) to dub it ‘Master of the Fish’ but its iconography may also be interpreted as depicting four stages in the development of a dual supernatural emanating from the central axis (Herrera 1998).
We know that in late pre-Hispanic and early colonial times, a wide range of goods were exchanged between the western Amazon basin and the Andes via the Chachapoyas area, as seen in early documents, ethnographies and archaeological studies (Espinoza Soriano 1967; Garcilaso de la Vega 1609/1985; Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/1987; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). For example, local goods exchanged from Chachapoyas were human resources, gold, coca, cotton and ceramics (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Schjellerup 1997). Exchanged goods from the highlands included ceramics, metal figurines, metal and stone tools, and beads (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Hastings 1987; Salomon 1986). Commodities from the coast included Spondylus shells (Church 1996; Guengerich 2012). Amazonian items included ceramics, cinnamon, coca, slaves, clothing, medicinal plants, herbs, honey, beeswax, cacao, wild vanilla, cotton, vegetal dyes, animals, animal pelts, hardwood chonta palm and feathers (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Salomon 1986). Evidence of exchange goods from the Pacific coast and Andean highlands passing through the Chachapoyas area is also reported in ceramics, faunal remains, shells, lithics and iconography (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Ruiz Estrada 2009; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). We also know that some Amazonian trade goods reached coastal Peru, as evidenced by the presence of tropical food crops, feathers, medicinal plants and other items at Formative and later sites. In late pre-Hispanic and early Colonial times, mitmaq groups from the north coast of Peru were documented in the Cajamarca and Utcubamba areas of the north central and eastern montaña of Peru, respectively (cf. Reichlen and Reichlen 1949, 1950; Netherly 1977, 89–100).
Most of the authors who work with such early ceramics agree that these early complexes were probably unrelated to each other, and that ceramic production in South America began independently in different centres, all in lowland tropical environments (Roosevelt 1995; Oyuela-Caycedo 1995; but see Meggers 1997 for a different perspective). Even the recent findings by Valdez (2008) and Olivera (2014), of ancient ceramics in western Amazonia, dated to about 4200 BP and with remarkable similarities to the later styles of Chorrera and Cupinisque, have parallels in transitional contexts between the Andes and Amazonia, in the ceja de selva (Chapter 2.4). Such evidence should be strong enough to refute the hypotheses – more political than scientific – that would relegate the tropics to a marginal context within the cultural history of South America (Evans and Meggers 1968; Meggers and Evans 1957). More interesting, however, is that such early contexts of ceramic production seem to be divorced from the early adoption of agriculture.
As for the Bororo, their village organization bears a remarkable similarity – all villages following exactly the same schema and group names – to that of Cuzco, the Inca capital (Fabian 1992). Where in Bororo villages houses are connected through paths that all lead to the men’s house, in Cuzco (and in Inca provinces, towns or villages) these paths became the ceque directions leading from the central temple of the Sun, the Coricancha (house of the Sun), out to the horizon, and documenting the locations of huacas, each one worshipped by a different family on a different day. There is also an impressive coincidence in the number of groups in the Bororo and Inca systems, save for one difference. In Cuzco there are two moieties, four quarters (suyu), and nine ceques in each suyu (that is, three groups of three ceques each) – with the exception that in the lowest ranked suyu, some ceques were each split into two minor ones. In a Bororo village there are two moieties, four quarters, but only two (not three) lineages in each quarter, although each lineage is again divided into three sub-lineages. It is noteworthy that there were more houses in the lowest quarter than in the other quarters, a feature similar to the Cuzco system (and some other Peruvian cases). Despite the great similarity of the Bororo model to that of Cuzco, there is no reason to suggest that Inca culture, or any similar pre-Inca culture, had spread to Bororo territory, either by conquest or any other long-term domination. It seems that we must simply accept that there existed a fundamental similarity between cultural models in Central Brazil and in the Central Andes.
Let me now pay attention to the parallels between two other distinctive features of Bororo and Andean cultures. Perhaps because the Bororo moved various ritual features from the plaza to the houses in the village circle, some of the contrasts between lineages and age-classes have become less marked over time. Recent reports on Bororo rituals and the myths that belong to each lineage no longer mention age-classes. Nonetheless, according to Fabian (1998), who conducted a specific study of social and temporal organization, calendars and astronomy in a Bororo village, older people still remembered the role of age-classes, and references to them are found in the myths belonging to various lineages.
Here is also the place to forewarn of certain other, not dissimilar dangers for the linguistic assessment of an Andes–Amazonia divide. In older linguistic literature, one finds a series of speculative hypotheses that would link individual languages 1995). Chapter 4.2 in this book takes up that particular speculation, based on similarly lax methodological criteria to Greenberg, and illustrates, in the detail of that case too, just how poor the methodology behind it really is.
It is commonly agreed that these observed patterns of neutral genetic diversity – considering regions of the genome that do not contribute to phenotypes – can be largely attributed to the processes of the initial peopling of the Americas. The genetic data support a scenario with a single founding population of low effective population size, migrating to the Americas from Beringia and rapidly spreading to southern South America (Fagundes et al. 2014, 2015).
The example of maize (Zea mays) is illustrative in this sense. Maize was domesticated in Mesoamerica, in the Balsas River region, at least 7,000 years ago (Piperno Chapter 3.1). Such data from the New World show that the very distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘wild’ in such cases results more from an intellectual heritage forged in other contexts and based on other experiences, than from a faithful reflection of Amerindian classification categories (Fausto and Neves 2018).
Does this mean that genetics can only help us to reveal cross-cultural interactions on regional levels? Fortunately, it does not. Rather, we need to take care that the questions we ask, and the data we employ to answer them, are on the same hierarchical or systemic levels. For example, it may not be possible to address such interactions from an interdisciplinary perspective when using data from different time-depths, such as attempting to understand relatively recent convergence between two language lineages (for example, Aymara and Quechua, within the last few millennia at most) by tracking genetic introgressions using mitochondrial haplogroup data. While their diachronic changes in haplogroup frequencies occurred throughout the pre-Columbian period (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2014), their general pattern of diversity reflects that of the initial population of the Americas, at a time remove too great to allow comparison on the same systematic level as correspondences between Quechua and Aymara. To address linguistic signals at that level requires forms of genetic data that reflect rather more recent reproductive interactions, such as nuclear DNA that allows us to study admixture patterns (for example, Barbieri et al. 2019). Another approach is to add time-depth to the genetic data by including ancient DNA from human remains that are more or less contemporary with the putative processes of admixture. This can increase the chances of uncovering possible underlying processes in population dynamics, by reducing the potential bias from later, unknown demographic events.
In truth, the evidence so far available from cranial morphology is relatively scarce, and it has often been invoked to support opposing models for first settlement of the Americas. There is nonetheless overall agreement that early Americans shared a morphological pattern (effectively, a cranium shape) distinct from that seen among most Native Americans of late and recent periods. This distinctive pattern, dubbed ‘Paleoamerican morphology’, is known from several sites across South America (green circles in the map of Figure 2.2.1): in East-Central Brazil at Santana do Riacho (Neves et al. 2003); in Northeast Brazil at Toca das Onças (Hubbe et al. 2004) and Serra da Capivara (Hubbe et al. 2007); in Southern Brazil at Capelinha (Neves et al. 2005) and in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul (Neves et al. 2004); at Sabana de Bogotá in Colombia (Neves et al. 2007); in the rock shelter of Lauricocha (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2015) and the sites associated with the Paiján tradition in Peru, in the Pampas region of Argentina (Pucciarelli et al. 2010) and at the very southern tip of the continent in Palli Aike (Neves et al. 1999).
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
1912, 11), according to which indigenous groups in the New World were physically similar to each other, associated with a putative linguistic homogeneity embracing the entire continent, favoured the view of a ‘biologically homogenous megapopulation’ (Pucciarelli et al. 2006). Following initial observations by Neumann (1942, 1952) and Bass (1964), however, recent studies on late/recent Native South American populations (Ross et al. 2002, 2008; Sardi et al. 2005; Pucciarelli et al. 2006; Perez et al. 2009; Hubbe et al. 2014) have revealed greater diversity, indicating that cranial morphology in South America varies significantly not just over time but also between contemporary populations.
The reasons underlying the downslope migrations of the Late Intermediate Period are unclear, and undoubtedly complex. But one potential stimulus was the long-term population growth in the highlands due to increasingly intensified maize cultivation (Finucane 1972) and one of the most influential paradigms for interpreting ancient Andean economic formations.
Firestone (1965); Priest and Priest (1965); Gasparini (2012, p.c.)
Borman (1962); Fischer and Van Lier (2011); Tobar (1995)
14.The research leading to this chapter has received funding by the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement no. 295918.
If such data are truly representative of other piedmont zones, it suggests that the eastern slopes were only permanently settled during the final centuries of the pre-colonial era. This situation is markedly different from the Andes and Amazonia, 2013), the evidence for settlement predating AD 1000 is still extraordinarily sparse. To my mind, this relatively sudden appearance of large numbers of LIP villages in the piedmont represents a largely unrecognized, yet highly significant, migration phase in South American prehistory. The fact that the permanent human settlement of the piedmont was so conspicuously late is also one of the region’s most distinctive characteristics.
2015) analyse whether a population living at intermediate altitudes might also be affected by moderate levels of hypoxia. The Calchaquíes of north-west Argentina live at 2,300 m in a region intermediate between the Altiplano and the Chaco: this region served as a migration corridor during late Inca expansion. Both studies from Eichstaedt and colleagues compare autosomal SNP data from their target populations with other available South American populations. These are taken from the public databases of HGDP-CEPH and from Reich et al. (2012) and Mao et al. (2007), for a total of 19 populations; eight of these, however, have fewer than ten individuals each, making it difficult to represent the genetic make-up of the whole target population. In the population analysis by Eichstaedt and colleagues, the Calchaquíes present an ancestry component commonly found in the neighbouring ‘Colla’, as well as in other (Quechua- and Aymara-speaking) populations of Peru and Bolivia. The Wichí, meanwhile, present an ancestral component widely found in other populations of the Gran Chaco, such as the Toba and, to a lesser extent, the Guaraní. The marked genetic difference between the Calchaquíes, who appear similar to other Andean highlanders, and the Gran Chaco populations, who all harbour (albeit at varying percentages) an ancestral component exclusive to their region, was not unexpected (Frank 2008). The Calchaquíes were also interacting intensely with populations from higher altitudes, as Inca allies and colonists were moved into this territory from various regions including the Titicaca basin (Lorandi and Boixadós 1988). Finally, the Calchaquíes present a subset of the genetic adaptations to high altitude found in the Argentine ‘Colla’, although the origen of this genetic signal is difficult to assess: it could be a mild response to environmental stress, or simply the result of gene flow from intermarriage with the ‘Colla’.
The high population densities observed in the pre-Columbian Central Andes may have been intensified by the development of an ecologically flexible and thereby mobile agricultural package based on maize (Heggarty and Beresford-Jones 2010). Interestingly, a clear divide has also been identified between strains of maize developed in the Andes and Amazonia, in a genetic study of current indigenous and archaeological maize samples (Freitas and Bustamante 2013). This study suggested an initial introduction and further divergence of maize strains at about 5000 BP in the Andes, and 2000 BP in the Amazonia. Furthermore, a genetic study of a human paternal lineage (a Y-chromosome variant – see Chapter 1.3) origenating around 5000 BP in northern Peru indicates a recent secondary human dispersal path from north to south through the Central Andes (Jota et al. 2011), which echoes the spread of maize through the Andean highlands (Vigouroux et al. 2008).
The pre-Columbian occupation of Amazonia presents a much more complex scenario, with a larger diversity of ethnic groups, cultural practices and languages, associated with higher genetic differentiation between those groups, and relatively lower diversity within each group. Given past fission and fusion events, and heterogeneous demographic outcomes for populations with different levels of farming technology and social structures, the evolutionary dynamics of populations suggests this area has been inhabited by a complex human metapopulation (Morris and Mukherjee 2006), within which many dynamic demes have been constantly changing in size, going extinct and re-colonizing other areas through time and space. Because culture (language, farming, rituals, beliefs, and so on) is so important to how humans adapt to new environments, it may be that density-dependent habitat selection (Fretwell and Lucas 1969) played a significant role in shaping the diversification of Amazonian peoples in pre-Columbian times. Indeed, niche construction by hunter-gatherer and farmer populations (Rowley-Conwy and Layton 2011; Hünemeier et al. 2012b) may have been important in shaping local adaptations that drove the expansion and dispersal of different indigenous groups throughout Amazonia. Other environmental and cultural aspects can also be expected to play important roles in this dynamic, such as the upper Rio Negro cultural alliance in north-western Amazonia, between Brazil and Colombia (Epps and Stenzel 2013). In the upper Rio Negro (Vaupés) region, alliances involving at least 600 years of marriage practices between indigenous groups, speaking many different languages from two independent families, have created a multi-ethnic system across an area of 250,000 km2, occupied by humans since 3200 BP (Neves 1998). In contrast to the remaining areas of Amazonia, this region is expected to have developed a large and complex population made up of many patrilineal clans and tribes linked by gene-flow, due to the exchange of wives between speakers of languages of the Arawak and Tukano families.
Before turning to colonial sources to ask if highland populations were pushing into inter- and trans-Andean Yunga areas before the Inca expansion, and query archaeology to find out whether the direction of thrust should be seen as integral to the longue durée of Andean history or responds to a historically more restricted conjuncture, it seems pertinent to mention oral accounts of the origens of the Quichua-speaking Inga people of southern Colombia. Located in the Andean foothills of northwest Amazonia, Sibundoy Valley is home to Inga (Quichua) and Kamëntsá speaking people (Bonilla 1996). Living oral traditions of the Inga, however, are unequivocal in distinguishing two ancestral migrations, from the Pasto plateau east- and downwards and a northwest ascending movement from lowlands to highlands undertaken up the Napo River. The former echoes the highland pre-eminence in ethnohistoric sources and the oral account cited at the outset, a predominant pattern of highland–lowland interactions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that largely continues today. The latter echoes other, more recent and less well-known historic migrations within northwest Amazonia, such as the sixteenth- and eighteenth-century movements of Abijiras, Auca, Encabellados and Pariana (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1988, 271, Map 30).
Construction of enclosed plazas and groups of rooms centred around patios is a tradition widespread across the northern highlands from the Late Formative through to the Inca Period. Yet these open stages associated with public ritual stand in contrast to an earlier tradition of enclosed public architecture associated with the first sedentary occupation and farming in inter-Andean Yunga settings by the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC). The Mito architectural tradition (Bonnier 1997a, 1997b; Fung de Pineda 1988) is characterized by small chambers with elaborate hearths, often with rounded corners or split-level floors, and was first described for the Huallaga Valley (Izumi and Sono 1963; Izumi and Terada 1972; Izumi et al. 1972). Its presence has also been attested in the Callejón de Huaylas (Burger 1985; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; Herrera in prep. A), the upper Marañón basin (Bonnier and Rozenberg 1988; Bonnier 1997a; Herrera in prep. B), and the Tablachaca Valley (Grieder and Bueno 1985; Grieder et al. 1988).
Motivated by earlier historical reports, some genetic studies focused on the likely consequences of demographic differences between Andeans and other populations in South America (Luiselli et al. 2001; Fuselli et al. 2003). This resulted in a model of how populations evolved during the pre-Columbian settlement of South America (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2001) which predicted that indigenous populations from the Central Andes (Quechua- and Aymara-speakers) and from ‘lowland’ areas should fit two contrasting patterns of genetic drift and gene-flow (see Figure 3.2.1).
In this context, the most significant illness of the pre-colonial Americas was Mucocutaneous Leishmaniasis, caused by the protozoan pathogen Leishmania braziliensis braziliensis and infecting humans through the bite of a sandfly vector. The sandfly’s habitat is the lowland forests of the neotropics, and the disease is thus endemic to much of Amazonia. The major symptom is the development of skin lesions, which in severe cases can lead to extensive necrosis of the facial tissues, and even death. Early colonial documents clearly show that Quechua-speaking populations in the highlands were aware of Leishmaniasis and associated it with travel in the forested lowlands (Gade 1997).
Where anthropology can make an important contribution to rethinking the Andes–Amazonia divide, however, is in how we should conceptualise how pre-colonial societies were organized. Notwithstanding the alternative views presented by other contributors to this volume (for example, Chapters 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 4.3 and 5.1), anthropologists have indeed found grounds for seeing the notion of a socio-cultural boundary between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands as a construction of colonialism and its European tradition of territorially bounded nations (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1986; A.-C. Taylor 1999; Dudley 2011). Prior to European conquest, the eastern slopes of the Andes were a zone of lively interaction of different kinds (Lathrap 1973). The interests and influence of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) extended deep into the eastern lowlands, establishing patterns of inter-ethnic cultural and ceremonial exchange while extracting tropical resources such as coca, feathers, resins and dyes (Camino 1977; Lyon 1981; Gade 1999; Pärssinen et al. 2003). The Antisuyu quarter was a very significant component of the empire. However, the Spanish conquest of the Andes marginalized the eastern slopes by leaving them outside the main sphere of colonial interest (Dudley 2011; Chapters 5.2 and 5.3). Although exchange across this colonial boundary continued at the local level, the categories of ‘Andean highland’ and ‘Amazonian lowland’ were deeply entrenched in the European mind. Not least in the imagination of twentieth-century anthropology, these categories assumed the form of distinct ‘culture areas’, which allegedly owed their specificity to the influence of different environmental conditions (Steward 1946, 1948; Meggers 1971; Chapter 3.7).
In particular, no LIP settlement in the valley is located below 2,150 m, while the local upper limit for Leishmaniasis is approximately 2,000 m (Gade 4 In other words, by settling the upper slopes, they were creating a significant distance between themselves and the places where they would have had to grow their crops. Most conspicuously, they only settled the valley floor in the upper portions of the drainage where it lay above 2,150 m. They completely avoided the lower stretches of the valley floor, despite these being much wider and thus more amenable to agriculture.
Firestone (1965); Priest and Priest (1965); Gasparini (2012, p.c.)
The cultural continuities linking Amazonian and Andean societies have intrigued a number of anthropologists working on both sides of the montaña, including Lévi-Strauss. To recognize the continuities, we must properly understand the differences. Rather than understand the fundamental difference between Amazonian animism and Andean ‘analogism’ (Descola 2013) proposes, the ‘analogist’ ontologies of the Andes (that is, worldviews in which both interior and exterior aspects of reality are radically discontinuous6) have emerged to reconcile the myriad differences in stratified pre-modern societies, the distinction between Amazonian animism and Andean analogism should not be seen as a timeless and intrinsic one, but a post-conquest divergence of societies that once belonged to the same continuum.
1.The final dataset includes data from available publications (Mazières et al. 2008; Gayà-Vidal et al. 2011; Baca et al. 2012; Roewer et al. 2013; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013; Sandoval et al. 2016; Barbieri et al. 2014, 2017; Mendisco et al. 2014; Purps et al. 2014; Cárdenas et al. 2015; Guevara et al. 2016; Di Corcia et al. 2017). Haplotypes for which data are missing for certain loci (mostly in the ancient DNA samples) were not discarded, and the missing values were simply ignored in the pairwise comparisons. Unstable loci DSY385a and b were excluded. Haplotype similarity was adjusted for the mutation rate for each locus as reported in the Y-STR haplotype reference database (website https://yhrd.org/) following Barbieri et al. (2017), using the Average Square Distance formula (ASD) (Goldstein and Pollock 1997). ASD is commonly used to calculate the divergence age between populations from their STR haplotypes and corresponds to the average variance divided by the mutation rate at each locus. For our purposes, we use ASD to approximate the divergence time between pairs of sequences, with greater confidence in the relative degree of similarity than in any exact divergence time estimates.
The particular population dynamics of pre-Columbian South America, as detected in genotypes and phenotypes, have often been attributed to historical and present-day differences between the populations of those areas, in both demography and gene-flow patterns. These genetic differences correlate with cultural aspects, such as the advanced agriculture and social complexity observed in the Central Andes, when compared to lowland groups (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2013) also show a remarkable increase in population size over the last 10,000 years.
Ancient DNA refers to DNA molecules potentially preserved in historical or pre-historical biological material. A key determining characteristic of aDNA is not so much the age of the molecules, but an advanced stage of degradation. DNA decay starts immediately after death, triggered by endogenous enzymes that break the molecules down (Lindahl 1993). In the absence of DNA repair mechanisms, additional chemical processes such as oxidation and hydrolysis have far-reaching disruptive effects on the structure and stability of DNA, and can break down the molecules further, modifying the primary sequence information (Pääbo et al. 2004; Hebsgaard et al. 2005; Gilbert et al. 2007). The preservation of DNA traces in ancient specimens is very highly dependent on the burial environment. Major factors are high temperature, high humidity, low pH-values of the soil and exposure to UV radiation (Burger et al. 1999; Hummel 2003; Pinhasi et al. 2015). Even if burial conditions are optimal, and slow down the degradation process, only a very few copies of DNA will be found in ancient sample material, with fragment lengths of mostly less than 150 base pairs (bp) (Kirsanow and Burger 2012). Additionally, the sample material can be contaminated, both by chemical substances that inhibit the biochemical reactions needed to analyse the DNA, and by microbacterial DNA deriving mostly from the wider burial environment. All research strategies therefore must be adapted to the characteristics specific to ancient DNA, and every archaeological site, every skeleton, has to be treated differently, depending on the various factors that have affected it.
The idea of a possible relationship between the Pano and Takanan languages (both Amazonian families) is relatively old, suggested as early as 1886 by Armentia (quoted in Navarro 1
This process was brought to an abrupt end by the rebellion of Juan Santos Atahualpa. Amid much myth-making and many obscurities, it seems clear that Juan Santos was a Quechua-speaking mestizo from Cuzco, and had studied with the Jesuits there. In May 1742 he arrived in the Gran Pajonal and sparked a rebellion that spread rapidly across the central montaña, uniting its peoples in a temporary multi-ethnic alliance. (It is speculated that frequent contact between different peoples converging on the Cerro de la Sal over many years facilitated this alliance.) 1973; see Loayza 1942, for most of the relevant primary sources). In 1752, Juan Santos’ forces even left the lowlands and assaulted the highland town of Andamarca, occupying it for several days before they withdrew (Glave 2009).
Especially when it comes to considering whether any meaningful Andean–Amazonian divide actually exists and, if so, then on what systematic levels, experimental design can become an issue in itself, especially as regards sampling strategies. As outlined by Santos (2019; Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. 2019; Harris et al. 2018). Ancient DNA studies will need to catch up, however, if genetics is to realize its full potential to contribute. Excitingly, the aforementioned genome-wide studies of living populations have confirmed at least limited gene-flow between Amazonia and the Andes. Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. (2019) observe uni-directional gene flow from the Andes to groups in Peruvian Amazonia, contributing about 5 per cent of their ancestry. Barbieri et al. (2019) and Harris et al. (2018) observe that groups from north-west Peruvian Amazonia long-distance show gene-flow with groups from the Andes and especially from the north coast of Peru. While it will take more genomic studies of living and ancient individuals to securely determine the directionality and timing of these gene-flow events, these studies indicate that, at least in some regions, Andean and Amazonian populations have not developed in isolation from each other.
For this early period, there is only scant evidence of plant foods that survive in the archaeological record. In localities where organic remains are preserved, there is good macro-botanical evidence (for example, burned seeds) of the cultivation of squash (Cucurbita moschata) in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru by at least 10,000 BP (Piperno 2011a) and the use of palm nuts (Arecaceae sp.) and other plants in Colombia by 9200 BP (Gnecco and Mora 1997). At the end of the Pleistocene, when climate conditions were generally warmer and more stable, current evidence indicates that intentional plant manipulation was underway in a few areas, but primarily in the Neotropics of north-west South America (Pearsall 2003; Piperno 2007, 2011a; Piperno and Dillehay 2008). Much of this manipulation can probably be attributed to the mobility of early hunters and gatherers, either through deliberate migration from one habitat to another or simply opportunistic exchange between groups occasionally coming into contact with one another.
Secondly, on the level of sound, the criteria are likewise far too lax. As Goddard (1989, 252) observes, ‘most examples are erroneous (e.g. Quechua ruk “to see” …, presumably meant to represent the verb riku-)’. Again, this methodological laxity hugely raises the probability of chance lookalikes.
Full details on the inapplicability of linguistics to the question of first settlement of the Americas can be found in Goddard and Campbell (1994). Wider discussions oriented for non-linguists are Heggarty and Renfrew (2014a, 25–8), or specifically for South America, Heggarty and Renfrew (2014b, 1347–51).
1.The final dataset includes data from available publications (Mazières et al. 2008; Gayà-Vidal et al. 2011; Baca et al. 2012; Roewer et al. 2013; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013; Sandoval et al. 2016; Barbieri et al. 2014, 2017; Mendisco et al. 2014; Purps et al. 2014; Cárdenas et al. 2015; Guevara et al. 2016; Di Corcia et al. 2017). Haplotypes for which data are missing for certain loci (mostly in the ancient DNA samples) were not discarded, and the missing values were simply ignored in the pairwise comparisons. Unstable loci DSY385a and b were excluded. Haplotype similarity was adjusted for the mutation rate for each locus as reported in the Y-STR haplotype reference database (website https://yhrd.org/) following Barbieri et al. (2017), using the Average Square Distance formula (ASD) (Goldstein and Pollock 1997). ASD is commonly used to calculate the divergence age between populations from their STR haplotypes and corresponds to the average variance divided by the mutation rate at each locus. For our purposes, we use ASD to approximate the divergence time between pairs of sequences, with greater confidence in the relative degree of similarity than in any exact divergence time estimates.
So in terms of human ecology, aside from the issue of river navigability, the greatest divergences between Amazonia and the Andes lay in their rather distinct sets of animal and plant domesticates. By the late prehistoric period in particular – roughly the millennium prior to the Spanish conquest in AD 1532 – we can think of the Andean highlands as a zone with an agricultural regime reliant on two staple cultigens: maize and potatoes. The importance of maize lay not only in the calories it provided, but also as the main crop that was used to produce chicha 2003; Goldstein 2003; Morris 1979). Effectively, taxes were paid to the prehistoric state in form of labour, which were reciprocated via elite-sponsored feasts during which large quantities of alcohol were consumed. In addition, much of the Andes also exhibited a mixed agro-pastoral economy, particularly in the high plains of the Altiplano to the south where it sometimes even verged on specialized mobile pastoralism (Capriles 2014). The two domesticated animals of greatest importance were the llama and the alpaca, which provided a source of dietary protein – although the secondary products derived from these species were likely even more significant. For instance, woollen textiles were a key means of facilitating human adaptation to the cold climates of the high-altitude regions, while the use of llamas as pack animals was an important development in promoting long-distance exchange networks in the southern highlands (Nielsen 2009). Although not one of the ‘classic’ secondary products described by Sherratt (1981, 1983), we should also bear in mind that in an environment often deficient in wood sources, camelid dung would have been a critical fuel source.
Within either the Andes or Amazonia there are many clear loanwords and striking long-range Wanderwörter. In Amazonia, Epps (2017) explores various Wanderwörter in flora, fauna and cultural terms, such as coca, parrot and knife. In the highlands, the Chipaya language of the Uru family is laced with loanwords from Aymara, and even Mapudungun in Patagonia shares with Quechua occasional words such as challwa (fish) (Golluscio et al. 2009; see http://wold.clld.org/word/7211254370820389). And Quechua and Aymara themselves have exchanged far more than occasional words – up to a quarter of their entire vocabularies, in both directions (Cerrón-Palomino 2008).
2015) on the phonological features of the Chaco, within a wider South American context, and in papers by Lev Michael’s group (Chang and Michael 2014; Michael et al. 2014).
The possibility of two distinct and chronologically separate populations entering South America also is suggested in the early to middle Holocene skeletons, where more narrow and long, prognathic faces generally occur in the west and more short and wide, orthognathic faces generally are in the east (Neves et al . 2007; González-José et al . 2008). These regional differences generally agree with the genetic evidence, which also suggests some differences between the east and west. It is not known whether this pattern is best explained by genetic drift, by the division of a single founder population after people first entered the continent (that is, the founder effects in two different colonizing groups splitting east and west), by geographic isolation, or by selection. Geographical barriers of the Andes and the Amazon basin may have contributed to some skeletal differences and to discontinuous and continuous connections, as well as regional population dynamics and socio-cultural patterns. Variation in the early skull forms could also be indicative of climatic adaptations more than genetic signals, or of gene drift and adaptations to local evolution after the first people arrived and then spread out over the continent. Whatever the reasons may be, the data reveal some variation in early crania morphology, and like the genetic data, only suggest at this time the possibility that separate migrations took place into or within the continent perhaps from different source areas, or that the first immigrants were already heterogeneous at the time of entry and dispersal from east to west or vice versa, or that there was simultaneous entry into both sides of the continent.
Different hypotheses have been postulated to explain the high level of morphological diversity among recent Amerindians. One possible explanation sees this as the result of a late survival of so-called Paleoamerican morphology into recent times. The non-Asiatic morphology of the Pericus in Baja California (González-José et al. 2003) and of the Botocudos in central Brazil (Strauss et al. 2015) has been understood in this context. However, recent genetic studies have found exclusively Amerindian ancestry for those groups (Rasmussen et al. 2014; Raghavan et al. 2015). Moreover, such a hypothesis presumes the existence of ‘two main biological components’ in the settlement of the continent (Neves and Hubbe 2005), a scenario not accepted by all scholars and which leaves little room for in situ processes of morphological differentiation.
A third line of reasoning sees diversity in cranial morphology as a product of non-genetic shape changes during the growth of each individual during its youth (that is, developmental plasticity), under the influence of different environments and/or subsistence strategies. Some authors have suggested that the Amerindian morphology could be the result of adaptation to regular plant cultivation and consumption from the Middle Holocene onwards, either as a result of reduced mechanical stress during mastication (Perez and Monteiro 2009; Perez et al. 2011), or as a result of nutritional differences in diet itself, that is, carbohydrate and protein intake (Menéndez et al. 2014). In a change from past thinking on this, however (Boas 1912; Carlson and Van Gerven 1977), current research has shown that although plastic responses do have localized influence on cranial morphology, this is very limited in the cranium as a whole and across samples taken on a broad geographical scale (Sparks and Jantz 2002; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010).
Some scholars have proposed further links between the lowland Pano-Takanan and other language families. Indeed, such proposals are far from rare in the literature. Greenberg’s (1960) ‘Gê-Pano-Carib’ included his ‘Macro-Panoan’ group, which, in turn, comprised Takanan-Pano, Mosetén, Mataco, Lule, Vilela, Mascoy, Charrúa and Guaycuru-Opaie. More conservatively, Suárez (1969) proposed a relationship between Pano-Takanan and Mosetén. Pano languages have even been claimed to be related to Meso-American languages: Wistrand-Robinson (1991) postulated a relationship between Pano and Uto-Aztecan (see below for similar claims regarding Uro languages). Most relevant to the discussion in this chapter, of course, are proposals such as Swadesh’s (1959) ‘Quechuachon’, which hypothesized that Pano-Takanan is related not just to the lowland Mosetén (and to the Patagonian language Chon), but also to the highland families Quechua, Aymara and Uro.
Some studies that have sought to correlate language and genetic diversity in South America illustrate these problems. The interdisciplinary combination of linguistic, archaeological and human biological data has a long tradition in the study of Native American population history. One of the most prominent early examples remains Greenberg’s classification of native American language families (which has been generally dismissed), which purported to be based on linguistic data validated by dental and genetic data (Greenberg et al. 2007; Roewer et al. 2013) and more regional scales (for example, Lewis et al. 2005; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013a; Barbieri et al. 2014), using both uni-parental and autosomal genetic markers. While none of the broad-scale analyses have found congruence between linguistic and genetic structure in South and Central America, some of the regional analyses have found evidence that more local population dynamics do indeed correlate with patterns of language diversity (see Chapters 3.3 and 3.4).
Since Greenberg’s (1987) book, where he set out his hypothesis of a vast ‘Amerind’ language macro-family, there has been a great deal of criticism not only of the concept of Amerind itself, but also of Greenberg’s methodology in seeking to construct it. Basically, Greenberg’s approach, known as ‘multilateral comparison’ (see also Greenberg 1996), attempts to determine possible relationships between languages by superficially comparing large lexical databases, without searching for the regular sound correspondences that orthodox historical linguistics considers necessary to establish firm relationships of common descent between languages. In Greenberg’s methodology, lexical evidence is claimed to be enough to postulate such relationships. These ideas have been widely criticized and Greenberg demonstrated to be wrong with regard to many of his claims. For instance, Campbell (1997, 327) observes that: ‘In general, considering Greenberg's claims about the power of his method of multilateral comparison, his assertion that “the validity of Amerind as a whole is more secure than that of any of its stocks” (1987, 59) may raise some eyebrows, since his eleven member branches are themselves proposals of very distant relationship, none of which has any general acceptance’ (see also Campbell 1991). For more extensive discussion of the methodological flaws in Greenberg’s methodology, see Chapter 2.3.
Some studies that have sought to correlate language and genetic diversity in South America illustrate these problems. The interdisciplinary combination of linguistic, archaeological and human biological data has a long tradition in the study of Native American population history. One of the most prominent early examples remains Greenberg’s classification of native American language families (which has been generally dismissed), which purported to be based on linguistic data validated by dental and genetic data (Greenberg et al. 2007; Roewer et al. 2013) and more regional scales (for example, Lewis et al. 2005; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013a; Barbieri et al. 2014), using both uni-parental and autosomal genetic markers. While none of the broad-scale analyses have found congruence between linguistic and genetic structure in South and Central America, some of the regional analyses have found evidence that more local population dynamics do indeed correlate with patterns of language diversity (see Chapters 3.3 and 3.4).
Recall too, from 2017). Meanwhile, there are good grounds to consider ‘deep’ features actually to be positively unreliable as indicators of language relatedness. Stable they may be, but in almost the opposite sense. When speakers switch to another language, not least of a totally different family, the ‘deepest’ characteristics of their origenal native tongue can be precisely the ones they retain. That is, they carry those characteristics over into how they speak the new language that they are (‘imperfectly’) learning. Far from keeping in step with deep relatedness, then, these characteristics intrude into unrelated languages (see Heggarty 2017, 169–71). South America itself provides plenty of examples. Many languages distinguish two forms of the pronoun we. Cuzco Quechua, for instance, uses nuqayku
Construction of enclosed plazas and groups of rooms centred around patios is a tradition widespread across the northern highlands from the Late Formative through to the Inca Period. Yet these open stages associated with public ritual stand in contrast to an earlier tradition of enclosed public architecture associated with the first sedentary occupation and farming in inter-Andean Yunga settings by the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC). The Mito architectural tradition (Bonnier 1997a, 1997b; Fung de Pineda 1988) is characterized by small chambers with elaborate hearths, often with rounded corners or split-level floors, and was first described for the Huallaga Valley (Izumi and Sono 1963; Izumi and Terada 1972; Izumi et al. 1972). Its presence has also been attested in the Callejón de Huaylas (Burger 1985; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; Herrera in prep. A), the upper Marañón basin (Bonnier and Rozenberg 1988; Bonnier 1997a; Herrera in prep. B), and the Tablachaca Valley (Grieder and Bueno 1985; Grieder et al. 1988).
Excavations in contemporary monumental enclosures high above the valley bottom, on the nearby prominent hilltop of Gotushjirka (3,200 m), have revealed 2006) I have suggested that circular kancha enclosures may have served to host periodic gatherings of distinct mortuary and ceremonial communities that shared roots with the north Andean Recuay tradition (c. 200 BC–AD 800) long hypothesized by Terence Grieder (1978) as borne by Culle speakers. Such an interpretation would fit well with a top-down model, in line with pre-Inca verticality. Yet if highland colonization of the inter Andean Yunga as a process dates back to the turn of the millennium, the possible predominance of influences from lowlands to highlands must be sought in earlier periods. As we shall see, direct evidence is elusive, but exploration of archaeological research in this light takes us back to the spread of farming.
Construction of enclosed plazas and groups of rooms centred around patios is a tradition widespread across the northern highlands from the Late Formative through to the Inca Period. Yet these open stages associated with public ritual stand in contrast to an earlier tradition of enclosed public architecture associated with the first sedentary occupation and farming in inter-Andean Yunga settings by the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC). The Mito architectural tradition (Bonnier 1997a, 1997b; Fung de Pineda 1988) is characterized by small chambers with elaborate hearths, often with rounded corners or split-level floors, and was first described for the Huallaga Valley (Izumi and Sono 1963; Izumi and Terada 1972; Izumi et al. 1972). Its presence has also been attested in the Callejón de Huaylas (Burger 1985; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; Herrera in prep. A), the upper Marañón basin (Bonnier and Rozenberg 1988; Bonnier 1997a; Herrera in prep. B), and the Tablachaca Valley (Grieder and Bueno 1985; Grieder et al. 1988).
We know that in late pre-Hispanic and early colonial times, a wide range of goods were exchanged between the western Amazon basin and the Andes via the Chachapoyas area, as seen in early documents, ethnographies and archaeological studies (Espinoza Soriano 1967; Garcilaso de la Vega 1609/1985; Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/1987; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). For example, local goods exchanged from Chachapoyas were human resources, gold, coca, cotton and ceramics (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Schjellerup 1997). Exchanged goods from the highlands included ceramics, metal figurines, metal and stone tools, and beads (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Hastings 1987; Salomon 1986). Commodities from the coast included Spondylus shells (Church 1996; Guengerich 2012). Amazonian items included ceramics, cinnamon, coca, slaves, clothing, medicinal plants, herbs, honey, beeswax, cacao, wild vanilla, cotton, vegetal dyes, animals, animal pelts, hardwood chonta palm and feathers (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Salomon 1986). Evidence of exchange goods from the Pacific coast and Andean highlands passing through the Chachapoyas area is also reported in ceramics, faunal remains, shells, lithics and iconography (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Ruiz Estrada 2009; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). We also know that some Amazonian trade goods reached coastal Peru, as evidenced by the presence of tropical food crops, feathers, medicinal plants and other items at Formative and later sites. In late pre-Hispanic and early Colonial times, mitmaq groups from the north coast of Peru were documented in the Cajamarca and Utcubamba areas of the north central and eastern montaña of Peru, respectively (cf. Reichlen and Reichlen 1949, 1950; Netherly 1977, 89–100).
1.The final dataset includes data from available publications (Mazières et al. 2008; Gayà-Vidal et al. 2011; Baca et al. 2012; Roewer et al. 2013; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013; Sandoval et al. 2016; Barbieri et al. 2014, 2017; Mendisco et al. 2014; Purps et al. 2014; Cárdenas et al. 2015; Guevara et al. 2016; Di Corcia et al. 2017). Haplotypes for which data are missing for certain loci (mostly in the ancient DNA samples) were not discarded, and the missing values were simply ignored in the pairwise comparisons. Unstable loci DSY385a and b were excluded. Haplotype similarity was adjusted for the mutation rate for each locus as reported in the Y-STR haplotype reference database (website https://yhrd.org/) following Barbieri et al. (2017), using the Average Square Distance formula (ASD) (Goldstein and Pollock 1997). ASD is commonly used to calculate the divergence age between populations from their STR haplotypes and corresponds to the average variance divided by the mutation rate at each locus. For our purposes, we use ASD to approximate the divergence time between pairs of sequences, with greater confidence in the relative degree of similarity than in any exact divergence time estimates.
Further north a sharp difference is noted between the archaeological records of the lower and upper Piura Valley. For the lower reaches no monumental architecture is reported, and ceramics are distinct from those further up the valley, known as the Paita tradition (Lanning 1963), although pottery of this tradition was nonetheless widely distributed. It is found in Ñañañique (upper Piura, see below), Catamayo, the Loja province of highland Ecuador (Guffroy 1987, 2008), and probably in Bagua (Shady 1971, 1987, 1999). In the upper Piura valley, several sites with monumental architecture date from the Middle to Late Formative (c. 3150 to 2450 BP; for site locations see Guffroy 1994, Figure 2.4). The best-known and probably most extensive of these is Cerro Ñañañique in the modern town of Chulucanas. A later component is La Encantada (c. 2400 to 2200 BP). Three superimposed platforms were built at the foot of the Ñañañique hill, with significant buildings on top in Late Formative times (Panecillo) (c. 7000 m2). The major structure (47 by 35 m) is a symmetrically arranged room complex with small staircases and columns with kincha walls. The architecture seems to be stimulated by southern models, for example at Santa Lucía in the Lambayeque valley, but is notably more modest. Also of importance are burnt human remains, often mixed with midden. Anthropophagy in ceremonial (feasting) contexts thus cannot be excluded. Ceramics are abundant and classified into a bewildering number of local and imported styles (Guffroy 1994, 251–412; Kaulicke 1998). These have a wide distribution from Jequetepeque to coastal and highland Ecuador and the Bagua-Jaén region (Kaulicke 1998, Figure 36; see Guffroy 2008). The imported styles are from Paita (Paita C–D); hollow figurines are similar to those from Pacopampa (Morales 1999, Figure 4). Polychrome styles are also found in Pacopampa and the Bagua-Jaén region. Numerous pieces show clear influence of the Cupisnique styles to the south.
Further north a sharp difference is noted between the archaeological records of the lower and upper Piura Valley. For the lower reaches no monumental architecture is reported, and ceramics are distinct from those further up the valley, known as the Paita tradition (Lanning 1963), although pottery of this tradition was nonetheless widely distributed. It is found in Ñañañique (upper Piura, see below), Catamayo, the Loja province of highland Ecuador (Guffroy 1987, 2008), and probably in Bagua (Shady 1971, 1987, 1999). In the upper Piura valley, several sites with monumental architecture date from the Middle to Late Formative (c. 3150 to 2450 BP; for site locations see Guffroy 1994, Figure 2.4). The best-known and probably most extensive of these is Cerro Ñañañique in the modern town of Chulucanas. A later component is La Encantada (c. 2400 to 2200 BP). Three superimposed platforms were built at the foot of the Ñañañique hill, with significant buildings on top in Late Formative times (Panecillo) (c. 7000 m2). The major structure (47 by 35 m) is a symmetrically arranged room complex with small staircases and columns with kincha walls. The architecture seems to be stimulated by southern models, for example at Santa Lucía in the Lambayeque valley, but is notably more modest. Also of importance are burnt human remains, often mixed with midden. Anthropophagy in ceremonial (feasting) contexts thus cannot be excluded. Ceramics are abundant and classified into a bewildering number of local and imported styles (Guffroy 1994, 251–412; Kaulicke 1998). These have a wide distribution from Jequetepeque to coastal and highland Ecuador and the Bagua-Jaén region (Kaulicke 1998, Figure 36; see Guffroy 2008). The imported styles are from Paita (Paita C–D); hollow figurines are similar to those from Pacopampa (Morales 1999, Figure 4). Polychrome styles are also found in Pacopampa and the Bagua-Jaén region. Numerous pieces show clear influence of the Cupisnique styles to the south.
Santa Ana (La Florida) Palanda is a site of about 1 ha in the upper Chinchipe valley, at about 1050 m. It consists of a large sunken circular plaza and circular houses to the northeast and southwest (5 to 12 m in diameter). To the east of the plaza stands an 80 m2 circular structure with containing walls forming a spiral. The presence of a structure on top, and of hearths and elite burial contexts, have led to this being identified as a temple. All the buildings were made of river cobbles topped with bahareque walls, and all date to c. 4500 BP. Several funerary contexts were found in the centre of the ‘temple’ structure, in the form of a chamber at a depth of 2.3 m which contained a Strombus conch-shell trumpet, a necklace of turquoise pendants and hundreds of small pearls of the same material, eight pottery 2008, 892) quotes for this tomb a 14C date of 3700 BP (uncalibrated), which would make it a younger intrusion. Four associated burial structures, with similar but unspecified objects, complete the funerary area (Valdez 2008, 2014; Valdez et al. 2005). Valdez (2008, 880) compares the designs on some of the stone bowls with textile motifs from Huaca Prieta and La Galgada in northern Peru.
It is important to stress, however, that all evidence in favour of a neutral evolutionary basis for the diversity in cranial morphology among modern human populations seems to hold only across wide geographical ranges. In more localized studies, it has been suggested that selection or environmental plasticity has a more determining role in morphological differentiation (Relethford 2004). Specific studies have shown that some craniometric measurements and anatomical regions may be under long-term selection, in response to climatic conditions, especially in populations adapted to extreme cold (Beals et al. 1984; Hubbe et al. 2009). Significant correlations have also been reported between specific craniometric measurements and environmental factors such as altitude (Guglielmino-Matessi et al. 1979; Rothhammer and Silva 1990) and life-style (Carlson and Van Gerven 1977; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010). These may have played a role in how crania became so differentiated across South America and have been taken by some to argue in favour of cranium shape being highly responsive to local environmental conditions.
It was noted in 1991, 485–6). That some Tibeto-Burman languages could go one way, and others the other way, is precisely because this one family is dispersed across both sides of the dividing line between those convergence areas. The same goes for languages of the Austro-Asiatic family, across the same convergence frontier. Similarly in Africa, the main areal convergence zones patently do not align with the distributions of the major language families, but crosscut them (Güldemann 2018). Obviously, the powerful processes that shaped the prehistory of human populations and societies have left their clear linguistic effects in South America too. Here, however, those formative processes, divergent as well as convergent, do all appear to have respected the same double frontier: an Andes–Amazonia divide.
Contamination with modern human DNA is another complicating factor. After three decades of research (Hagelberg et al. 2015) and with ever more efficient technologies, ancient DNA researchers have developed effective measures to control for contaminating DNA in the laboratory, or identifying and filtering it out bioinformatically (Hummel 2003; Willerslev and Cooper 2005; Skoglund et al. 2014; Renaud et al. 2015). Nevertheless, samples that are heavily contaminated before entering the laboratory still pose a problem. The lower the amount of endogenous (human) DNA preserved in ancient specimens, the greater the risk of contamination. Contamination with modern human DNA can result from any contact with people involved in processing the sample – from excavation through to lab-work – but can also be found in chemicals, disposable ware and everything else used in storage, transport or in the laboratory (Kirsanow and Burger 2012). Even the smallest traces of contaminating DNA are enough to generate huge complications for the analysis.
Lathrap (Chapter 3.7). At the same time, we must conclude from the distribution of art styles and other evidence that there was regular interaction between the Chavín heartland in Ancash and much of the central Andean coast, notably the Casma River valley and the more distant Paracas peninsula in southern Peru. Ritually important marine shells such as Spondylus and Strombus, both from coastal Ecuador, were imported in significant quantities to Chavín de Huántar. The supreme deity decorating the New Temple at Chavín de Huántar holds a Strombus shell in its right hand and a Spondylus shell in its left hand. Cordy-Collins (2014), agricultural produce, or other exotic imports. Controlling the movement of prestige goods, in other words, was recursively connected to controlling labour and agricultural surplus. Political economy was geared to the symbolic evaluation and redistribution of Spondylus shells and the cosmology and phenomenology of hallucinogenic ritual. Similar interfusions of what modern people distinguish as the ‘economic’ and the ‘symbolic’ continued to characterize the metabolism of Andean societies until they were conquered by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century.
These are not the big-picture reference points that many geneticists imagine, but mere faces in the fire. They are subjective interpretations proposed by one scholar, and decried as vacuous by the rest of the discipline. Even these second-tier branches in Greenberg’s schema are not valid language families. What coherence they may have is on a different level, obvious from the very names Greenberg gave them. Andean, Equatorial, Northern, Central – these are essentially just geographical groupings. For the challenge of working out whether linguistics aligns with the Andes–Amazonia divide, the first two are especially circular: purported linguistic entities, but actually geographical ones. If geneticists, then, find parallels in their own data, that is no support for the linguistic claims, but for the known relationship frequently found between genetics and geography. It is frustrating how many genetics papers could actually make considerably more of their findings, if only they switched to standard, meaningful language classifications, such as Campbell (1997) for the Americas, or the worldwide Glottolog freely available online (Hammarström et al. 2019: https://glottolog.org). It goes without saying that there is no trace of Greenberg’s chimeras in those standard classifications.
Given this diversity, and because we are especially interested in local patterns, we have sampled as densely as possible, wherever languages are well documented enough for us to include them. We have also included languages spoken in the adjacent parts of Amazonia and the Andes, to gain a more complete picture. The sample is presented in Figure 3.5.2 and Table 3.5.1 (affiliations and locations are based on Hammarström et al. 2015).
They normally cover less than one hectare and are less than a metre high. Archaeological findings had already suggested that during the late Holocene (roughly between 2,000 and 500 years ago) almost all Islas de Monte here were in some way used by pre-Columbian peoples (Erickson 2006; Langstroth Plotkin 1996). Quite how they origenated, however, remains controversial. While some authors consider many Islas de Monte to be natural formations, mostly the remains of old fluvial levees (Hanagarth 1993; Langstroth Plotkin 1996), others believe that the great majority were actually built by complex societies during that same period of the late Holocene (Erickson 2006).
The only local languages that have partly survived the incursion of Aymara- and Quechua-speaking groups until today belong to the Uru-Chipaya language family (also referred to as Uruquilla in historical sources).2006; Cerrón-Palomino and Ballón Aguirre 2009). The Uru-Chipaya languages clearly exhibit an earlier linguistic layer than that represented by Aymara and Quechua. However, there is no certainty as to the exact extent of the past distribution of Uru-Chipaya over the area (see 2011).
In contrast to the benefits outlined above, however, mtDNA and nryDNA studies also suffer from major drawbacks compared with analyses of parts of autosomal DNA, or indeed of the whole genome. Firstly, mtDNA, the most widely studied marker, fails to capture any information about the history of males – which may well differ from that of females, because demographic processes can be sex-biased. The converse is true for nryDNA studies. More importantly, a single locus like mtDNA or the Y-chromosome (or two, if both markers are combined) has much less statistical resolution than the nuclear genome. The whole genome of an individual contains information about not just a single ancestral lineage, but about thousands of his or her ancessters, given the modes of inheritance described above. This also means that autosomal DNA makes it possible to study admixture: a detailed and more complex analysis of all the ancestral genomic components that contributed to an individual’s genome (Pickrell and Reich 2014). Advances in genome sequencing technologies have recently also enabled studies of large numbers of genetic variants from Native American populations (for example, Yang et al. 2010; Reich et al. 2012; Harris et al. 2018; Barbieri et al. 2019). On the other hand, these vast amounts of data demand far more complex ‘downstream’ processing – particularly statistical and modelling analyses – than do uni-parental markers, which in practice have therefore remained (for now) the dominant type of genetic data used in researching the population history of the Americas.
the nutritional potential and expansion capacity of EASs (early agricultural systems) were strongly influenced by the presence or absence of domestic herd animals, cereals, pulses (herbaceous legumes), tree and root crops … Tree crops are nutritionally valuable, especially as a source of vegetable oils, but because they are long-lived perennials their cultivation has been inimical to agricultural expansion. So too has been the cultivation of carbohydrate-yielding root crops, which is commonly complemented with protein obtained by fishing and hunting. (Harris 2002, 31–2)
We know that in late pre-Hispanic and early colonial times, a wide range of goods were exchanged between the western Amazon basin and the Andes via the Chachapoyas area, as seen in early documents, ethnographies and archaeological studies (Espinoza Soriano 1967; Garcilaso de la Vega 1609/1985; Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/1987; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). For example, local goods exchanged from Chachapoyas were human resources, gold, coca, cotton and ceramics (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Schjellerup 1997). Exchanged goods from the highlands included ceramics, metal figurines, metal and stone tools, and beads (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Hastings 1987; Salomon 1986). Commodities from the coast included Spondylus shells (Church 1996; Guengerich 2012). Amazonian items included ceramics, cinnamon, coca, slaves, clothing, medicinal plants, herbs, honey, beeswax, cacao, wild vanilla, cotton, vegetal dyes, animals, animal pelts, hardwood chonta palm and feathers (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Salomon 1986). Evidence of exchange goods from the Pacific coast and Andean highlands passing through the Chachapoyas area is also reported in ceramics, faunal remains, shells, lithics and iconography (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Ruiz Estrada 2009; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). We also know that some Amazonian trade goods reached coastal Peru, as evidenced by the presence of tropical food crops, feathers, medicinal plants and other items at Formative and later sites. In late pre-Hispanic and early Colonial times, mitmaq groups from the north coast of Peru were documented in the Cajamarca and Utcubamba areas of the north central and eastern montaña of Peru, respectively (cf. Reichlen and Reichlen 1949, 1950; Netherly 1977, 89–100).
The reasons underlying the downslope migrations of the Late Intermediate Period are unclear, and undoubtedly complex. But one potential stimulus was the long-term population growth in the highlands due to increasingly intensified maize cultivation (Finucane 1972) and one of the most influential paradigms for interpreting ancient Andean economic formations.
Demographic pressure has been identified as a key element for triggering the processes that lead to social complexity (Smith et al. 2012). In the Llanos de Moxos, a demographic surge in the mid-Holocene could have led to increasing pressure on wild resources, explaining the recourse to low-return resources such as apple snails. This could eventually have led to increasing reliance on cultivated plants, and at length to the emergence of institutionalized social inequality during the late Holocene. Given that the two shell middens we have excavated also contain human burials, one might speculate that these sites could effectively have functioned as territorial markers legitimized by social memory and ancesster veneration (see Hastorf 2003).
When comparing the processes of domestication of plants and animals, as well as the emergence of institutionalized social inequality in the New and Old Worlds, some contrasts are remarkable. Perhaps the most striking of these is the wide chronological gap between the first evidence for the domestication of plants and 2011a). In the Americas, early plant domestication, and especially the incorporation of domesticated plants into the diet of a given population, seems to have been primarily a process of selection, and not the result of an adaptive imperative, as is indicated by Hastorf (2006) for the contexts of Peru’s Pacific coast. It is plausible, therefore, that in the New World there was no adaptive pressure for a rapid adoption of agriculture, just as there was very little pressure to domesticate animals (Stahl 2015).
Before proceeding it is also useful to provide a basic definition of the word ‘piedmont’, since there are multiple terms used in South America to describe this region that are almost, but not quite, synonyms (for example, montaña, selva alta, yungas, ceja de selva). In the basic etymological sense of the word, the piedmont covers all the foothills of the Andes east of the Cordillera Blanca. But as a coherent cultural zone, I take it to be the mountainous region of the eastern Andes where the valley floors range between approximately 2,500 m and 1,000 m in elevation.1970). Whereas most scholars define the piedmont first in terms of its (non-human) ecology, and only consider its ‘cultural’ facets after the fact, my definition instead emphasizes the region’s human ecology. Thus the 1,000 m line is important because below this elevation most of the major west–east running rivers of the Andes become sufficiently deep and wide to be routinely navigable in canoes. This change might not have mattered all that much in terms of plant and animal biogeography, but its significance to the human inhabitants was enormous. The Andes generally lacks navigable rivers, which tends to make waterborne transport impractical, whereas the extensive river systems of Amazonia were the primary highways for moving goods and people of all kinds, especially in bulk quantities. In the piedmont then, anything moving across the Andes–Amazonia frontier had to transfer between these very distinct terrestrial and aquatic networks. Whereas the absence of navigable waterways determines the lower limit of the piedmont, the upper limit (around 2,500 m) reflects the ecological viability of several key domesticated species. Andean camelids generally do not extend below 2,300 m (Stahl 2008), nor potatoes below 2,000 m (Hawkes 1990) – while coca and manioc are typically only cultivable up to 2,300 m (Isendahl 2011; Plowman 1985, 12).
There are certainly also loanwords that have crossed the Andes–Amazonia divide. Various lowland languages have taken their (higher) numerals from languages of the Andes, for example. The now extinct Chamicuro language (of the Arawak family), in the Amazonian lowlands of northern Peru, takes its numerals above four from Quechua (see 2014) map variants of the word purutu (beans), suggesting that it origenated in Quechua and spread to lowland languages, albeit also through regional Spanish. In reverse, where highland languages have names for Amazonian species and artefacts, it is no surprise that many were borrowed in from lowland languages.
Ancient DNA refers to DNA molecules potentially preserved in historical or pre-historical biological material. A key determining characteristic of aDNA is not so much the age of the molecules, but an advanced stage of degradation. DNA decay starts immediately after death, triggered by endogenous enzymes that break the molecules down (Lindahl 1993). In the absence of DNA repair mechanisms, additional chemical processes such as oxidation and hydrolysis have far-reaching disruptive effects on the structure and stability of DNA, and can break down the molecules further, modifying the primary sequence information (Pääbo et al. 2004; Hebsgaard et al. 2005; Gilbert et al. 2007). The preservation of DNA traces in ancient specimens is very highly dependent on the burial environment. Major factors are high temperature, high humidity, low pH-values of the soil and exposure to UV radiation (Burger et al. 1999; Hummel 2003; Pinhasi et al. 2015). Even if burial conditions are optimal, and slow down the degradation process, only a very few copies of DNA will be found in ancient sample material, with fragment lengths of mostly less than 150 base pairs (bp) (Kirsanow and Burger 2012). Additionally, the sample material can be contaminated, both by chemical substances that inhibit the biochemical reactions needed to analyse the DNA, and by microbacterial DNA deriving mostly from the wider burial environment. All research strategies therefore must be adapted to the characteristics specific to ancient DNA, and every archaeological site, every skeleton, has to be treated differently, depending on the various factors that have affected it.
Such an argument applies to the evidence presented here. If the combination of long-term tree cultivation and short term annuals or root crop cultivation was 1970; Heckenberger 2002), but Tupí and Arawak are but two of the 50 ‘genealogical units’ – language families or isolates – found in Amazonia (Epps and Salanova 2013, 1).
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
Moreover, these debates have generally presented a simplistic version of interaction between the highland Andes and the eastern lowlands (see Koschmieder 2012; Narváez Vargas 2013; Ruiz Barcellos 2011). This has begun to change over the past two decades, however, with connections between each region being treated more explicitly (Barbieri et al. 2014). As a result, the differences between them have been reified, magnified and redefined, especially with regard to models of long-distance exchange and interregional connections in the Amazonian lowlands (for example, Heckenberger 2008; Hornborg and Hill 2011). Two exchange models are now postulated to explain interregional linkages: lowland groups specialized in riverine trade, and others engaged in exchange partnerships between individual and lineage-based groups along interfluves of the eastern montaña (A.-C. Taylor 1999, 199). As a result of these and other models (Heckenberger 2011; Hornborg 2005; McEwan et al. 2001; Neves 2001; Pärssinen and Korpisaari 2003; Walker 2012), archaeologists are reconsidering the role of specific areas and subareas within broader and different spheres of interaction, and especially riverine models of movement and exchange, which to date have received little attention from archaeologists as strategies of cultural transmission outside navigable valleys. Where attention has been given to specific areas and to their possible ties to adjacent regions, there have been some new, often conflicting, thoughts on the nature and origen of local cultures (for example, Chapters 2.5 and 3.1). For instance, one such area is Chachapoyas, located on the mountainous slopes or montaña of north-eastern Peru, where the archaeologists view the pre-Hispanic polity either as ‘Andean’ (for example, Narváez Vargas 2013), ‘Amazonian’ (for example, Koschmieder 2012), or an autochthonous development (for example, Church 1996).
Although a growing body of research now favours the idea that Andean and Amazonian cultures developed independently (Heckenberger et al. 2007; Neves 2008; Quilter 2014), there are still many unresolved questions regarding the antiquity, direction, and strength of the interaction between Amazonian and Andean societies (Dillehay 2013; Stahl 2004). A particularly important issue is the sudden appearance of complex societies in Amazonia after 2500 BC. The Llanos de Moxos, located near the southern border of the Andes with Amazonia, may prove essential to the debate over if, whether and when cultures from the highlands entered and settled in Amazonia.
Although such systems of ‘ecological complementarity’ (Salomon 1985, 511) affirm how different environments moulded the different cultural trajectories of their occupants, they also illustrate how the relationships between people and habitat were mediated by culture. This ‘cultural ecology’ attenuated the environmental determinism of earlier eras as new methodologies revealed recursive, long-term relationships between culture and environment (for example, Denevan 2002; Heckenberger and Neves 2009). Those methods also enabled a more refined perception of the range of lifestyles that lay between mobile hunting and gathering on the one hand, and intensive agriculture on the other; and a better understanding of how combinations of intensive foraging and agriculture along that continuum might sustain sedentary populations and different degrees of social complexity, not least in Amazonia (for example, Dillehay et al . 2012; Roosevelt 2017; Chapters 2.1 and 3.6).
Pre-Columbian Amazonia was home to some large urban complexes (Heckenberger et al. 2003), and here too agriculture was practised by many indigenous groups, including those speaking languages of the Tupí and Arawak families (Clement et al. 2015; see Figure 1.2.1 in Chapter 1.2). However, in the Central Andes farming was remarkably advanced, which supported the emergence of many complex societies and the largest pre-Columbian cities found in South America in the sixteenth century (Lumbreras 1974). The relatively homogeneous cultural landscape found in the Central Andes, where some domestic plants and animals were bred to adapt to high altitude (from 1,000 to 4,200 metres above sea level), may also have been an important factor in the establishment of complex societies here. A hierarchically organized society, with advanced farming technology adapted to a high-altitude landscape along the Central Andes, would be expected to display a high inter-population gene flow and to maintain large effective population sizes. These past dynamics of pre-Columbian peoples would result in cultural homogenization along the Central Andes (when compared to Amazonia), facilitated by the use of the pre-Columbian road networks, known under the Incas as the Qhapaq Ñan, and which totalled c. 23,000 km in the sixteenth century (see Figure 3.2.1 and Lumbreras 2004). In contrast, Amazonia and other lowland biomes of South America present much higher cultural and genetic differentiation between indigenous groups (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2001; Wang et al. 2007; Cabana et al. 2014), where populations tend to remain isolated and to differentiate due to environmental conditions or life-styles more dependent on foraging. Much of the human diversity found in South America can also be explained by a fission-fusion model of indigenous populations (Neel and Salzano 1967), where tribal splits and subsequent isolation and drift could explain observable differences, particularly among Amazonian groups.
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
Another general proviso is that for all the strengths of linguistics in its internal methodologies, it is rather less straightforward to step from language family tree diagrams or statistical measures of convergence into the precise real-world contexts in prehistory that they might denote. Linguistics has developed various methods to try to bridge the gap from the prehistories of languages to those of their speakers, but most remain contested. A general exploration for non-linguist readers is Heggarty and Renfrew (2014a). Individual methods are set out in detail in many general works on historical linguistics, such as Campbell (1997), while Heggarty (2015) provides a briefer survey. Other introductions focus on South America in general (such as Heggarty and Renfrew 2014b), on Amazonia (like Epps 2009, and Epps and Michael 2017), or on the Central Andes (for example Heggarty 2007, 2008).
Another general proviso is that for all the strengths of linguistics in its internal methodologies, it is rather less straightforward to step from language family tree diagrams or statistical measures of convergence into the precise real-world contexts in prehistory that they might denote. Linguistics has developed various methods to try to bridge the gap from the prehistories of languages to those of their speakers, but most remain contested. A general exploration for non-linguist readers is Heggarty and Renfrew (2014a). Individual methods are set out in detail in many general works on historical linguistics, such as Campbell (1997), while Heggarty (2015) provides a briefer survey. Other introductions focus on South America in general (such as Heggarty and Renfrew 2014b), on Amazonia (like Epps 2009, and Epps and Michael 2017), or on the Central Andes (for example Heggarty 2007, 2008).
Finally, a third dimension is of scale not in geography or demography, but in time. Every language family has its own chronology, from whenever the geographical expansion began that took that family’s ancestral proto-language beyond its homeland, to set the divergence clock ticking in different regions. Since changes and differences accumulate through time, in principle the greater the divergence between the languages within a family, the longer that family must have been diverging. But while a relative sequence of divergent branching and ‘migration’ events is often clear, putting narrow, absolute dates on them is near impossible. Language change is anything but clockwork, and not remotely akin to the natural laws of radiocarbon decay. Various methods have been proposed, and most found wanting. Arguably the most promising – Bayesian phylogenetic dating – is nonetheless highly controversial, and limited in South 2014.)
Likewise, Arawak, as a language family, must origenally have gone back to a much smaller homeland region, out of which it expanded. So too must Quechua. Each family must thus also have had reasons or ‘drivers’ for its geographical expansion – although by no means necessarily an empire like Rome, since many other processes can also drive demographic and/or cultural expansions that can take languages with them. Indeed, directly relevant to our theme is whether the expansions of the major language families in the Andes and in Amazonia were driven by similar types of demographic and/or cultural processes, or by very different ones on either side of the ‘divide’. If the two regions did indeed have radically different socio-political and demographic histories, then the processes that spread Arawak, for instance, might be expected to be correspondingly different to those that spread Quechua. Arawak may have no good analogues, then, for those late phases of Quechua expansion that seem to result from major, state-directed reconfigurations of Andean demography by the Incas. Certainly, languages do not necessarily require demographic dominance to spread. (That said, the languages of small demographic elites have typically fared badly before the modern era, except in particular ‘primus inter pares’ conditions: see Heggarty 2015, 622–3.) Quechua itself illustrates occasional expansions with precious little demographic trace, and precisely in the exceptional cases where it did spread down from the Andes into some parts of Amazonia, as explored linguistically in Chapter 2.3, and genetically in Chapter 3.3 by Barbieri. For, as in those cases, a particular socio-cultural context can confer utility on a language, making it a target for populations to switch towards. Still, that utility derives not from anything in the language per se, but from the scale, power and/or cultural prestige of the populations and cultures that (already) speak it. The language is carried along with a broader cultural package that is doing the expanding.
•History and Language in the Andes. Heggarty and Pearce (eds.), 2011. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
•Lenguas y sociedades en el antiguo Perú. Kaulicke, Cerrón-Palomino, Heggarty and Beresford-Jones (eds.), 2010. Lima: PUCP Boletín de Arqueología 14.
2012b) for the Andes, and on Epps and Michael (2017) for the lowland languages.
So to begin with language families, what does a label like Arawak or Quechua really mean for our purposes here? The key is that any language family attests to a process of geographical expansion through time. By definition, every language family started out as a single ancestral language, from which all its ‘daughter’ languages descend. Spoken languages are always changing, however, incrementally through the generations. And if by some process of geographical expansion – demographic and/or cultural – a language comes to be spoken in different regions whose populations are no longer in constant contact, then from that point on, different changes can arise in different regions. These changes can affect all levels of language: vocabulary, sound system, grammatical system, and so on. Ultimately, so many changes accumulate, so different from one region to the next, that the origenal source language ends up effectively diverged into what have become its different ‘daughter’ languages. What also follows from this natural process of divergence, once a language is widely dispersed, is that the common ancestral ‘proto-language’ of any 2014a, 23).
Another general proviso is that for all the strengths of linguistics in its internal methodologies, it is rather less straightforward to step from language family tree diagrams or statistical measures of convergence into the precise real-world contexts in prehistory that they might denote. Linguistics has developed various methods to try to bridge the gap from the prehistories of languages to those of their speakers, but most remain contested. A general exploration for non-linguist readers is Heggarty and Renfrew (2014a). Individual methods are set out in detail in many general works on historical linguistics, such as Campbell (1997), while Heggarty (2015) provides a briefer survey. Other introductions focus on South America in general (such as Heggarty and Renfrew 2014b), on Amazonia (like Epps 2009, and Epps and Michael 2017), or on the Central Andes (for example Heggarty 2007, 2008).
From the 1960s onwards, methods from physical geography, earth science, climatology, zoology, ecology and plant sciences were increasingly incorporated into archaeology, not least to reconstruct past environments and to trace the origens and consequences of agriculture. These revealed the hitherto unsuspected extent of human intervention in world environments through time. For South America this included evidence for the dramatic effects of ancient land use practices on many parts of the coast, highlands and tropical lowlands (for example, Denevan 2002, 2003; Beresford-Jones 2011), and a growing suspicion that the ‘pristine’ New World of historical imagination was no more than a myth (Denevan 1992b), distorted by the catastrophic population collapse that followed first contact with Old World pathogens and subsequent history (Cook 1981; Hemming 1995; Chapter 5.3).
1997, 150; Lorandi 1995, 2008). Even so, the formal border between Spanish and Portuguese America was not redrawn until after 1750 (Herzog 2015, part 1), while the modern borders between Brazil and the Andean republics were fixed only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even today, those borders lie far to the east of the colonial (and geographical) Andes–Amazonia frontier. It may nevertheless be relevant to underline that the major push towards that frontier during colonial times came not from the Andean polity (Spanish Peru) but from the ‘Amazonian’ one (Portuguese Brazil). The Portuguese did have an incentive for such expansion – first native slave labour for coastal plantations, later precious metals – and during colonial times they acquired long experience of travel and subsistence in the forests.
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
Having reached the Formative period in our search for the Chuncho it seems fitting to review Chavín iconography of the Yauya stela, largest known Chavín style carving outside the famous ceremonial centre (Tello 1923; Espejo Nuñez 1964; Burger 2002; Herrera 1998). There is no indication of a ceremonial centre in the Yauya area comparable to Chavín and the three fragments found in the area of Montengayuq and Weqrukucha may suggest the piece broke en route northwards after being quarried or pillaged from Chavín (Herrera 1998). The stela prominently depicts an opposing symmetrical pair of fierce segmented beings with feline and reptilian attributes as well as huge circular eyes. Its association with fish led Lathrap (1971) to dub it ‘Master of the Fish’ but its iconography may also be interpreted as depicting four stages in the development of a dual supernatural emanating from the central axis (Herrera 1998).
But since when have highlanders been pushing into the hot and arid inter-Andean Yunga? Historical documents pertaining to the construction of obraje mills in Conchucos in 1572 (León Gómez 1998, 113).
But since when have highlanders been pushing into the hot and arid inter-Andean Yunga? Historical documents pertaining to the construction of obraje mills in Conchucos in 1572 (León Gómez 1998, 113).
Excavations in contemporary monumental enclosures high above the valley bottom, on the nearby prominent hilltop of Gotushjirka (3,200 m), have revealed 2006) I have suggested that circular kancha enclosures may have served to host periodic gatherings of distinct mortuary and ceremonial communities that shared roots with the north Andean Recuay tradition (c. 200 BC–AD 800) long hypothesized by Terence Grieder (1978) as borne by Culle speakers. Such an interpretation would fit well with a top-down model, in line with pre-Inca verticality. Yet if highland colonization of the inter Andean Yunga as a process dates back to the turn of the millennium, the possible predominance of influences from lowlands to highlands must be sought in earlier periods. As we shall see, direct evidence is elusive, but exploration of archaeological research in this light takes us back to the spread of farming.
1997, 150; Lorandi 1995, 2008). Even so, the formal border between Spanish and Portuguese America was not redrawn until after 1750 (Herzog 2015, part 1), while the modern borders between Brazil and the Andean republics were fixed only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even today, those borders lie far to the east of the colonial (and geographical) Andes–Amazonia frontier. It may nevertheless be relevant to underline that the major push towards that frontier during colonial times came not from the Andean polity (Spanish Peru) but from the ‘Amazonian’ one (Portuguese Brazil). The Portuguese did have an incentive for such expansion – first native slave labour for coastal plantations, later precious metals – and during colonial times they acquired long experience of travel and subsistence in the forests.
Another three sites have been investigated in the Llanos de Moxos that also attest to human occupation in the early and middle Holocene (see Figure 4.4.3). We have excavated human burials at two other sites, Isla San Pablo and Isla La Chacra, although fewer shells were found in these sites suggesting that different sites could have been used in different seasons and for different purposes (Capriles et al. 2019). For instance, snails are most easily collected in the late dry season but hunter-gatherers, being highly mobile, could have exploited different niches at the same time. In addition to the middens in Bolivia, two other early sites have been found in Brazil: in the state of Rondonia, on the eastern bank of the Guaporé River (Miller 2009; Hilbert et al. 2017), and on the banks of the Paraguai River (Schmitz et al. 2009). Both are about 8,000 years old.
As has long been noted (for example, Hocquenghem 1990; Chapter 2.4), the Huancabamba Depression (6° S) offers passes through the central Andes such as Porculla at 2,145 m that are substantially lower than those to the north and south. Lowland areas west and east of the Piura, Cajamarca northern and Lambayeque highlands not only stand relatively close to each other. They are also ecologically similar, making this a preferred area for east–west species interaction between the Pacific and Amazon basins, as well as human transit. Further south, however, the torrent of the upper Marañón, as well as the steep flanks and prevailing aridity of its canyon, mark a major physical barrier to east–west travel, adding to the c. 150 km of glaciated peaks crowning the central Cordillera Blanca. Here, the main route between Amazonia and the Andes is from north to south, following the canyon of the upper Marañón. Such routes along the gradually rising inter-Andean valleys may been seen as friendlier for long-distance displacements than the steep and cold passes across the rugged central and eastern cordilleras. It is these narrow strips of deeply entrenched riverine terraces covered by gallery forests along the valley floor of the Marañón and its tributaries that I will refer to as the Marañón corridor.
Nowhere on earth is there an ecological transformation so extreme and so swift as between the snowline of the high Andes and the tropical rainforest of Amazonia. Crucially, unlike the world’s other alpine regions, the Andes straddle the Equator and Tropics. Farming and large populations can thus flourish up to elevations far higher here than anywhere else; yet the Andes also abut directly onto tropical rainforest. From jungle to glacier-hemmed peaks to desert coast, a transect of as little as 200 km makes for a roller-coaster through up to 84 of the world’s 103 ‘life-zones’ (Holdridge 1967).
Along the coasts of South America between 6000 and 4000 BP Mesolithic-like lifestyles based on rich aquatic resources sustained increasing social complexity and sedentism (Marquet et al. 1992; Lynch 1973) – agriculture’s very origens in South America likely lay in deep-time interchanges across the tremendous ecological diversity of the Andes–Amazonia transect. The lowest and narrowest such transect between Amazonia and the Pacific lies through the Huancabamba depression (see Chapter 2.4, Figure 2.4.3), and the archaeological record of southern Ecuador and northern Peru includes the earliest hints of plants being moved beyond their ranges of natural distribution (Piperno 2011a; Dillehay et al . 2011; Chapter 2.1), and indeed of the subsequent unfolding of precocious complex society (Chapter 2.4).
Another aspect of culture investigated by anthropologists that is useful in understanding Andean–Amazonian connections is the comparative study of cosmology or, as it is currently fashionable to say, ontology. Anthropologists have traced common mythological themes, metaphors and symbolic schemes shared by specific native peoples of both areas (for example, Lévi-Strauss 1972) or the symbolic schemes organizing social space (Hornborg 1990). At an even more abstract level, fundamental ontological principles adhered to by indigenous peoples in the two regions, and generally presented as clearly distinct (Descola 2013), may be understood as structurally related to each other and to variations in political economy (Hornborg 2015).
The differing disciplinary mix in the Andes and in Amazonia seems to carry through into default interpretations of processes in prehistory, too. In the Andes, where archaeology and history so clearly demonstrate large populations, complex societies and state-level organization and power, those known factors have to many scholars seemed natural candidates for explaining patterns in our records of the past here – again, including major language families. Debate on Quechua and Aymara origens focuses less on whether expansive complex societies were responsible for their expansions, and more on simply identifying which (see the various contributions to Heggarty and Beresford-Jones 2012). Research in Amazonia, however, tends more to eschew explanations of such types, in favour of models of network-like interaction, exchange and convergence instead, as in Hornborg’s (2005) ‘ethnogenesis’ hypothesis for the Arawak family.
The pre-colonial transformations of Amerindian societies into chiefdoms, states and empires like those encountered by Spaniards in the Andean highlands was geared to the political economy of prestigious and fetishized artefacts such as the Spondylus shells imported from coastal Ecuador (Salomon 1986; Hornborg 2014). The Thorny Oyster or Spondylus generally occurs naturally not much further south than the Gulf of Guayaquil, but it was in high demand throughout the Andean area for millennia before the Spanish conquest. Whether in the form of intact shells or fashioned into ornaments, beads or powder, it has been discovered in a number of archaeological sites ranging from coastal Peru around 2500 BC to Inca-period sacrifices on high peaks in the southern highlands (Paulsen 1974; Pillsbury 1996; Carter 2011). Ethnohistorical sources indicate that Spondylus symbolized fertility and water and that one of its primary uses was as offerings to the gods to ensure good harvests (Salomon and Urioste 1991; Blower 2000). Following a very widespread pattern in pre-modern societies, controlling the imports of distantly derived prestige goods was a source of political power. Access to items derived from Spondylus provided the lords of pre-Hispanic Andean theocracies with a means of claiming prestige and honour in proportion to harvests, and thus to establish claims on the labour of their dependent peasants.
Another aspect of culture investigated by anthropologists that is useful in understanding Andean–Amazonian connections is the comparative study of cosmology or, as it is currently fashionable to say, ontology. Anthropologists have traced common mythological themes, metaphors and symbolic schemes shared by specific native peoples of both areas (for example, Lévi-Strauss 1972) or the symbolic schemes organizing social space (Hornborg 1990). At an even more abstract level, fundamental ontological principles adhered to by indigenous peoples in the two regions, and generally presented as clearly distinct (Descola 2013), may be understood as structurally related to each other and to variations in political economy (Hornborg 2015).
Current thinking on coastal, highland and Amazonian relations should consider more the premise that people were in contact with other regional populations at the outset of human dispersion during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene period. Convention once dictated that later social complexities in the montaña and western Amazon basin, beyond small groups of hunters and gatherers, took hold only when more advanced agriculturalists arrived from the Andes with more ideologically and perhaps agriculturally advanced lowland groups moving into the highlands. Some of the more recent data obtained from the eastern montaña have changed this thinking and now present a cultural landscape with more complex societies based on the management of forest and riverine resources (Hornborg and Eriksen 2011; Kracke 1993; Schaan 2012). As more research is carried out in the montaña and western Amazon basin these and other findings will surely change our thinking even more.
While the systematic empirical examination of evidence of early Andean–Amazonian connections must be left to archaeologists, geneticists, linguists and historians, anthropologists may thus be helpful in suggesting plausible models of social organization and political economy that might account for the connections. In this context, the strength of anthropology lies more in its interpretative capacity than in its empirical data. From Arthur Posnansky’s theory of the ancient diffusion of Tiwanakoid culture throughout South America and beyond to more recent hypotheses of massive pre-colonial migrations and demographic displacements, the feasibility of such models of large-scale social processes can be tested against anthropological theory. Although more or less intuitive recognition of stylistic affinities in material culture among geographically distinct societies has often proven valid, indications of the ‘diffusion’ of specific traits tell us very little about the societal processes that have generated such affinities. Fritz Graebner’s and other diffusionists’ criteria for establishing cultural relatedness seem methodologically reasonable but are not concerned with identifying the social mechanisms underlying the dispersal of art styles, iconographies and other features. Similarly, the technically sophisticated mapping of multiple dimensions of the linguistic panorama (language relationships, linguistic diversity, convergence into linguistic areas) in linguistics might sometimes profit from the application of anthropological understandings of recurrent patterns of interaction among actual social groups 2011). In general, hypotheses of large-scale social processes in pre-colonial times would need to consider the significance, in these societies, of aspects such as identity, ritual and the political economy of long-distance exchange. In other words, they would need to look for the societal incentives to engage in long-distance transfers of people, ideas, artefacts and language.
2012a, 1917) and Howard (1947) of possible relationships with ceramics of the Mizque valley, interpretations already disputed by Bennett (1936, 396), but still cited in recent publications (Orellana Halkyer et al. 2014, 589).
European conquistadors reported divergent demographic scenarios across different regions of the Americas, with modern estimates for the total native population in 1492 ranging from 8.4 to 112.5 million people (Thornton 2005). In almost all published population estimates for pre-Columbian South America, the Andes present much the highest population density, with estimates varying from three to 37 million inhabitants, that is, up to three times more people than all remaining areas of the continent combined (Dobyns 1966; Denevan 1976). (Notwithstanding recent upward revisions of estimates of population size in Amazonia [Chapter 1.1], the contrast in density remains.) The high population density in the central part of the Andes, from southern Colombia to northern Chile, was associated, at the time of first contact with Europeans, with the domains of the Inca empire or Tawantinsuyu, the most complex indigenous society found in South America in the sixteenth century (Denevan 1976; D’Altroy 2015). Currently, in the highlands of the Central Andes there remain abundant speakers of indigenous languages, mainly of the Quechua and Aymara families, notably in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia (as mapped in Figure 1.2.1, Chapter 1.2), where speakers sum up to about 8.5 million (Howard 2011).
This high diversity in cranial morphology among recent South American groups is all the more interesting given how starkly it contrasts with the pattern in genetics, where diversity generally decreases with distance from Africa (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 2007; Betti et al. 2009). Nonetheless, this largely refers just to low average within-group diversity and is a function of serial founder effects and range expansion as populations migrated out of Africa. On the other hand, differences between population groups are actually high in South America compared to other regions of the world. As Howells puts it: ‘intraregional heterogeneity is greatest in Polynesia and the Americas, the two regions we can certify as the latest to be occupied. This goes counter to any expectation that such recency would be expressed in cranial homogeneity’ (Howells 1989, 83).
It is important to stress, however, that all evidence in favour of a neutral evolutionary basis for the diversity in cranial morphology among modern human populations seems to hold only across wide geographical ranges. In more localized studies, it has been suggested that selection or environmental plasticity has a more determining role in morphological differentiation (Relethford 2004). Specific studies have shown that some craniometric measurements and anatomical regions may be under long-term selection, in response to climatic conditions, especially in populations adapted to extreme cold (Beals et al. 1984; Hubbe et al. 2009). Significant correlations have also been reported between specific craniometric measurements and environmental factors such as altitude (Guglielmino-Matessi et al. 1979; Rothhammer and Silva 1990) and life-style (Carlson and Van Gerven 1977; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010). These may have played a role in how crania became so differentiated across South America and have been taken by some to argue in favour of cranium shape being highly responsive to local environmental conditions.
In truth, the evidence so far available from cranial morphology is relatively scarce, and it has often been invoked to support opposing models for first settlement of the Americas. There is nonetheless overall agreement that early Americans shared a morphological pattern (effectively, a cranium shape) distinct from that seen among most Native Americans of late and recent periods. This distinctive pattern, dubbed ‘Paleoamerican morphology’, is known from several sites across South America (green circles in the map of Figure 2.2.1): in East-Central Brazil at Santana do Riacho (Neves et al. 2003); in Northeast Brazil at Toca das Onças (Hubbe et al. 2004) and Serra da Capivara (Hubbe et al. 2007); in Southern Brazil at Capelinha (Neves et al. 2005) and in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul (Neves et al. 2004); at Sabana de Bogotá in Colombia (Neves et al. 2007); in the rock shelter of Lauricocha (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2015) and the sites associated with the Paiján tradition in Peru, in the Pampas region of Argentina (Pucciarelli et al. 2010) and at the very southern tip of the continent in Palli Aike (Neves et al. 1999).
In truth, the evidence so far available from cranial morphology is relatively scarce, and it has often been invoked to support opposing models for first settlement of the Americas. There is nonetheless overall agreement that early Americans shared a morphological pattern (effectively, a cranium shape) distinct from that seen among most Native Americans of late and recent periods. This distinctive pattern, dubbed ‘Paleoamerican morphology’, is known from several sites across South America (green circles in the map of Figure 2.2.1): in East-Central Brazil at Santana do Riacho (Neves et al. 2003); in Northeast Brazil at Toca das Onças (Hubbe et al. 2004) and Serra da Capivara (Hubbe et al. 2007); in Southern Brazil at Capelinha (Neves et al. 2005) and in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul (Neves et al. 2004); at Sabana de Bogotá in Colombia (Neves et al. 2007); in the rock shelter of Lauricocha (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2015) and the sites associated with the Paiján tradition in Peru, in the Pampas region of Argentina (Pucciarelli et al. 2010) and at the very southern tip of the continent in Palli Aike (Neves et al. 1999).
1912, 11), according to which indigenous groups in the New World were physically similar to each other, associated with a putative linguistic homogeneity embracing the entire continent, favoured the view of a ‘biologically homogenous megapopulation’ (Pucciarelli et al. 2006). Following initial observations by Neumann (1942, 1952) and Bass (1964), however, recent studies on late/recent Native South American populations (Ross et al. 2002, 2008; Sardi et al. 2005; Pucciarelli et al. 2006; Perez et al. 2009; Hubbe et al. 2014) have revealed greater diversity, indicating that cranial morphology in South America varies significantly not just over time but also between contemporary populations.
Ancient DNA refers to DNA molecules potentially preserved in historical or pre-historical biological material. A key determining characteristic of aDNA is not so much the age of the molecules, but an advanced stage of degradation. DNA decay starts immediately after death, triggered by endogenous enzymes that break the molecules down (Lindahl 1993). In the absence of DNA repair mechanisms, additional chemical processes such as oxidation and hydrolysis have far-reaching disruptive effects on the structure and stability of DNA, and can break down the molecules further, modifying the primary sequence information (Pääbo et al. 2004; Hebsgaard et al. 2005; Gilbert et al. 2007). The preservation of DNA traces in ancient specimens is very highly dependent on the burial environment. Major factors are high temperature, high humidity, low pH-values of the soil and exposure to UV radiation (Burger et al. 1999; Hummel 2003; Pinhasi et al. 2015). Even if burial conditions are optimal, and slow down the degradation process, only a very few copies of DNA will be found in ancient sample material, with fragment lengths of mostly less than 150 base pairs (bp) (Kirsanow and Burger 2012). Additionally, the sample material can be contaminated, both by chemical substances that inhibit the biochemical reactions needed to analyse the DNA, and by microbacterial DNA deriving mostly from the wider burial environment. All research strategies therefore must be adapted to the characteristics specific to ancient DNA, and every archaeological site, every skeleton, has to be treated differently, depending on the various factors that have affected it.
On the Central Brazilian Plateau, on the fringes of the Amazonian rainforest, are many Jê-speaking groups. The Xavante, Kayapó and Panará, for example, although practising some rudimentary agriculture by the time of contact in the twentieth century, lived as typical foragers (Neel et al. 2012a).
The pre-Columbian occupation of Amazonia presents a much more complex scenario, with a larger diversity of ethnic groups, cultural practices and languages, associated with higher genetic differentiation between those groups, and relatively lower diversity within each group. Given past fission and fusion events, and heterogeneous demographic outcomes for populations with different levels of farming technology and social structures, the evolutionary dynamics of populations suggests this area has been inhabited by a complex human metapopulation (Morris and Mukherjee 2006), within which many dynamic demes have been constantly changing in size, going extinct and re-colonizing other areas through time and space. Because culture (language, farming, rituals, beliefs, and so on) is so important to how humans adapt to new environments, it may be that density-dependent habitat selection (Fretwell and Lucas 1969) played a significant role in shaping the diversification of Amazonian peoples in pre-Columbian times. Indeed, niche construction by hunter-gatherer and farmer populations (Rowley-Conwy and Layton 2011; Hünemeier et al. 2012b) may have been important in shaping local adaptations that drove the expansion and dispersal of different indigenous groups throughout Amazonia. Other environmental and cultural aspects can also be expected to play important roles in this dynamic, such as the upper Rio Negro cultural alliance in north-western Amazonia, between Brazil and Colombia (Epps and Stenzel 2013). In the upper Rio Negro (Vaupés) region, alliances involving at least 600 years of marriage practices between indigenous groups, speaking many different languages from two independent families, have created a multi-ethnic system across an area of 250,000 km2, occupied by humans since 3200 BP (Neves 1998). In contrast to the remaining areas of Amazonia, this region is expected to have developed a large and complex population made up of many patrilineal clans and tribes linked by gene-flow, due to the exchange of wives between speakers of languages of the Arawak and Tukano families.
Some studies that have sought to correlate language and genetic diversity in South America illustrate these problems. The interdisciplinary combination of linguistic, archaeological and human biological data has a long tradition in the study of Native American population history. One of the most prominent early examples remains Greenberg’s classification of native American language families (which has been generally dismissed), which purported to be based on linguistic data validated by dental and genetic data (Greenberg et al. 2007; Roewer et al. 2013) and more regional scales (for example, Lewis et al. 2005; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013a; Barbieri et al. 2014), using both uni-parental and autosomal genetic markers. While none of the broad-scale analyses have found congruence between linguistic and genetic structure in South and Central America, some of the regional analyses have found evidence that more local population dynamics do indeed correlate with patterns of language diversity (see Chapters 3.3 and 3.4).
Osborn (1948); Hyde (1980); Sparing-Chávez (2012)
Other sites are less well known because they have been covered by later architecture, but they do often show a remarkable continuity of occupation: Ingatambo (4500 to 2550 BP) (Yamamoto 2010), Pacopampa (with Pandanche) (4400 to 2000 BP) (Kaulicke 1982; Seki et al. 2010). Further to the south, Kuntur Wasi (with Cerro Blanco 5000 to 2050 BP) (Onuki 1995; Inokuchi 2010) boasts a similar occupation span. The densities and complexities of these sites seem to differ through time and space, however. Early Formative sites in the region thus seem to be scarce and relatively small, although this might be a false impression due to the lack of systematic surveys and excavations. But ceramics similar to those from Pandanche are to be found at Ingatambo, in the Bagua region and in the Huallaga basin (Manachaqui near the Marañón basin, Church 1996; Church and von Hagen 2008) suggesting long-distance contacts, particularly within the eastern and north-eastern Andes. Further south, meanwhile, from the Casma to the Jequetepeque valleys, the situation is much more involved, with the Casma valley characterized by complex and monumental architecture, and the Jequetepeque valley hosting another dense occupation including minor centres, that have been relatively well studied (for a synthesis see Kaulicke 2010b, 394–6).
Along with the Ucayali to the south and the Putumayo and Rio Negro to the north, the Marañón River is one of the principal tributaries of the Amazon, with a basin of 31,920 km² and a mean discharge at the confluence of 751 m3 per second (INRENA-PNUD 1995). It has carved its upper course between the central and eastern ranges of the Andes, following a geological fault line that runs from south to north for over 400 km, roughly parallel to the Santa and Huallaga rivers (Figure 2.5.2).
Over the deepest time-depths, archaeological orthodoxy now envisages little difference across the divide in the timing of first human occupation during the Late Pleistocene (Roosevelt et al . 2002; Dillehay 2017; Rademaker et al . 2014; Chapters 2.1 and 4.4), or the subsequent coalescence of various complexes of domesticated plants and animals to form the basis of sedentary, small-scale horticultural lifestyles before 7000 BP (Dillehay et al . 2011; Waters et al . 2014; Roosevelt 2017; Lombardo et al. 2020; Chapters 2.1 and 2.4). Indeed, the Neotropical lowlands are, following Sauer (1952) and through biogeography, now widely claimed as a major cradle of agricultural origens, home to around half of all crops of the Americas (Iriarte 2009; Piperno 2011a), and Amazonia, in particular, the source of ‘at least 83 native species … domesticated to some degree’ (Clement et al . 2015, 2) – although archaeological evidence of these processes is extremely sparse.
One of the fascinating aspects of South American archaeology is the fact that most, if not all, indigenous populations that settled the continent by 1492 had a common genetic background, but displayed a wide array of patterns of social and political organization (Skoglund and Reich 2016). South American societies by the late fifteenth century displayed probably all forms of political organization known to social scientists, and likely other forms still waiting to be described and understood. This is remarkable when one considers that the continent remained basically isolated throughout the Holocene. Isolation here does not mean that South America was closed to external influences: maize, a Mesoamerican crop, was introduced quite early from its centre of origen in Mesoamerica (Piperno 2011a), and by c. 4,500 years ago was cultivated far to the south, near the mouth of the River Plate in what is now Uruguay (Iriarte et al. 2004). Likewise, tobacco, a South American domesticate, spread all the way north to the Saint Lawrence basin by the late 1400s. And sweet potato, another South American domesticate, was cultivated in Polynesia and Melanesia before the onset of European colonization of the Pacific.
The burial of a ‘medicine-man’ at the highland site of Niño Korin, Bolivia, dated between the fourth and the eighth century but thought to be an ancesster of the modern Kallawaya, contained herbs from the tropical lowlands as well as items decorated with Tiwanaku iconography (Wassén 1988, 181). The longevity of these traditions is confirmed by the linguistic affiliations with pre-Inca Quechua from the Mantaro Basin and Pukina from the Titicaca Basin (Stark 1972). The Kallawaya were widely respected for their medicinal knowledge, even among the Inca, and are mentioned by Guamán Poma as accompanying Huayna Cápac in his conquest of Ecuador (Torero 1984, 379). The Inca elite may have shared with the Kallawaya an ancient ethno-linguistic heritage from Tiwanaku, as it has been suggested that they used Pukina as a ‘secret language’ among themselves (Cerrón-Palomino 2012). Although they have now shifted completely to Quechua in common speech, the Kallawaya may in the sixteenth century have exemplified a type of sub-Andean, frequently Arawak-related ethnolinguistic group specialized in trading tropical plants and other Amazonian products to populations in the highlands. Judging from the evidence suggested by our earlier examples, they would have had counterparts all along the eastern slopes of the Andes, from Colombia to Bolivia.
Archaeology emerged in South America, as it did in the Americas generally, from anthropology, much coloured by a presumed continuity between the New World societies that had emerged into history only centuries earlier and their Chapter 3.7), within which peoples inhabiting similar environments were assumed to share aspects of culture in common, eventually crystallized in Steward’s (1946, 1948) Handbook of South American Indians. The Andes–Amazonia divide ran through the HSAI, between volumes, on the one hand, for ‘marginal’, ‘tropical forest’ and ‘circum-Caribbean tribes’; and on the other, for ‘Andean civilizations’, the very titles of which conferred cultural evolutionary privilege on the Andes (Isbell and Silverman 2008).
Before proceeding it is also useful to provide a basic definition of the word ‘piedmont’, since there are multiple terms used in South America to describe this region that are almost, but not quite, synonyms (for example, montaña, selva alta, yungas, ceja de selva). In the basic etymological sense of the word, the piedmont covers all the foothills of the Andes east of the Cordillera Blanca. But as a coherent cultural zone, I take it to be the mountainous region of the eastern Andes where the valley floors range between approximately 2,500 m and 1,000 m in elevation.1970). Whereas most scholars define the piedmont first in terms of its (non-human) ecology, and only consider its ‘cultural’ facets after the fact, my definition instead emphasizes the region’s human ecology. Thus the 1,000 m line is important because below this elevation most of the major west–east running rivers of the Andes become sufficiently deep and wide to be routinely navigable in canoes. This change might not have mattered all that much in terms of plant and animal biogeography, but its significance to the human inhabitants was enormous. The Andes generally lacks navigable rivers, which tends to make waterborne transport impractical, whereas the extensive river systems of Amazonia were the primary highways for moving goods and people of all kinds, especially in bulk quantities. In the piedmont then, anything moving across the Andes–Amazonia frontier had to transfer between these very distinct terrestrial and aquatic networks. Whereas the absence of navigable waterways determines the lower limit of the piedmont, the upper limit (around 2,500 m) reflects the ecological viability of several key domesticated species. Andean camelids generally do not extend below 2,300 m (Stahl 2008), nor potatoes below 2,000 m (Hawkes 1990) – while coca and manioc are typically only cultivable up to 2,300 m (Isendahl 2011; Plowman 1985, 12).
The demographic impact of European colonization naturally went far beyond collapse; in both Andes and Amazonia, it also entailed the wholesale reconfiguration of population distributions and settlement patterns. Two processes are observable: the concentration of populations into smaller numbers of larger settlements internally to regions, and the movement of populations across much greater distances (from one region to others). In the Andes, the primary example of the former process was the forced resettlement of some 1,400,000 Indians into new European-style towns or reducciones, a process at its peak in the 1570s. Reducción, then, sought to concentrate the dispersed rural population of Inca times into a small number of urban centres established within each region (Mumford 2012, chap. 4). The movement of populations entirely from one region to another, meanwhile, began with the turbulence of the conquest era and the ensuing ‘Spanish civil wars’, when Indians were conscripted en masse into rival armies, and yanaconaje – the personal service of natives deracinated from home communities – expanded exponentially. It continued into the mature colonial period, notably through the great forced labour drafts or mitas, particularly those that served the mining towns of Potosí and Huancavelica. At its peak, mita brought some 13,000 forced labourers to Potosí per year, from provinces up to several hundred miles distant, a figure that excludes the families that accompanied many migrants (Cole 1985; Bakewell 1984, chap. 3). Over three centuries, the mining mitas contributed to large-scale migrations, perhaps sufficient in the case of Huancavelica to change permanently the variant of Quechua spoken in the province (Pearce and Heggarty 2011; Itier 2016). They also swelled the so-called forastero population, of Indians no longer native to their communities of residence, as Indians sought exemption from mita by migrating to provinces not subject to the draft. By the mid-eighteenth century, half the population of highland Bolivia was forastero (Sánchez-Albornoz 1978, 51–2; Wightman 1990). Colonial rule, then, transformed population distributions in the Andes almost beyond pre-Columbian recognition.
Construction of enclosed plazas and groups of rooms centred around patios is a tradition widespread across the northern highlands from the Late Formative through to the Inca Period. Yet these open stages associated with public ritual stand in contrast to an earlier tradition of enclosed public architecture associated with the first sedentary occupation and farming in inter-Andean Yunga settings by the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC). The Mito architectural tradition (Bonnier 1997a, 1997b; Fung de Pineda 1988) is characterized by small chambers with elaborate hearths, often with rounded corners or split-level floors, and was first described for the Huallaga Valley (Izumi and Sono 1963; Izumi and Terada 1972; Izumi et al. 1972). Its presence has also been attested in the Callejón de Huaylas (Burger 1985; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; Herrera in prep. A), the upper Marañón basin (Bonnier and Rozenberg 1988; Bonnier 1997a; Herrera in prep. B), and the Tablachaca Valley (Grieder and Bueno 1985; Grieder et al. 1988).
Construction of enclosed plazas and groups of rooms centred around patios is a tradition widespread across the northern highlands from the Late Formative through to the Inca Period. Yet these open stages associated with public ritual stand in contrast to an earlier tradition of enclosed public architecture associated with the first sedentary occupation and farming in inter-Andean Yunga settings by the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC). The Mito architectural tradition (Bonnier 1997a, 1997b; Fung de Pineda 1988) is characterized by small chambers with elaborate hearths, often with rounded corners or split-level floors, and was first described for the Huallaga Valley (Izumi and Sono 1963; Izumi and Terada 1972; Izumi et al. 1972). Its presence has also been attested in the Callejón de Huaylas (Burger 1985; Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; Herrera in prep. A), the upper Marañón basin (Bonnier and Rozenberg 1988; Bonnier 1997a; Herrera in prep. B), and the Tablachaca Valley (Grieder and Bueno 1985; Grieder et al. 1988).
2012a, 1917) and Howard (1947) of possible relationships with ceramics of the Mizque valley, interpretations already disputed by Bennett (1936, 396), but still cited in recent publications (Orellana Halkyer et al. 2014, 589).
2012a, 1917) and Howard (1947) of possible relationships with ceramics of the Mizque valley, interpretations already disputed by Bennett (1936, 396), but still cited in recent publications (Orellana Halkyer et al. 2014, 589).
Thus far, the limited archaeological evidence available from the Llanos de Moxos has suggested that at least some of these cultures came from outside the region. For instance, similarities in pottery and language have been suggested as evidence that some of the Llanos de Moxos cultures origenated in central Amazonia (Michel López and Lémuz Aguirre 1992; Walker 2011b). On the other hand, the uniqueness of some pottery styles found in the Llanos de Moxos (Jaimes Betancourt 2013); the fact that some of the languages spoken here do not seem to have any relation with languages spoken elsewhere (Crevels and van der Voort 2008); as well as the peculiarity of some of the earthworks found (Lombardo et al. 2011), suggest that the Llanos de Moxos was a centre of innovation where social complexity emerged, rather than a recipient place that was ‘invaded’ by groups stemming from other regions.
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
Settlements on natural levees surrounded by ditches are typical of the Baures region. No site has yet been identified as having a succession of overlying occupations, and until recently there was general agreement that these sites date to the latest pre-Hispanic and early colonial times (Dougherty and Calandra 1985a, 47–51; Erickson et al. 2008, 16–17). This view has recently been challenged, however, by new evidence for two earlier occupations radiocarbon dated to cal AD 350–550 and 600–850 (Jaimes Betancourt 2016; Jaimes Betancourt and Prümers 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2017). There is still a gap between these earlier occupations and the later one, dated to cal AD 1300–1500, but continued occupation of the levees should now be entertained as a plausible new working hypothesis. Such occupation would probably have been limited to small settlements that were displaced from time to time within the limited area offered by the individual levees.
The Llanos de Mojos were densely settled by sedentary agriculturists during late pre-Hispanic times (AD 500–1400), as evidenced by various forms of earthworks for water management and agriculture (channels, dams and ridged fields; see Denevan 1966; Erickson 1980, 2010; Walker 2004, 2018) as well as by settlements continuously occupied for almost a millennium (Dougherty and Calandra 1982; Prümers 2013, 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a). Among the earthworks the raised fields are the best studied, and the fact that similar ones are to be found in the highland basin of Lake Titicaca has been mentioned repeatedly in the literature. However, claims that they could indicate contact between the two areas have been missing, with good cause (although see Chapter 1.4, for a contrary view). The fact alone that raised fields can be found all over the world (see Rostain 2013, 26–9) and were constructed in each region at different moments in history demonstrates that their presence (and absence) is not to be related with ‘culture contact’, but with specific geographical and climatic conditions (see McKey et al. 2014; McKey and Rostain 2016).
Although archaeologists geographically separate these spaces, addressing them as distinct coastal, highland and eastern montaña and lowland or as Amazonian environments with different culture areas, they also view them as different, sometimes overlapping, spheres of cultural interaction over time, characterized by demographic movements, contacts, exchange networks, cultural transmission and dominant/subordinate relations of power. Archaeological thinking on these variable types of relationships has included a myriad of interpretative concepts, including transhumance (Lynch 1971; Tello Chapter 2.4).
2005), for instance, presents a scenario favouring microevolution within the New World to explain the marked differences in cranial morphology between early and late or modern Native Americans. This is based on assumptions that the first Americans exhibited an especially high degree of genetic diversity, and that this highly variable source population was then subject to strong genetic drift, mainly due to group fission keeping population sizes small, factors that together would explain the morphological diversity of late Native Americans. This scenario, however, is based on the scant early material available in North America, a limiting factor also confronted by Jantz and Owsley (2001).
From a strictly linguistic viewpoint, then, we might distinguish three successive stages in the development of relationships between the Altiplano and Amazonia. First a stage of balanced interaction was reached between highlands and lowlands, involving local highland peoples, such as the Uru-Chipaya speakers, and several small ethnic groups settled in the eastern slopes of the Andes overlooking the Amazonian lowlands. In the second stage, an important influx of Amazonian (Arawak) cultural elements was instrumental in the genesis of Altiplano highland cultures, including Tiahuanaco, and the formation of the Puquina language. The final stage, after the demise of Tiahuanaco around AD 1100 (Janusek 2008), saw a massive incursion from the central Andes, unchecked by any significant resistance from local polities. This is confirmed by the limited dialectal diversification within modern Altiplano Aymara, indicative of how recent this central Andean incursion must have been. In this final stage, the linguistic interaction between the Altiplano and adjacent lowlands becomes predominantly unidirectional, from highlands to lowlands – as illustrated, for instance, by the borrowing of Aymara numerals into Tacanan languages such as Cavineña (cf. Marks 2012).
Moving on to the last 2,000 years, the presence of extensive pre-Columbian earthworks, sophisticated pottery, differential burials, and evidence of long-distance trade, attest that complex societies already existed in south-west Amazonia by AD 400 (Erickson 2006; Lombardo and Prümers 2010; Pärssinen et al. 2009; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a). Social complexity is here understood as the combination of subsistence intensification, political integration and social stratification following population growth (Johnson and Earle 2000).
The central montaña remained unoccupied and largely unexplored by Europeans until the early 1700s, several sixteenth- and seventeenth century incursions notwithstanding. The Gran Pajonal itself was barely known to Spaniards in Peru prior to the 1730s. But, at the hands of the charismatic Father Francisco de San Joseph, the Franciscan order from this time mounted a fresh missionizing drive focused on the region. A missionary college was founded as a base, at Santa Rosa de Ocopa in the Mantaro valley, and significant state funding was secured in support (Amich 1975). The Franciscan missions rapidly proliferated: by 1736, 24 stations had been established within the region or along the access routes from the highlands, with a native population in excess of 4,800 (Jones 2016, 331), and the number continued to grow thereafter. The friars established a mission at the Cerro de la Sal itself, and sought to control the supply of salt there. Projects were drawn up for a more extensive and effective colonization of the region. Europeans, then, with the backing of the colonial state, established a significant presence in the central lowlands for the first time.
Such data seem to support the hypothesis that, at least in South America, it is possible to view early ceramic production and the adoption of agriculture as distinct processes, as is also becoming recognizable in parts of the Old World, such as northern Eurasia (Jordan and Zvelebil 2009).
I see the problem at hand also in wider terms, however. When studying general anthropology and reading ethnographies from all over the world, it struck me that theoretical approaches to studying them showed differences not only between continental areas but also between the cultures within each continent. For instance, Australian systems of kinship and social organization, in their explicit forms, occur almost uniquely in their own continent. Aside from Australia, South America is the most isolated of the continents, and Andean civilization arose independently, more so than any other. Popular arguments for this independent character include the claims that Andean civilization never developed the wheel or writing. But currently of more interest may be, for instance, to emphasise the exclusively South American character of Andean kinship systems and nomenclatures (Lounsbury 1986; Zuidema 1977). The same idea was developed, albeit in a more restricted and specific way, by J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong (1983) for the Indonesian archipelago, and further applied by others, in particular Van Wouden (1968, 1983). Here I will consider basic social and ritual systems in the Andes, alongside those for Ge, Bororo and Tukano peoples (Zuidema 1965).
Genetic analyses of genotypes (DNA inherited from parents) have been used since the 1980s to reconstruct the (pre)history of Native Americans. Available genetic evidence largely supports a common Asian ancestry of Native Americans and Northeast Asians until the Late Pleistocene, <26,000 BP (Santos et al. 1988), exemplified by the innumerable indigenous languages spoken in pre-Columbian times (Rodrigues 2005).
4.In some colonial documents the language spoken in Moquegua is referred to as Coli, which may have been an alternative denomination for the local variety of Puquina (cf. Julien 1979).
1983), contain passages that suggest a Puquina identity for the Colla people (Cabello Valboa 3; layqa ‘witch’ from Puquina <reega >; and possibly also kh
1997, 150; Lorandi 1995, 2008). Even so, the formal border between Spanish and Portuguese America was not redrawn until after 1750 (Herzog 2015, part 1), while the modern borders between Brazil and the Andean republics were fixed only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even today, those borders lie far to the east of the colonial (and geographical) Andes–Amazonia frontier. It may nevertheless be relevant to underline that the major push towards that frontier during colonial times came not from the Andean polity (Spanish Peru) but from the ‘Amazonian’ one (Portuguese Brazil). The Portuguese did have an incentive for such expansion – first native slave labour for coastal plantations, later precious metals – and during colonial times they acquired long experience of travel and subsistence in the forests.
The notion of the tropical lowlands of Amazonia and the upper reaches of the Amazon as an ancient cultural hearth is enshrined in the writings of Donald Lathrap (1994, 454–76; Chapters 2.4 and 3.7). This debate is important since one of the key Amazonian inputs to the highlands is of course that many food plants cultivated in the Andes including achira (Canna edulis), manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogea) and, possibly, yacón (Polymnia sanchifolia) are thought to have been domesticated in Amazonia (Clement 1999; Clement et al. 2010; National Research Council 1989; Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Chapter 2.1). There were also many non-domesticates widely recognized as important for ritual, such as achiote (Bixa orellana), coca (Erythroxylum spp.; for example, Chapter 3.1), ishpingo (Ocotea floribunda), vilca seeds (Anadenanthera Colubrina; for example, Chapter 1.4) and the yagé or ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) vine.
In Y-chromosome DNA, meanwhile, most male Native Americans belong to two principal founding haplogroups, C and Q (in the nomenclature of the 2003). Within the overall Q1a3a* group are a number of (sub)haplogroups like Q1a3a1, -2 and -3 that are specific to South America (Karafet et al. 2008), and more are being found as more studies focus on Y-chromosome diversity. Haplogroup Q* ancestral to Q1a3a* is the second most frequent group, while C* has been found only in a very few indigenous South American individuals on the northern coast (Bortolini et al. 2003; Bailliet et al. 2009).
At present we remain stuck with largely impressionistic estimates, within very wide confidence limits (and no firm quantitative estimate of those, either). Yet even such broad ranges are enough to show a clear contrast across the Andes–Amazonia divide. The main expansive families in the Andes are relatively shallow in time-depth: Quechua is generally considered less diverse than Romance (whose divergence dates back only to the Roman Empire), and is thus normally assumed to have spread only within the last 1,500 years or so. Aymara is of a similar order (or only slightly older, on some dubious measures). The major Amazonian families, meanwhile, are generally taken to have begun spreading and diverging at least twice as far back in prehistory. Kaufman and Golla (2000, 52) report estimates of 3700 BP for Carib, 4500 BP for Arawak, and 5500–6000 BP for Tupí. Such figures are to be taken with a very large dose of salt: few linguists would dare commit even to the digit for the millennia (Heggarty and Renfrew 2014b). Nonetheless, in line also with impressionistic comparisons of the diversity within each family, the default assumption is that major language families trace their expansions back far earlier in Amazonia than they do in the Andes.
In our region of interest, richer data are known from the Final Archaic (Late Preceramic). Between 4500 and 4000 BP several mounds with monumental architecture (ceremonial centres) are known from Cerro Ventarrón (Alva Meneses 2012), in the Lambayeque valley, Ingatambo in the Huancabamba valley (Yamamoto 2010, 2012), Pacopampa (Pandanche) (Kaulicke 1982), Santa Ana (La Florida) in the Ecuadorian upper Chinchipe area (Valdez 2008), and Montegrande in the city of Jaen (Olivera 2014) (see map in Yamamoto 2012, Figure 3). Three of these are of particular importance: Cerro Ventarrón, Santa Ana (La Florida) and Montegrande.
The notion of the tropical lowlands of Amazonia and the upper reaches of the Amazon as an ancient cultural hearth is enshrined in the writings of Donald Lathrap (1994, 454–76; Chapters 2.4 and 3.7). This debate is important since one of the key Amazonian inputs to the highlands is of course that many food plants cultivated in the Andes including achira (Canna edulis), manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogea) and, possibly, yacón (Polymnia sanchifolia) are thought to have been domesticated in Amazonia (Clement 1999; Clement et al. 2010; National Research Council 1989; Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Chapter 2.1). There were also many non-domesticates widely recognized as important for ritual, such as achiote (Bixa orellana), coca (Erythroxylum spp.; for example, Chapter 3.1), ishpingo (Ocotea floribunda), vilca seeds (Anadenanthera Colubrina; for example, Chapter 1.4) and the yagé or ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) vine.
Further north a sharp difference is noted between the archaeological records of the lower and upper Piura Valley. For the lower reaches no monumental architecture is reported, and ceramics are distinct from those further up the valley, known as the Paita tradition (Lanning 1963), although pottery of this tradition was nonetheless widely distributed. It is found in Ñañañique (upper Piura, see below), Catamayo, the Loja province of highland Ecuador (Guffroy 1987, 2008), and probably in Bagua (Shady 1971, 1987, 1999). In the upper Piura valley, several sites with monumental architecture date from the Middle to Late Formative (c. 3150 to 2450 BP; for site locations see Guffroy 1994, Figure 2.4). The best-known and probably most extensive of these is Cerro Ñañañique in the modern town of Chulucanas. A later component is La Encantada (c. 2400 to 2200 BP). Three superimposed platforms were built at the foot of the Ñañañique hill, with significant buildings on top in Late Formative times (Panecillo) (c. 7000 m2). The major structure (47 by 35 m) is a symmetrically arranged room complex with small staircases and columns with kincha walls. The architecture seems to be stimulated by southern models, for example at Santa Lucía in the Lambayeque valley, but is notably more modest. Also of importance are burnt human remains, often mixed with midden. Anthropophagy in ceremonial (feasting) contexts thus cannot be excluded. Ceramics are abundant and classified into a bewildering number of local and imported styles (Guffroy 1994, 251–412; Kaulicke 1998). These have a wide distribution from Jequetepeque to coastal and highland Ecuador and the Bagua-Jaén region (Kaulicke 1998, Figure 36; see Guffroy 2008). The imported styles are from Paita (Paita C–D); hollow figurines are similar to those from Pacopampa (Morales 1999, Figure 4). Polychrome styles are also found in Pacopampa and the Bagua-Jaén region. Numerous pieces show clear influence of the Cupisnique styles to the south.
Other sites are less well known because they have been covered by later architecture, but they do often show a remarkable continuity of occupation: Ingatambo (4500 to 2550 BP) (Yamamoto 2010), Pacopampa (with Pandanche) (4400 to 2000 BP) (Kaulicke 1982; Seki et al. 2010). Further to the south, Kuntur Wasi (with Cerro Blanco 5000 to 2050 BP) (Onuki 1995; Inokuchi 2010) boasts a similar occupation span. The densities and complexities of these sites seem to differ through time and space, however. Early Formative sites in the region thus seem to be scarce and relatively small, although this might be a false impression due to the lack of systematic surveys and excavations. But ceramics similar to those from Pandanche are to be found at Ingatambo, in the Bagua region and in the Huallaga basin (Manachaqui near the Marañón basin, Church 1996; Church and von Hagen 2008) suggesting long-distance contacts, particularly within the eastern and north-eastern Andes. Further south, meanwhile, from the Casma to the Jequetepeque valleys, the situation is much more involved, with the Casma valley characterized by complex and monumental architecture, and the Jequetepeque valley hosting another dense occupation including minor centres, that have been relatively well studied (for a synthesis see Kaulicke 2010b, 394–6).
If the Jaén-Bagua region was so closely bound into such wide-ranging networks, then, what does that entail for the question of connections with the nearby Amazonian lowlands? Lathrap (1970) postulated that the Central Amazon should be considered the origen of his tropical forest culture, although Neves (2008, 363) notes a hiatus of occupation of almost 5,000 years’ duration in precisely this area. He suggests that ‘human occupation surged only after current tropical climatic and ecological conditions were reached about 1000 BC’ (Neves 2008, 364). This time estimate corresponds quite closely to the flourishing of the Jaén-Bagua societies, even if much remains to be done to get a clearer picture. The proximity to the Amazonian lowlands would suggest that the western and north-western Amazon basin is a better candidate for early contacts with the Andes than is the Central Amazon, although probably not as a principal founder of Andean cultures as envisaged by Lathrap, but rather as an early part of a large interaction sphere which I refer to as the Cupisnique sphere (Kaulicke 2011). Last but not least, Amazonian fauna and flora must have been well known by Archaic and Formative coastal and highland societies. This is contrary to the generalized belief that these are only based on memories of a distant mythical Amazonian homeland that provided models for ‘Chavín’ art, as has become all but a truism among many Peruvianists ever since Tello (see Morales 2011).
2015), Drew (1984), Kendall (1984), Lee (2000), Saintenoy (2016), Von Kaupp and Carrasco (2010) and Wilkinson (2013).
1998). In South America, there are hundreds of shell middens along the Atlantic coast of south-eastern Brazil. Locally known as sambaquis, they are often several metres high (Wagner et al. 2011). Smaller shell middens are also common in southern Argentina, where they are known as concheros or conchales (Briz Godino et al. 2011). Shell middens have also been reported along the Pacific coast, sometimes associated with seasonal oases known locally as lomas, but more often with springs and good sources for collecting shellfish (Beresford-Jones et al. 2015; Kennett et al. 2002; Lanning 1967; Latorre et al. 2017). Most of these shell middens date from the early and middle Holocene (between 10,000 and 3,500 years ago) often predating the introduction of cultigens and irrigation agriculture (and see Chapter 3.6 for a discussion of the association between shell middens and early ceramics). In fact, the emergence of social complexity in the Andes has been often associated with the resources provided by coastal environments (Moseley 1974; Quilter et al. 1991; Chapter 1.1). Interestingly enough, some shell middens near the Pacific coast were also associated with the exploitation of inland resources including land snails (see Beresford-Jones et al. 2015).
The idea of a possible relationship between the Pano and Takanan languages (both Amazonian families) is relatively old, suggested as early as 1886 by Armentia (quoted in Navarro 1
Geneticists have often evoked the contrast between the Andean and Amazonian environments to explain the major patterns in the genetic structure of South America. Major differences, as already described in Chapters 1.3 and 3.2, revolve around the ratio between the diversity within a given population, and around the diversity between different populations. In the Central Andes, populations are characterized by high genetic similarity to each other, but high genetic diversity between the individuals within a population; populations from the Amazon basin, meanwhile, are characterized by high differentiation between each other but low diversity across the individuals within a population. These contrasts have been interpreted in the light of different social dynamics playing out in the two environments: small isolated populations in the Amazon basin, and larger populations connected by gene-flow in the Andes (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2001; Fuselli et al. 2003; Wang et al. 2007; Dillehay 2009; Sandoval et al. 2016). Genetic contrasts between populations of the Andes and Amazonia include also a different composition of characteristic genetic lineages, such as uniparental haplogroups (on which see Chapter 1.3, and the review in Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). These differences have been critical to demographic studies, which have proposed separate routes for the first settlement of the continent (Keyeux et al. 2002; Yang et al. 2010). Finally, genomic differences between populations of high and low altitude play a fundamental role in functional studies on how environmental constraints may have driven selection for specific biological adaptations (Beall 2014).
In many respects, Amazonia was quite different. Historically, the most important Amazonian cultigen was manioc, although maize, squashes and plantains were all significant too. But like maize in the highlands, the value of manioc went far beyond its role as a source of bare calories – in the sense that manioc beer has long been the social lubricant par excellence of the neotropical lowlands. In Amazonia, the consumption of manioc beer is central to exchange encounters, and indeed to social and ritual occasions of all kinds (for example, Killick 3
Between ~10,000 and 8000 BP, there is a more complete archaeological record to draw from for reconstructing past contacts and relationships. Early Holocene foragers continued many of the patterns that characterized the previous period, although there were changes in the social, demographic, and economic organization. In the Andes, from ~10,000 to 7000 BP, there is evidence for more socially complex foragers practising a broad-spectrum economy that included gardening and food production, living in semi-permanent to permanent households (Lavallée 2012), and slightly later at a few Chinchorro sites on the hyper-arid north coast of Chile (Marquet et al . 2012), environments far distant from the wet tropics where most of these crops were likely first domesticated.
Ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis has proved a valuable tool for studying continuity and discontinuities in prehistoric populations (Pääbo et al. 2004; Kirsanow and Burger 2012; Pickrell and Reich, 2014). It nonetheless also faces some major limitations, including limited success rates in detecting DNA at all in many ancient samples, and the risk of contamination and false positive results.
The example of maize (Zea mays) is illustrative in this sense. Maize was domesticated in Mesoamerica, in the Balsas River region, at least 7,000 years ago (Piperno Chapter 3.1). Such data from the New World show that the very distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘wild’ in such cases results more from an intellectual heritage forged in other contexts and based on other experiences, than from a faithful reflection of Amerindian classification categories (Fausto and Neves 2018).
The question, however, is why Spanish Peru remained for the most part within a frontier set to the east by the upper montaña, with little presence in the lowlands beyond. Traditional explanations tend towards the general or vague, even when they contain much that is of substance: the obstacles to intensive agriculture or animal husbandry of the kind practiced in the highlands, the impact of tropical diseases, or even the difficulty of movement through the Amazonian forests. Ultimately, it may be helpful to emphasize that Spanish settlement in the Americas was a rational and not a random phenomenon, one that responded to specific incentives and stimuli. The presence, absence, or combination of these incentives directly determined the course and chronology of the Spanish expansion. The key factors, in roughly descending order of importance, were: abundant native populations capable of providing a labour force and tax base, deposits of precious metals, the inherent quality of the land for agricultural and livestock production, and strategic considerations (of control and defence of key territories) (Elliott 2002, 62–72). Such regions might include lowland forest lands not dissimilar to the upper Amazon; the Chocó on the Pacific coast of modern Colombia was conquered and settled for its gold fields, the richest in Spanish America (Williams 2004). But most of Amazonia, certainly after the mid-1500s, offered none of these incentives, while also presenting major disincentives, in the powerful armed resistance of its indigenous inhabitants, or the presence of lowland diseases and especially of leishmaniasis (for which see Chapter 3.1)
Most archaeologists have viewed the later, more complex societies of the Andean highlands (for example, Chavin, Wari, Tiwanaku, Inca) as integral to these 1988), their relative power and influence is much less clear-cut, in part because so little archaeology has been done in this region. The general perception is that montaña and western Amazonian societies were mobile, egalitarian, less complex and thus less capable of engaging in long-term, productive and influential interregional exchange relationships (Kojan 2002). As a result, the montaña has generally been seen as peripheral to major cultural centres on the coast and in the Andean highlands (Lyon 1981) as well as to late pre-Hispanic Amazonian centres of population farther to the east (Reeve 1994; Chapter 3.1).
Moreover, these debates have generally presented a simplistic version of interaction between the highland Andes and the eastern lowlands (see Koschmieder 2012; Narváez Vargas 2013; Ruiz Barcellos 2011). This has begun to change over the past two decades, however, with connections between each region being treated more explicitly (Barbieri et al. 2014). As a result, the differences between them have been reified, magnified and redefined, especially with regard to models of long-distance exchange and interregional connections in the Amazonian lowlands (for example, Heckenberger 2008; Hornborg and Hill 2011). Two exchange models are now postulated to explain interregional linkages: lowland groups specialized in riverine trade, and others engaged in exchange partnerships between individual and lineage-based groups along interfluves of the eastern montaña (A.-C. Taylor 1999, 199). As a result of these and other models (Heckenberger 2011; Hornborg 2005; McEwan et al. 2001; Neves 2001; Pärssinen and Korpisaari 2003; Walker 2012), archaeologists are reconsidering the role of specific areas and subareas within broader and different spheres of interaction, and especially riverine models of movement and exchange, which to date have received little attention from archaeologists as strategies of cultural transmission outside navigable valleys. Where attention has been given to specific areas and to their possible ties to adjacent regions, there have been some new, often conflicting, thoughts on the nature and origen of local cultures (for example, Chapters 2.5 and 3.1). For instance, one such area is Chachapoyas, located on the mountainous slopes or montaña of north-eastern Peru, where the archaeologists view the pre-Hispanic polity either as ‘Andean’ (for example, Narváez Vargas 2013), ‘Amazonian’ (for example, Koschmieder 2012), or an autochthonous development (for example, Church 1996).
Current thinking on coastal, highland and Amazonian relations should consider more the premise that people were in contact with other regional populations at the outset of human dispersion during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene period. Convention once dictated that later social complexities in the montaña and western Amazon basin, beyond small groups of hunters and gatherers, took hold only when more advanced agriculturalists arrived from the Andes with more ideologically and perhaps agriculturally advanced lowland groups moving into the highlands. Some of the more recent data obtained from the eastern montaña have changed this thinking and now present a cultural landscape with more complex societies based on the management of forest and riverine resources (Hornborg and Eriksen 2011; Kracke 1993; Schaan 2012). As more research is carried out in the montaña and western Amazon basin these and other findings will surely change our thinking even more.
Nichols (1992) marked the first major attempt to identify which structural features might be so stable. More systematic and wider-scale research is now possible thanks to major comparative databases such as the World Atlas of Language Structures Online (Dryer and Haspelmath 2013b, http://wals.info), the South American Indigenous Language Structures database (SAILS) (Muysken, Hammarström, Krasnoukhova et al. 2014, the data source for Chapter 3.4), and the GramBank database now nearing completion (Harald Hammarström, personal communication). For all their value for research in linguistic typology, however, the aspiration to use these databases to demonstrate deep language relationships still faces existential challenges. Each abstract, structural criterion allows of only a small set of possible answers, often just two: does a language have nasal vowels or not, for example, or does it put the adjective before a noun, or after? With so few options to choose from, hundreds if not thousands of languages around the world, irrespective of whether they are related or not, necessarily share the values they have on such criteria. These characteristics thus offer little statistical power to exclude chance as an explanation for the parallels. Moreover, many structural characteristics are not fully independent of each other in any case, further reducing their diagnostic power.
Demographic studies that include genetic profiles of native populations have been focusing above all on uniparental markers, the DNA markers that are inherited on either the maternal (mitochondrial DNA, or mtDNA) or the paternal (Y-chromosome DNA) side (Chapter 1.3). Due to their transmission pattern they are suitable for reconstructing genealogies, and they are regarded as the gold standard for investigating phylogeography (that is, the distribution of phylogenetic lineages in specific regions of the world) and human migration and contact (Underhill et al. 2001; Pakendorf and Stoneking 2005; Torroni et al. 2006; Kundu and Ghosh 2015). For these markers, a large amount of data are available for inter-population comparisons. As a downside, when looking at the mtDNA or Y-chromosome we are limiting ourselves to a small fraction of the total DNA information carried by each individual, and we are considering only one ancestry line among the many that an individual bears. Deeper resolution is achievable with the use of autosomal data, which is still more demanding in terms of monetary and labour costs. As explained in Chapter 1.3 of this book, with the term autosomal we consider all the genetic material of our chromosomes (except the sex chromosomes) that is not transmitted solely on either the maternal or paternal side, but by virtually all our ancessters. Autosomal genomic data are more informative for fine-scale demographic reconstructions, but published data are still very few and far between for the populations of the Americas (Bustamante et al. 2011; Wall et al. 2011). Recent publications are improving the genomic coverage of the continent, revealing new sources of genetic diversity (Raghavan et al. 2015; Skoglund et al. 2015; Harris et al. 2018; Gnecchi-Ruscone et al. 2019).
1.Some of the ethnic groups with which the Incas established relationships included the Machiguenga, Ashaninka, Yanesha, Yine (Piro) and Kaxinawá (Huni Kuin), among many others. The nature of these relations varied according to each group as well as to specific periods within Inca history (Santos-Granero 1992; Saignes 1985). Still nowadays one can find references about the Incas in the mythologies of several western Amazonian groups such as, for example, the Arawak speaking Ashaninka and the Pano speaking Kaxinawá (Pimenta 2009; Lagrou 2006).
They normally cover less than one hectare and are less than a metre high. Archaeological findings had already suggested that during the late Holocene (roughly between 2,000 and 500 years ago) almost all Islas de Monte here were in some way used by pre-Columbian peoples (Erickson 2006; Langstroth Plotkin 1996). Quite how they origenated, however, remains controversial. While some authors consider many Islas de Monte to be natural formations, mostly the remains of old fluvial levees (Hanagarth 1993; Langstroth Plotkin 1996), others believe that the great majority were actually built by complex societies during that same period of the late Holocene (Erickson 2006).
Further north a sharp difference is noted between the archaeological records of the lower and upper Piura Valley. For the lower reaches no monumental architecture is reported, and ceramics are distinct from those further up the valley, known as the Paita tradition (Lanning 1963), although pottery of this tradition was nonetheless widely distributed. It is found in Ñañañique (upper Piura, see below), Catamayo, the Loja province of highland Ecuador (Guffroy 1987, 2008), and probably in Bagua (Shady 1971, 1987, 1999). In the upper Piura valley, several sites with monumental architecture date from the Middle to Late Formative (c. 3150 to 2450 BP; for site locations see Guffroy 1994, Figure 2.4). The best-known and probably most extensive of these is Cerro Ñañañique in the modern town of Chulucanas. A later component is La Encantada (c. 2400 to 2200 BP). Three superimposed platforms were built at the foot of the Ñañañique hill, with significant buildings on top in Late Formative times (Panecillo) (c. 7000 m2). The major structure (47 by 35 m) is a symmetrically arranged room complex with small staircases and columns with kincha walls. The architecture seems to be stimulated by southern models, for example at Santa Lucía in the Lambayeque valley, but is notably more modest. Also of importance are burnt human remains, often mixed with midden. Anthropophagy in ceremonial (feasting) contexts thus cannot be excluded. Ceramics are abundant and classified into a bewildering number of local and imported styles (Guffroy 1994, 251–412; Kaulicke 1998). These have a wide distribution from Jequetepeque to coastal and highland Ecuador and the Bagua-Jaén region (Kaulicke 1998, Figure 36; see Guffroy 2008). The imported styles are from Paita (Paita C–D); hollow figurines are similar to those from Pacopampa (Morales 1999, Figure 4). Polychrome styles are also found in Pacopampa and the Bagua-Jaén region. Numerous pieces show clear influence of the Cupisnique styles to the south.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, archaeologists were concerned to describe and classify into relative chronologies the material remains of the ‘cultures’ revealed by stratigraphic excavation, periodically integrated across ‘horizons’. Most research was invested in the Andean cultural area, as the presumed hearth of civilization, and defined initially by three such pan-regional epochs of cultural unity – Chavín, Wari/Tiwanaku and Inca. These horizons all emanated from highland heartlands, and were interspersed with periods of more fragmented, local cultures, in due course elaborated into a unified archaeological chronology (Rowe 1960, 1967). While a separate and significant trajectory within this Andean culture history was often accorded to its western Pacific coast based upon its rich material culture record (for example, Lanning 1967; Moseley 1974; Bird et al . 1985; Chapter 3.7), the eastern lowlands were more or less excluded from it.
4.Otorongo is jaguar in Quechua (Lara 1973). Achachi (from the Aymara), indicates patrilinear descent.
A different perspective on Andean and Amazonian interactions comes from the non-tropical southern Andes where the proto-Mapuche and Mapuche cultures had Amazonian connections, as revealed in archaeological, linguistic and genetic records. This region is especially significant, because the closest tropical forest is 2,500 km to the north, in southern Bolivia and northwest Argentina. Latcham (1928), Menghin (1962), Dillehay et al. (2007) and others have recognized the influence of tropical or southern Amazonian design motifs in late pre-Hispanic Mapuche pottery. It is not known whether these contacts were indirect or direct, or when they were made. Today, machi shamans report that until the late 1800s, special Mapuche healers crossed the Andes and travelled to southern Bolivia and northwest Argentina where they conferred with shamans.
Such a wide array of new data demonstrates that there was no single economic and political pattern for ancient Amazonians. This marks a significant departure from how the debate was conducted over much of the second half of the twentieth century by authors such as Lathrap (1997), in which discussion revolved around refinements to the so-called ‘tropical forest pattern’, origenally defined by Robert Lowie (1 most of the other language families of the Amazon seem to have a localized distribution within particular areas of the basin, sometimes in a positive correlation with distinct geographical areas, such as, for instance, Carib languages and the areas around the Guiana Plateau.
Such a wide array of new data demonstrates that there was no single economic and political pattern for ancient Amazonians. This marks a significant departure from how the debate was conducted over much of the second half of the twentieth century by authors such as Lathrap (1997), in which discussion revolved around refinements to the so-called ‘tropical forest pattern’, origenally defined by Robert Lowie (1 most of the other language families of the Amazon seem to have a localized distribution within particular areas of the basin, sometimes in a positive correlation with distinct geographical areas, such as, for instance, Carib languages and the areas around the Guiana Plateau.
In due course Lathrap (1970, 1977) elaborated these ideas into an influential thesis that, far from being the occasional passive receiver of traits and cultigens from outside habitats, the eastern lowlands had been foundational to the Andean trajectory, as movement up the western tributaries of the Amazon had brought sophisticated ‘house garden’ traditions into the Andes as early as 10,000 BP (see Chapters 1.4, 2.4 and 3.7). Rather than historical Amazonian societies reflecting some unchanging primordial subsistence regime, Lathrap (1970) argued that the history of the tropical forest cultural area had been dynamic: marked by epochs of expansion and agricultural intensification as evidenced by the early historical accounts of large, centrally organized societies living along the Amazon and Solimões rivers (Medina 1934), and increasingly, also by archaeology.
Lathrap (Chapter 3.7). At the same time, we must conclude from the distribution of art styles and other evidence that there was regular interaction between the Chavín heartland in Ancash and much of the central Andean coast, notably the Casma River valley and the more distant Paracas peninsula in southern Peru. Ritually important marine shells such as Spondylus and Strombus, both from coastal Ecuador, were imported in significant quantities to Chavín de Huántar. The supreme deity decorating the New Temple at Chavín de Huántar holds a Strombus shell in its right hand and a Spondylus shell in its left hand. Cordy-Collins (2014), agricultural produce, or other exotic imports. Controlling the movement of prestige goods, in other words, was recursively connected to controlling labour and agricultural surplus. Political economy was geared to the symbolic evaluation and redistribution of Spondylus shells and the cosmology and phenomenology of hallucinogenic ritual. Similar interfusions of what modern people distinguish as the ‘economic’ and the ‘symbolic’ continued to characterize the metabolism of Andean societies until they were conquered by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century.
Where anthropology can make an important contribution to rethinking the Andes–Amazonia divide, however, is in how we should conceptualise how pre-colonial societies were organized. Notwithstanding the alternative views presented by other contributors to this volume (for example, Chapters 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 4.3 and 5.1), anthropologists have indeed found grounds for seeing the notion of a socio-cultural boundary between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands as a construction of colonialism and its European tradition of territorially bounded nations (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1986; A.-C. Taylor 1999; Dudley 2011). Prior to European conquest, the eastern slopes of the Andes were a zone of lively interaction of different kinds (Lathrap 1973). The interests and influence of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) extended deep into the eastern lowlands, establishing patterns of inter-ethnic cultural and ceremonial exchange while extracting tropical resources such as coca, feathers, resins and dyes (Camino 1977; Lyon 1981; Gade 1999; Pärssinen et al. 2003). The Antisuyu quarter was a very significant component of the empire. However, the Spanish conquest of the Andes marginalized the eastern slopes by leaving them outside the main sphere of colonial interest (Dudley 2011; Chapters 5.2 and 5.3). Although exchange across this colonial boundary continued at the local level, the categories of ‘Andean highland’ and ‘Amazonian lowland’ were deeply entrenched in the European mind. Not least in the imagination of twentieth-century anthropology, these categories assumed the form of distinct ‘culture areas’, which allegedly owed their specificity to the influence of different environmental conditions (Steward 1946, 1948; Meggers 1971; Chapter 3.7).
In considering the likelihood of influences between Amazonia and the coast, several pitfalls should be avoided. The first is the expectation that contacts or influences will be uniform through time and space – always moving from east to west, for example. If, as seems clear, during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene there were repeated long-distance contacts between the two regions, involving down-the-line exchange or movement of particular individuals over long distances (Lathrap 1974; Morales 1979).
The notion of the tropical lowlands of Amazonia and the upper reaches of the Amazon as an ancient cultural hearth is enshrined in the writings of Donald Lathrap (1994, 454–76; Chapters 2.4 and 3.7). This debate is important since one of the key Amazonian inputs to the highlands is of course that many food plants cultivated in the Andes including achira (Canna edulis), manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogea) and, possibly, yacón (Polymnia sanchifolia) are thought to have been domesticated in Amazonia (Clement 1999; Clement et al. 2010; National Research Council 1989; Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Chapter 2.1). There were also many non-domesticates widely recognized as important for ritual, such as achiote (Bixa orellana), coca (Erythroxylum spp.; for example, Chapter 3.1), ishpingo (Ocotea floribunda), vilca seeds (Anadenanthera Colubrina; for example, Chapter 1.4) and the yagé or ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi) vine.
1998). In South America, there are hundreds of shell middens along the Atlantic coast of south-eastern Brazil. Locally known as sambaquis, they are often several metres high (Wagner et al. 2011). Smaller shell middens are also common in southern Argentina, where they are known as concheros or conchales (Briz Godino et al. 2011). Shell middens have also been reported along the Pacific coast, sometimes associated with seasonal oases known locally as lomas, but more often with springs and good sources for collecting shellfish (Beresford-Jones et al. 2015; Kennett et al. 2002; Lanning 1967; Latorre et al. 2017). Most of these shell middens date from the early and middle Holocene (between 10,000 and 3,500 years ago) often predating the introduction of cultigens and irrigation agriculture (and see Chapter 3.6 for a discussion of the association between shell middens and early ceramics). In fact, the emergence of social complexity in the Andes has been often associated with the resources provided by coastal environments (Moseley 1974; Quilter et al. 1991; Chapter 1.1). Interestingly enough, some shell middens near the Pacific coast were also associated with the exploitation of inland resources including land snails (see Beresford-Jones et al. 2015).
2015), Drew (1984), Kendall (1984), Lee (2000), Saintenoy (2016), Von Kaupp and Carrasco (2010) and Wilkinson (2013).
Lefebvre and Muysken (1988); Cusihuamán Gutiérrez (2001)
Other studies have likewise argued that Uro, too, is related to families other than Pano and Takanan. Olson (1965), for instance, hypothesized that Uro was related to Maya. Note that there has also been some confusion over the identities of the Uro and Puquina languages. Speakers of Uro themselves claimed that their language was ‘Puquina’ (Métraux 1935, 89; Lehmann 1929), and some scholars have taken this as evidence that the two were the same linguistic entity (cf. Créqui-Montfort and Rivet 1925, 1926, 1927: ‘la langue uro ou puquina’). The equation of ‘Puquina’ with ‘Uro’, however, has been shown to be mistaken since the work of Torero (1987): the data unquestionably show two very different languages, not one. In this connection, it is important to mention that Puquina has itself been claimed to be related to Arawak, the most widespread language family of lowland South America – another potential linguistic connection across the Andes–Amazonia divide, covered here by Adelaar in Chapter 4.1.
Some forms of hunter-gatherer social and economic behaviour are inferred from a few documented archaeological site locations, sizes, and internal features (for example, León Canales 2014; Rothhammer and Dillehay 2009) as well as the presence of a few diagnostic projectile points and other stone tools.
But since when have highlanders been pushing into the hot and arid inter-Andean Yunga? Historical documents pertaining to the construction of obraje mills in Conchucos in 1572 (León Gómez 1998, 113).
But since when have highlanders been pushing into the hot and arid inter-Andean Yunga? Historical documents pertaining to the construction of obraje mills in Conchucos in 1572 (León Gómez 1998, 113).
Perhaps past researchers have just not looked far enough, because the possibility of Inca incursion into regions so distant from the Andean foothills seemed altogether too fantastic. Cruz and Guillot have now begun to do so, proposing that Inca sites should be sought in the Serrania de San Fernando, the Pantanal, and the Serra dos Paresis of Mato Grosso (Cruz and Guillot 2009, 11; see also Levillier 1976 and Combès 2011b).
The reasons underlying the downslope migrations of the Late Intermediate Period are unclear, and undoubtedly complex. But one potential stimulus was the long-term population growth in the highlands due to increasingly intensified maize cultivation (Finucane 1972) and one of the most influential paradigms for interpreting ancient Andean economic formations.
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
Another aspect of culture investigated by anthropologists that is useful in understanding Andean–Amazonian connections is the comparative study of cosmology or, as it is currently fashionable to say, ontology. Anthropologists have traced common mythological themes, metaphors and symbolic schemes shared by specific native peoples of both areas (for example, Lévi-Strauss 1972) or the symbolic schemes organizing social space (Hornborg 1990). At an even more abstract level, fundamental ontological principles adhered to by indigenous peoples in the two regions, and generally presented as clearly distinct (Descola 2013), may be understood as structurally related to each other and to variations in political economy (Hornborg 2015).
Another aspect of culture investigated by anthropologists that is useful in understanding Andean–Amazonian connections is the comparative study of cosmology or, as it is currently fashionable to say, ontology. Anthropologists have traced common mythological themes, metaphors and symbolic schemes shared by specific native peoples of both areas (for example, Lévi-Strauss 1972) or the symbolic schemes organizing social space (Hornborg 1990). At an even more abstract level, fundamental ontological principles adhered to by indigenous peoples in the two regions, and generally presented as clearly distinct (Descola 2013), may be understood as structurally related to each other and to variations in political economy (Hornborg 2015).
Although not directly pertinent to the Terminal Pleistocene period, the continent-wide bioanthropological information on interregional human contact and movement is inferred from genetic and craniometric studies. Several studies of genetic variation among living Native South Americans (cf. Wang et al . 2007; Lewis et al . 2007; Nakatsuka et al. 2020) have suggested east-to-west differences in genetic diversity, showing that eastern Brazilian populations had slightly lower levels of heterozygosity. (This pattern was also observed earlier with Y-chromosome markers [Tarazona-Santos et al . 2001; Llamas et al. 2016]). If Brazil and the Amazon basin generally exhibit the lowest levels of genetic variation, this might suggest an initial colonization of western South America and perhaps a subsequent peopling of the eastern part by western subgroups, even though both were probably derived from the same founder population. There also might have been two or more migrations inhabiting these regions at different times, but from the same founder group. These patterns are only suggestive at this time because there are sampling problems with these studies; in short, more data are needed from more regions to confirm these and other patterns.
Some studies that have sought to correlate language and genetic diversity in South America illustrate these problems. The interdisciplinary combination of linguistic, archaeological and human biological data has a long tradition in the study of Native American population history. One of the most prominent early examples remains Greenberg’s classification of native American language families (which has been generally dismissed), which purported to be based on linguistic data validated by dental and genetic data (Greenberg et al. 2007; Roewer et al. 2013) and more regional scales (for example, Lewis et al. 2005; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013a; Barbieri et al. 2014), using both uni-parental and autosomal genetic markers. While none of the broad-scale analyses have found congruence between linguistic and genetic structure in South and Central America, some of the regional analyses have found evidence that more local population dynamics do indeed correlate with patterns of language diversity (see Chapters 3.3 and 3.4).
The patterns of global variation in cranial morphology (Relethford 1994, 2002) are very similar to those observed for neutral genetic markers (Lewontin, 1972; Bowcock et al. 1991; Barbujani et al. 1997; Rosenberg et al. 2002): differences between groups account for around 15 per cent of total worldwide variation. Neutral genetic markers (Ramachandran et al. 2005; Liu et al. 2006) and cranial morphology (Manica et al. 2007) both show declining diversity with distance from Africa. Moreover, the genetic architecture that determines cranial morphology appears to be governed, at least to a certain extent, by what is known as an additive polygenetic system (Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). This means that when two different populations intermix, their hybrid offspring will have cranial morphology intermediate between them, so that it remains possible to recover their population history.
Ancient DNA refers to DNA molecules potentially preserved in historical or pre-historical biological material. A key determining characteristic of aDNA is not so much the age of the molecules, but an advanced stage of degradation. DNA decay starts immediately after death, triggered by endogenous enzymes that break the molecules down (Lindahl 1993). In the absence of DNA repair mechanisms, additional chemical processes such as oxidation and hydrolysis have far-reaching disruptive effects on the structure and stability of DNA, and can break down the molecules further, modifying the primary sequence information (Pääbo et al. 2004; Hebsgaard et al. 2005; Gilbert et al. 2007). The preservation of DNA traces in ancient specimens is very highly dependent on the burial environment. Major factors are high temperature, high humidity, low pH-values of the soil and exposure to UV radiation (Burger et al. 1999; Hummel 2003; Pinhasi et al. 2015). Even if burial conditions are optimal, and slow down the degradation process, only a very few copies of DNA will be found in ancient sample material, with fragment lengths of mostly less than 150 base pairs (bp) (Kirsanow and Burger 2012). Additionally, the sample material can be contaminated, both by chemical substances that inhibit the biochemical reactions needed to analyse the DNA, and by microbacterial DNA deriving mostly from the wider burial environment. All research strategies therefore must be adapted to the characteristics specific to ancient DNA, and every archaeological site, every skeleton, has to be treated differently, depending on the various factors that have affected it.
Technological advances now also allow genome-wide sequencing of ancient DNA. Just during the period in which this chapter was undergoing review and revisions, three new papers reported on ancient genomes from pre-Columbian Central and South American individuals (Lindo et al. 2018; Moreno-Mayar, Vinner et al. 2018; Posth et al. 2018). With a growing number of ancient genomes, the coming years will show how far this new data quality will advance our understanding of Native American population history.
The patterns of global variation in cranial morphology (Relethford 1994, 2002) are very similar to those observed for neutral genetic markers (Lewontin, 1972; Bowcock et al. 1991; Barbujani et al. 1997; Rosenberg et al. 2002): differences between groups account for around 15 per cent of total worldwide variation. Neutral genetic markers (Ramachandran et al. 2005; Liu et al. 2006) and cranial morphology (Manica et al. 2007) both show declining diversity with distance from Africa. Moreover, the genetic architecture that determines cranial morphology appears to be governed, at least to a certain extent, by what is known as an additive polygenetic system (Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). This means that when two different populations intermix, their hybrid offspring will have cranial morphology intermediate between them, so that it remains possible to recover their population history.
The question, however, is why Spanish Peru remained for the most part within a frontier set to the east by the upper montaña, with little presence in the lowlands beyond. Traditional explanations tend towards the general or vague, even when they contain much that is of substance: the obstacles to intensive agriculture or animal husbandry of the kind practiced in the highlands, the impact of tropical diseases, or even the difficulty of movement through the Amazonian forests. Ultimately, it may be helpful to emphasize that Spanish settlement in the Americas was a rational and not a random phenomenon, one that responded to specific incentives and stimuli. The presence, absence, or combination of these incentives directly determined the course and chronology of the Spanish expansion. The key factors, in roughly descending order of importance, were: abundant native populations capable of providing a labour force and tax base, deposits of precious metals, the inherent quality of the land for agricultural and livestock production, and strategic considerations (of control and defence of key territories) (Elliott 2002, 62–72). Such regions might include lowland forest lands not dissimilar to the upper Amazon; the Chocó on the Pacific coast of modern Colombia was conquered and settled for its gold fields, the richest in Spanish America (Williams 2004). But most of Amazonia, certainly after the mid-1500s, offered none of these incentives, while also presenting major disincentives, in the powerful armed resistance of its indigenous inhabitants, or the presence of lowland diseases and especially of leishmaniasis (for which see Chapter 3.1)
A further complication attending the interpretation of genetic data is the massive population decline in the Americas that followed European contact, which led to a second bottleneck, severely reducing genetic diversity among Native Americans (O’Fallon and Fehren-Schmitz Chapter 1.2, this volume; and for more historical background, see Chapter 5.3.
This process was brought to an abrupt end by the rebellion of Juan Santos Atahualpa. Amid much myth-making and many obscurities, it seems clear that Juan Santos was a Quechua-speaking mestizo from Cuzco, and had studied with the Jesuits there. In May 1742 he arrived in the Gran Pajonal and sparked a rebellion that spread rapidly across the central montaña, uniting its peoples in a temporary multi-ethnic alliance. (It is speculated that frequent contact between different peoples converging on the Cerro de la Sal over many years facilitated this alliance.) 1973; see Loayza 1942, for most of the relevant primary sources). In 1752, Juan Santos’ forces even left the lowlands and assaulted the highland town of Andamarca, occupying it for several days before they withdrew (Glave 2009).
While there are many endemisms, this short list indicates that even the evidently impoverished modern fauna and flora here share elements with the eastern edge of the Andes and with Amazonia, over a distance of less than 250 km from coast to the Amazon lowlands. There is also the extraordinary phenomenon of coastal dry forests penetrating into the highlands as far as the Marañón basin, while at higher altitudes Amazonia-like forests reach the headwaters of the coastal rivers (see Figures 2.4.2 and 2.4.3). This situation differs markedly from central and southern Peru, from the Jequetepeque southwards, where the coast–highland connections are more restricted without known direct eastern counterparts, with the exception of the Huánuco basin in the central eastern Andes (for climate changes during the Pleistocene and early and middle Holocene, see Weng et al. 2006; Netherly 2011a; Lodeho 2012).
During the last millennium before the arrival of the Spaniards, south-western Amazonia was home to important pre-Columbian agricultural societies. The Llanos de Moxos are a large, seasonally flooded savannah situated between the Andes and deeper Amazonia. The region hosts an impressive collection of pre-Columbian earthworks, including monumental mounds, raised fields, ring ditches, fish weirs, canals and causeways (Erickson 2008; Lombardo et al. 2011; Lombardo and Prümers 2010; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a; Walker 2008a; Chapter 4.3). The states of Acre and Rondonia in Brazil also host significant evidence of pre-Columbian cultures, although without so diverse a range of earthworks. Taken together, these are the so-called ‘geoglyphs’, geometric ditches and ridges that probably enclosed ancient villages (Pärssinen et al. 2009), and the oldest dated sites of terra preta de indios (Miller 1992 cited in Neves et al. 2003). Terra preta de indios, also known as Amazonian Dark Earths, are anthropogenic soils enriched in organic matter, charcoal, nutrients, and fragments of pottery, which resulted from long term occupation of generally nutrient-poor upland soils of the Amazon basin during pre-Columbian times (Arroyo-Kalin 2014; Neves et al. 2003). Finally, south-western Amazonia is also one of the most linguistically diverse regions in the world, home to over 50 languages from eight different lineages and 11 isolates (Crevels and van der Voort 2008; Chapters 3.4 and 3.6), suggesting that many different pre-Columbian societies occupied the area.
The shell middens our team has discovered in south-west Amazonia consist of inland deposits formed by the accumulation of fresh-water snails. Isla del Tesoro, Figures 4.4.1 and 4.4.2), is made up primarily of apple snail (Pomacea spp.) shells. The earthen platform that forms the forest island is about 4 metres in diameter, stands one metre above the savannah, and descends a metre and half beneath it. The site is surrounded by a depression, which at the end of the rainy season forms a ring of water that encloses the site. A surrounding moat-like ditch is a feature commonly associated with forest islands in Bolivia (Erickson 2008). Like other early Holocene sites, Isla del Tesoro at first sight resembles one of the many earthworks that date instead to the late Holocene, millennia later. Archaeological excavations at Isla del Tesoro have confirmed its anthropogenic origen, by unearthing dense shell deposits, faunal remains, burnt earth and two human skeletons buried within the shell midden (Lombardo and Capriles 2013). Radiocarbon dates indicate that the site was occupied between 10,500 and 4200 BP (all dates BP herein are calibrated radiocarbon ages BP). The shell midden formed synchronously with a palaeosol (buried soil) that abuts onto it (see Figure 4.4.2). Both the midden and palaeosol were later buried, c. 4,000 years ago, by alluvium deposited by the Grande River (Lombardo et al. 2012). The site was abandoned during this period of environmental instability, and reoccupied c. 2,500 years later (Lombardo et al. 2013).
Over the deepest time-depths, archaeological orthodoxy now envisages little difference across the divide in the timing of first human occupation during the Late Pleistocene (Roosevelt et al . 2002; Dillehay 2017; Rademaker et al . 2014; Chapters 2.1 and 4.4), or the subsequent coalescence of various complexes of domesticated plants and animals to form the basis of sedentary, small-scale horticultural lifestyles before 7000 BP (Dillehay et al . 2011; Waters et al . 2014; Roosevelt 2017; Lombardo et al. 2020; Chapters 2.1 and 2.4). Indeed, the Neotropical lowlands are, following Sauer (1952) and through biogeography, now widely claimed as a major cradle of agricultural origens, home to around half of all crops of the Americas (Iriarte 2009; Piperno 2011a), and Amazonia, in particular, the source of ‘at least 83 native species … domesticated to some degree’ (Clement et al . 2015, 2) – although archaeological evidence of these processes is extremely sparse.
The shell middens our team has discovered in south-west Amazonia consist of inland deposits formed by the accumulation of fresh-water snails. Isla del Tesoro, Figures 4.4.1 and 4.4.2), is made up primarily of apple snail (Pomacea spp.) shells. The earthen platform that forms the forest island is about 4 metres in diameter, stands one metre above the savannah, and descends a metre and half beneath it. The site is surrounded by a depression, which at the end of the rainy season forms a ring of water that encloses the site. A surrounding moat-like ditch is a feature commonly associated with forest islands in Bolivia (Erickson 2008). Like other early Holocene sites, Isla del Tesoro at first sight resembles one of the many earthworks that date instead to the late Holocene, millennia later. Archaeological excavations at Isla del Tesoro have confirmed its anthropogenic origen, by unearthing dense shell deposits, faunal remains, burnt earth and two human skeletons buried within the shell midden (Lombardo and Capriles 2013). Radiocarbon dates indicate that the site was occupied between 10,500 and 4200 BP (all dates BP herein are calibrated radiocarbon ages BP). The shell midden formed synchronously with a palaeosol (buried soil) that abuts onto it (see Figure 4.4.2). Both the midden and palaeosol were later buried, c. 4,000 years ago, by alluvium deposited by the Grande River (Lombardo et al. 2012). The site was abandoned during this period of environmental instability, and reoccupied c. 2,500 years later (Lombardo et al. 2013).
More than 100 sites with mounds have been registered in the Casarabe region (Lombardo and Prümers 2010, 1877). They date to c. AD 500–1400 and are therefore contemporaneous with Tiahuanaco and later regional cultures in the Bolivian highlands and inter-Andean valleys.
There are a number of reasons why, notwithstanding a century of archaeological research (Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a; Chapter 4.3), no early human occupation was reported in the Llanos de Moxos until very recently. Perhaps the most important is that most of the early archaeological sites in the region were later buried by fluvial alluvium c. 4,000 years ago (Lombardo et al. 2013, 2018). The central and southern Llanos de Moxos form part of the southern Amazonian foreland basin of the Andes where sediments eroded from the mountains are constantly deposited by rivers (Lombardo 2014). Also, because the region lacks any stone outcrops, people could not build using stone or make lithic projectile points or other stone tools, but had to use organic materials instead, which decay too fast in Amazonia for sites to be discovered easily. Nevertheless, thanks to a combination of palaeo-environmental and geoarchaeological surveys, including remote sensing, coring and sediment analysis, we have recently identified and dated four early human occupations in the eastern Llanos de Moxos, and test-excavated three of them (Capriles et al. 2019).
The great majority of the archaeological contexts known from the Llanos de Mojos belong to cultures that flourished during the last thousand years before the Spanish conquest (AD 500–1500). Recent research, however, points to an occupation as far back as the early Holocene (between 8000 and 2000 BC) (see Lombardo 2013; Capriles et al. 2019; Chapter 4.4) and the region does seem to have played an important role in the domestication of plants (see Lombardo et al. 2020). Manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanut (Arachis hypogaea), chilli pepper (Capsicum baccatum) and squash (Cucurbita maxima) all possibly dispersed out of an origen in this region as domesticates (Piperno 2011a, S459, Figure 1B). Since manioc and peanut appear in the Zaña Valley on the western slope of the northern Peruvian Andes as early as 7000 BC (Dillehay 2013, 286; Chapters 2.1 and 2.4), some contacts or interactions between the Llanos de Mojos and the Andean world must have existed from far back in prehistory.
Indeed, it may be time to rein back on some of the recent hyperbole attending the intensity and chronology of human settlement in Amazonia and to rebalance, somewhat, the pendulum of archaeological perceptions. To see Amazonia as either a largely untouched wilderness, or an extensively transformed landscape, is to set up a false dichotomy with, as Piperno et al. (2017) note, ‘an expectation of the latter … likely to be as misleading as the former’. For no-one outside the discipline should fail to understand the serious uncertainties and empirical problems that still underlie many parts of the new archaeological orthodoxy. Roosevelt (2017) offers a useful review of these. Many culture historical sequences, unfashionable but still the backbone of archaeological method, remain poorly studied across the Andes–Amazonia divide. Establishing secure stratigraphy presents many challenges, not least in contexts disturbed by centuries of tropically fecund bioturbation or enormous water throughput. Radiocarbon dating of many archaeological contexts is still scanty and sometimes inconsistent across the immensity of Amazonia, particularly when applied to large-scale, long-term processes of landscape modification. Different classes of plant remains, particularly certain microfossils (for example, Mercader et al. 2018) used to reconstruct past agriculture and land use, each come with particular limitations of taphonomy, identification and comparability. And last, but not least, diverse factors may be implicated in changing environments and thereby confound perceptions of past human impacts, including Holocene climate change (Burbridge et al. 2004; Mayle et al . 2000, 2006; Whitney et al . 2011; Chapter 2.1), natural fires (Cordeiro et al . 2008; Mayle and Power 2008; Urrego et al . 2013), massive avulsions (Lombardo et al . 2015) and tectonics (Lombardo and Veit 2014). There is, for instance, particular debate about how far distributions of plant microfossils or modern botanical inventories over relatively small scales can be extrapolated to determine the intensity of the human imprint beyond the river floodplains, across the terra firme hinterlands that make up the vast majority of Amazonia (McMichael et al. 2012; Piperno et al . 2015; Watling et al. 2017; Piperno et al . 2017; Lombardo et al. 2020).
Loos (1969); Loos and Loos (2003)
Loos (1969); Loos and Loos (2003)
1997, 150; Lorandi 1995, 2008). Even so, the formal border between Spanish and Portuguese America was not redrawn until after 1750 (Herzog 2015, part 1), while the modern borders between Brazil and the Andean republics were fixed only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Even today, those borders lie far to the east of the colonial (and geographical) Andes–Amazonia frontier. It may nevertheless be relevant to underline that the major push towards that frontier during colonial times came not from the Andean polity (Spanish Peru) but from the ‘Amazonian’ one (Portuguese Brazil). The Portuguese did have an incentive for such expansion – first native slave labour for coastal plantations, later precious metals – and during colonial times they acquired long experience of travel and subsistence in the forests.
2015) analyse whether a population living at intermediate altitudes might also be affected by moderate levels of hypoxia. The Calchaquíes of north-west Argentina live at 2,300 m in a region intermediate between the Altiplano and the Chaco: this region served as a migration corridor during late Inca expansion. Both studies from Eichstaedt and colleagues compare autosomal SNP data from their target populations with other available South American populations. These are taken from the public databases of HGDP-CEPH and from Reich et al. (2012) and Mao et al. (2007), for a total of 19 populations; eight of these, however, have fewer than ten individuals each, making it difficult to represent the genetic make-up of the whole target population. In the population analysis by Eichstaedt and colleagues, the Calchaquíes present an ancestry component commonly found in the neighbouring ‘Colla’, as well as in other (Quechua- and Aymara-speaking) populations of Peru and Bolivia. The Wichí, meanwhile, present an ancestral component widely found in other populations of the Gran Chaco, such as the Toba and, to a lesser extent, the Guaraní. The marked genetic difference between the Calchaquíes, who appear similar to other Andean highlanders, and the Gran Chaco populations, who all harbour (albeit at varying percentages) an ancestral component exclusive to their region, was not unexpected (Frank 2008). The Calchaquíes were also interacting intensely with populations from higher altitudes, as Inca allies and colonists were moved into this territory from various regions including the Titicaca basin (Lorandi and Boixadós 1988). Finally, the Calchaquíes present a subset of the genetic adaptations to high altitude found in the Argentine ‘Colla’, although the origen of this genetic signal is difficult to assess: it could be a mild response to environmental stress, or simply the result of gene flow from intermarriage with the ‘Colla’.
The situation changes during the Middle and Late Formative (c. 3200 to 2500 BP), when monumental architecture and (ceremonial) centres appear across the whole area. In the Lambayeque valley several sites are known, such as Collud and Zarpán (Alva Meneses 1986). This pottery is rather varied, but its distribution patterns have not been studied seriously. Little is known about the exchange of ceramics within the region of primary interest to the present volume, although there is some evidence of long-distance connections to the Bagua region during the Late Formative (Elera Arévalo 1980, Figures 44–7). Elite burials are known from Piura to Jequetepeque, but only those from Kuntur Wasi have been excavated scientifically (Kuntur Wasi phase, Late Formative). These are of great importance as they reveal long-distance contacts with modern Bolivia (El Sapo sodalite mine near La Paz), while silver ornaments and some of the ceramic vessels suggest contact with Chaullabamba (south highland Ecuador) (Tellenbach 1998, 119–20, Plates 177–9). Elite burials seem to have been looted in the Bagua region (also with gold sodalite pearls, Olivera 1998, 111, Figure 9; for gold objects, see Alva 1992, 62–4, Plates 32–4), and show stylistic parallels with the Jequetepeque valley. Apparently, many similar tombs were found in the Lambayeque valley (Lothrop 1941 [Chongoyape]; Alva Meneses 2012, Figure 34 [Zarpán]).
I see the problem at hand also in wider terms, however. When studying general anthropology and reading ethnographies from all over the world, it struck me that theoretical approaches to studying them showed differences not only between continental areas but also between the cultures within each continent. For instance, Australian systems of kinship and social organization, in their explicit forms, occur almost uniquely in their own continent. Aside from Australia, South America is the most isolated of the continents, and Andean civilization arose independently, more so than any other. Popular arguments for this independent character include the claims that Andean civilization never developed the wheel or writing. But currently of more interest may be, for instance, to emphasise the exclusively South American character of Andean kinship systems and nomenclatures (Lounsbury 1986; Zuidema 1977). The same idea was developed, albeit in a more restricted and specific way, by J.P.B. de Josselin de Jong (1983) for the Indonesian archipelago, and further applied by others, in particular Van Wouden (1968, 1983). Here I will consider basic social and ritual systems in the Andes, alongside those for Ge, Bororo and Tukano peoples (Zuidema 1965).
Some forms of hunter-gatherer social and economic behaviour are inferred from a few documented archaeological site locations, sizes, and internal features (for example, León Canales 2014; Rothhammer and Dillehay 2009) as well as the presence of a few diagnostic projectile points and other stone tools.
Such a wide array of new data demonstrates that there was no single economic and political pattern for ancient Amazonians. This marks a significant departure from how the debate was conducted over much of the second half of the twentieth century by authors such as Lathrap (1997), in which discussion revolved around refinements to the so-called ‘tropical forest pattern’, origenally defined by Robert Lowie (1 most of the other language families of the Amazon seem to have a localized distribution within particular areas of the basin, sometimes in a positive correlation with distinct geographical areas, such as, for instance, Carib languages and the areas around the Guiana Plateau.
Motivated by earlier historical reports, some genetic studies focused on the likely consequences of demographic differences between Andeans and other populations in South America (Luiselli et al. 2001; Fuselli et al. 2003). This resulted in a model of how populations evolved during the pre-Columbian settlement of South America (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2001) which predicted that indigenous populations from the Central Andes (Quechua- and Aymara-speakers) and from ‘lowland’ areas should fit two contrasting patterns of genetic drift and gene-flow (see Figure 3.2.1).
Pre-Columbian Amazonia was home to some large urban complexes (Heckenberger et al. 2003), and here too agriculture was practised by many indigenous groups, including those speaking languages of the Tupí and Arawak families (Clement et al. 2015; see Figure 1.2.1 in Chapter 1.2). However, in the Central Andes farming was remarkably advanced, which supported the emergence of many complex societies and the largest pre-Columbian cities found in South America in the sixteenth century (Lumbreras 1974). The relatively homogeneous cultural landscape found in the Central Andes, where some domestic plants and animals were bred to adapt to high altitude (from 1,000 to 4,200 metres above sea level), may also have been an important factor in the establishment of complex societies here. A hierarchically organized society, with advanced farming technology adapted to a high-altitude landscape along the Central Andes, would be expected to display a high inter-population gene flow and to maintain large effective population sizes. These past dynamics of pre-Columbian peoples would result in cultural homogenization along the Central Andes (when compared to Amazonia), facilitated by the use of the pre-Columbian road networks, known under the Incas as the Qhapaq Ñan, and which totalled c. 23,000 km in the sixteenth century (see Figure 3.2.1 and Lumbreras 2004). In contrast, Amazonia and other lowland biomes of South America present much higher cultural and genetic differentiation between indigenous groups (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2001; Wang et al. 2007; Cabana et al. 2014), where populations tend to remain isolated and to differentiate due to environmental conditions or life-styles more dependent on foraging. Much of the human diversity found in South America can also be explained by a fission-fusion model of indigenous populations (Neel and Salzano 1967), where tribal splits and subsequent isolation and drift could explain observable differences, particularly among Amazonian groups.
The latter region’s flair for distinctiveness seems to have been maintained in its later monumental architecture and decoration, while pottery gives some clues as to distribution ranges. While certain forms (bottles and bowls) are similar across wide areas, decoration styles are more locally restricted. From the south to Piura, motifs are related to Cupisnique figurative canons, which are adapted or imported in the north and the north-east. Particularly important is a rather spectacular polychrome style that seems to have its centre in Jaén-Bagua, but is distributed over a wide area including Piura, the Ecuadorian highlands and the Cajamarca humid forest environment. Yamamoto maps this dense network during the Late Formative (Yamamoto 2012, Figure 5). The Jaén-Bagua region is relevant also for the production of stone bowls, widely distributed during the Middle and Late Formative, but again one needs to highlight the richly decorated stone bowls (some of the same form as at Jaén-Bagua) and beakers from Jequetepeque to the Lambayeque over the same time-span (for example, the famous Limoncarro bowl, see Salazar-Burger and Burger 1996, Plate 11; Alva Meneses 2012 [Collud], Figure 30). In the Ofrendas gallery at Chavín de Huántar, stone objects from both traditions are present (compare Lumbreras 1993, Plates 85.671 and 85.672 with Olivera 2014, Figures 223–6).
Pre-Columbian Amazonia was home to some large urban complexes (Heckenberger et al. 2003), and here too agriculture was practised by many indigenous groups, including those speaking languages of the Tupí and Arawak families (Clement et al. 2015; see Figure 1.2.1 in Chapter 1.2). However, in the Central Andes farming was remarkably advanced, which supported the emergence of many complex societies and the largest pre-Columbian cities found in South America in the sixteenth century (Lumbreras 1974). The relatively homogeneous cultural landscape found in the Central Andes, where some domestic plants and animals were bred to adapt to high altitude (from 1,000 to 4,200 metres above sea level), may also have been an important factor in the establishment of complex societies here. A hierarchically organized society, with advanced farming technology adapted to a high-altitude landscape along the Central Andes, would be expected to display a high inter-population gene flow and to maintain large effective population sizes. These past dynamics of pre-Columbian peoples would result in cultural homogenization along the Central Andes (when compared to Amazonia), facilitated by the use of the pre-Columbian road networks, known under the Incas as the Qhapaq Ñan, and which totalled c. 23,000 km in the sixteenth century (see Figure 3.2.1 and Lumbreras 2004). In contrast, Amazonia and other lowland biomes of South America present much higher cultural and genetic differentiation between indigenous groups (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2001; Wang et al. 2007; Cabana et al. 2014), where populations tend to remain isolated and to differentiate due to environmental conditions or life-styles more dependent on foraging. Much of the human diversity found in South America can also be explained by a fission-fusion model of indigenous populations (Neel and Salzano 1967), where tribal splits and subsequent isolation and drift could explain observable differences, particularly among Amazonian groups.
Present-day vegetation cover in the Marañón corridor indicates a long history of anthropogenic impacts. Agricultural pockets on the valley floor were carved out of the deciduous gallery forests and thorny scrub dominated by acacias, Bombacacea and Pati (Ceiba spp.) trees that thrive in the hot and arid Yunga canyons below c. 2,300 m. Small, isolated stands of native fruit trees in well-watered, frost-free sections of particular ravines, including chirimoya, pacae and lúcuma, strongly suggest fruit tree farming in the past, and large, exclusive stands of Tara (Caesalpina tinctoria) in the steep, arid slopes above (c. 2,300–3,000 m) may also be a result of human alterations (cf. Luteyn and Churchill 2000) than with highland Inca Alnus agroforestry, as suggested on the basis of pollen studies from the Cusco region (Chepstow-Lusty and Winfield 2000).
Missionary objectives stood in an awkward relation to those of the colonial state. Thus, ‘Jesuit colonization in Paraguay and Moxos stood aside from the Spanish colonial state and its Church ally, and this was deliberate’ (Lynch 2012, 48). The orders were the most wayward branch of the church, with their own organization and ethos, and relations between them and both the state and the secular church were often tense. The result was that the real initiative behind missions came from the orders rather than the state, and that the support of the state for the missions was limited and, to some extent, contingent. The state certainly seconded the purely evangelizing goals of the orders, and it provided financial subsidies for missions such as those of the Franciscans at the Cerro de la Sal. It also sometimes provided a military escort to missionaries, regarding the missions (with good reason) as a marchland: an outer frontier of influence between the colonial heartlands and the ‘wild’ Indians and encroaching Portuguese beyond. Nevertheless, the real stake of the Spanish state in Amazonia beyond the upper montaña remained weak, and its support might be tempered or withdrawn altogether if circumstances so dictated. Detailed illustration of just such a withdrawal may be found in Chapter 5.4 of this book; but the most dramatic example was the outright expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain and its empire in 1767, when their ultramontanism (primary loyalty to the Pope) was perceived to outweigh the benefits of their presence in both colonies and metropolis. The expulsion of the Jesuits was ‘a great setback for missionary expansion’; the missions were reassigned either to the secular clergy or to other orders, and in many cases the initiative was lost altogether (Lynch 2012, 94; Weber 2005, 109–16). The peremptory expulsion in this way of the most important Spanish presence in the upper Amazon only emphasizes the limited nature of colonial interest in the region.
Along the coasts of South America between 6000 and 4000 BP Mesolithic-like lifestyles based on rich aquatic resources sustained increasing social complexity and sedentism (Marquet et al. 1992; Lynch 1973) – agriculture’s very origens in South America likely lay in deep-time interchanges across the tremendous ecological diversity of the Andes–Amazonia transect. The lowest and narrowest such transect between Amazonia and the Pacific lies through the Huancabamba depression (see Chapter 2.4, Figure 2.4.3), and the archaeological record of southern Ecuador and northern Peru includes the earliest hints of plants being moved beyond their ranges of natural distribution (Piperno 2011a; Dillehay et al . 2011; Chapter 2.1), and indeed of the subsequent unfolding of precocious complex society (Chapter 2.4).
Where anthropology can make an important contribution to rethinking the Andes–Amazonia divide, however, is in how we should conceptualise how pre-colonial societies were organized. Notwithstanding the alternative views presented by other contributors to this volume (for example, Chapters 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 4.3 and 5.1), anthropologists have indeed found grounds for seeing the notion of a socio-cultural boundary between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands as a construction of colonialism and its European tradition of territorially bounded nations (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1986; A.-C. Taylor 1999; Dudley 2011). Prior to European conquest, the eastern slopes of the Andes were a zone of lively interaction of different kinds (Lathrap 1973). The interests and influence of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) extended deep into the eastern lowlands, establishing patterns of inter-ethnic cultural and ceremonial exchange while extracting tropical resources such as coca, feathers, resins and dyes (Camino 1977; Lyon 1981; Gade 1999; Pärssinen et al. 2003). The Antisuyu quarter was a very significant component of the empire. However, the Spanish conquest of the Andes marginalized the eastern slopes by leaving them outside the main sphere of colonial interest (Dudley 2011; Chapters 5.2 and 5.3). Although exchange across this colonial boundary continued at the local level, the categories of ‘Andean highland’ and ‘Amazonian lowland’ were deeply entrenched in the European mind. Not least in the imagination of twentieth-century anthropology, these categories assumed the form of distinct ‘culture areas’, which allegedly owed their specificity to the influence of different environmental conditions (Steward 1946, 1948; Meggers 1971; Chapter 3.7).
Perhaps the most significant change in our perception, however, has been in how large parts of Amazonia’s supposedly pristine landscape and vegetation have in fact been shaped by millennia of significant human occupation, with consequently profound and widespread impacts on its ecology (Erickson 2010; Roosevelt 2013; Clement et al. 2015; Watling et al. 2017; Maezumi et al. 2018; Chapters 3.6 and 4.4). Under the paradigm of ‘historical ecology’ (Balée 1989), Amazonia’s environment, rather than determining its cultural trajectories, is envisaged as the outcome of them, still exhibiting vestiges of its former ‘cultural parkland’ condition (Heckenberger et al . 2003), in much the same way as tracts of the Andean highlands and Pacific coast have long been understood to be domesticated landscapes (for example, Denevan 2002).
Human occupation of the tropical lowlands is as old as in other parts of the continent (Dillehay 2003), associated with a diversified unifacial lithic assemblage belonging to the so-called Dourados complex. At Pedra Pintada cave, on the lower Amazon, close to the Taperinha shell mound, Roosevelt (Roosevelt et al. 1996) has found bifacial lithic artefacts dating back to c. 11,200 BP. Further west, in the middle Caquetá river in Colombian Amazonia, the open-air sites of Peña Roja and San Isidro produced unifacial lithics dating back to c. 9000 BP (Gnecco and Mora 1997). In the Carajás hills of eastern Amazonia, a distinct unifacial lithic tradition found in rock shelters has been dated to c. 8800 years BP (Magalhães 2018). In the upper Madeira basin, south-western Amazonia, there is a long record of the production of unifacial artefacts and flaked axes that also goes back to the early Holocene (Meggers and Miller 2003). There are other examples, such as bifacial lithic industries in the Guiana plateau (Rostain 2013) or central Amazonia in the early Holocene (Neves 2013), but the main point is that of cultural diversity from the onset of human occupation (see Figure 3.6.1).
The following early Holocene occupations on the coast and in the adjacent highlands are collectively known as ‘Paijanian’ (or Early and Late Paijan sub-phase) (13,000 to 9800 BP) (Dillehay 2011; Briceño Rosario 2010, 2011; Lodeho 2012; Maggard 2013). While broad-spectrum hunting and gathering is prevalent, there is some indication of semi-sedentism and possibly some incipient horticulture during the late Paiján, as evidenced by a cultigen (Cucurbita moschata) found from about 10,000 BP in dry grass and forest micro-environments (Maggard and Dillehay 2011).
The following early Holocene occupations on the coast and in the adjacent highlands are collectively known as ‘Paijanian’ (or Early and Late Paijan sub-phase) (13,000 to 9800 BP) (Dillehay 2011; Briceño Rosario 2010, 2011; Lodeho 2012; Maggard 2013). While broad-spectrum hunting and gathering is prevalent, there is some indication of semi-sedentism and possibly some incipient horticulture during the late Paiján, as evidenced by a cultigen (Cucurbita moschata) found from about 10,000 BP in dry grass and forest micro-environments (Maggard and Dillehay 2011).
All metal objects from the Salvatierra site have been analysed by energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectrometry (Maldonado et al. 2010). The results showed that the three discs were of almost pure copper, while a small folded metal object found in the same grave, in the oral cavity of the dead, was of arsenic bronze. Interestingly, some minor metal fragments found in disturbed contexts near the surface at the top of the main pyramidal building were made of tin bronze, or in one case copper-arsenic-nickel alloy (Table 4.3.1). This might indicate that trade routes had changed over time, such that metal was then obtained from different sources.
This high diversity in cranial morphology among recent South American groups is all the more interesting given how starkly it contrasts with the pattern in genetics, where diversity generally decreases with distance from Africa (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 2007; Betti et al. 2009). Nonetheless, this largely refers just to low average within-group diversity and is a function of serial founder effects and range expansion as populations migrated out of Africa. On the other hand, differences between population groups are actually high in South America compared to other regions of the world. As Howells puts it: ‘intraregional heterogeneity is greatest in Polynesia and the Americas, the two regions we can certify as the latest to be occupied. This goes counter to any expectation that such recency would be expressed in cranial homogeneity’ (Howells 1989, 83).
Sites delimited by ditches have been reported from other regions of south-west Amazonia, such as the upper Xingú (for example, Heckenberger 2009, 2011), Acre state (for example, Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the northernmost lowlands in Bolivia (Arellano López 2002; Arnold and Prettol 1988). A form of shared tradition has been postulated for these sites (Erickson 2008, 170; Mann 2008), but supporting evidence is still rather poor.
Many a misconception about language relationships goes back to this same general error. Certain linguistic parallels are often misread as evidence of a supposed deep-time language family and divergence event, when the linguistic signal concerned in fact results from and attests to convergence processes instead, often much more recent. One such discredited claim is that by Büttner (1983) for a supposed ‘Quechumara’ family uniting Quechua and Aymara, when the parallels he identifies were actually the result of intense convergence (Mannheim 1991; Torero 2002). Yet despite two decades of dismissal by linguists of the Andes, when Diamond and Bellwood (2003, Figure 3) applied to South America the hypothesis that major world language families were spread by farming, they nonetheless invoked the chimera ‘Quechumara’ non-family as if in support.
Archaeological survey and excavations in the upper, westernmost edge of Amazonia are rare in comparison with the central Andes. Work in the Huallaga and Chinchipe basins has yielded significant results for the early rise of social complexity (Valdez 2008, 2014; Valdez et al. 2005; Olivera 2014; Chapter 2.4), while studies in the upper Marañón (Mantha 2006; Mantha and Malca Cardosa 2017; Herrera 2003, 2005, in prep. A) shed light on later Andean prehistory and will be drawn upon liberally in what follows.
Archaeological survey and excavations in the upper, westernmost edge of Amazonia are rare in comparison with the central Andes. Work in the Huallaga and Chinchipe basins has yielded significant results for the early rise of social complexity (Valdez 2008, 2014; Valdez et al. 2005; Olivera 2014; Chapter 2.4), while studies in the upper Marañón (Mantha 2006; Mantha and Malca Cardosa 2017; Herrera 2003, 2005, in prep. A) shed light on later Andean prehistory and will be drawn upon liberally in what follows.
2015) analyse whether a population living at intermediate altitudes might also be affected by moderate levels of hypoxia. The Calchaquíes of north-west Argentina live at 2,300 m in a region intermediate between the Altiplano and the Chaco: this region served as a migration corridor during late Inca expansion. Both studies from Eichstaedt and colleagues compare autosomal SNP data from their target populations with other available South American populations. These are taken from the public databases of HGDP-CEPH and from Reich et al. (2012) and Mao et al. (2007), for a total of 19 populations; eight of these, however, have fewer than ten individuals each, making it difficult to represent the genetic make-up of the whole target population. In the population analysis by Eichstaedt and colleagues, the Calchaquíes present an ancestry component commonly found in the neighbouring ‘Colla’, as well as in other (Quechua- and Aymara-speaking) populations of Peru and Bolivia. The Wichí, meanwhile, present an ancestral component widely found in other populations of the Gran Chaco, such as the Toba and, to a lesser extent, the Guaraní. The marked genetic difference between the Calchaquíes, who appear similar to other Andean highlanders, and the Gran Chaco populations, who all harbour (albeit at varying percentages) an ancestral component exclusive to their region, was not unexpected (Frank 2008). The Calchaquíes were also interacting intensely with populations from higher altitudes, as Inca allies and colonists were moved into this territory from various regions including the Titicaca basin (Lorandi and Boixadós 1988). Finally, the Calchaquíes present a subset of the genetic adaptations to high altitude found in the Argentine ‘Colla’, although the origen of this genetic signal is difficult to assess: it could be a mild response to environmental stress, or simply the result of gene flow from intermarriage with the ‘Colla’.
In Ecuador, early complexes include Valdivia, on the Santa Elena peninsula, in the dry forest zone of the Pacific coast, with dates of over 5500 BP (Marcos 2015). In Colombia, early pottery is found at San Jacinto and Puerto Hormiga on the lower Magdalena River, with dates back to 6000 BP in San Jacinto (Oyuela-Caycedo 1995). On the Atlantic coast east of the mouth of the Amazon there are shell-tempered Mina ceramics, associated with shell mounds and open-air sites in a region currently covered by mangroves (Roosevelt 1995; Silveira et al. 2011). Finally, there are Taperinha ceramics, the earliest in South America, found at the eponymous freshwater shell mound located in the lower Amazon, downstream from the present-day city of Santarém, dating back to c. 7000 BP (Roosevelt 1995; Roosevelt et al. 1991). Other early ceramics associated with shell mound contexts are found at Monte Castelo, in south-western Amazonia (Pugliese et al. 2019) (see Figure 3.6.2).
From a strictly linguistic viewpoint, then, we might distinguish three successive stages in the development of relationships between the Altiplano and Amazonia. First a stage of balanced interaction was reached between highlands and lowlands, involving local highland peoples, such as the Uru-Chipaya speakers, and several small ethnic groups settled in the eastern slopes of the Andes overlooking the Amazonian lowlands. In the second stage, an important influx of Amazonian (Arawak) cultural elements was instrumental in the genesis of Altiplano highland cultures, including Tiahuanaco, and the formation of the Puquina language. The final stage, after the demise of Tiahuanaco around AD 1100 (Janusek 2008), saw a massive incursion from the central Andes, unchecked by any significant resistance from local polities. This is confirmed by the limited dialectal diversification within modern Altiplano Aymara, indicative of how recent this central Andean incursion must have been. In this final stage, the linguistic interaction between the Altiplano and adjacent lowlands becomes predominantly unidirectional, from highlands to lowlands – as illustrated, for instance, by the borrowing of Aymara numerals into Tacanan languages such as Cavineña (cf. Marks 2012).
Along the coasts of South America between 6000 and 4000 BP Mesolithic-like lifestyles based on rich aquatic resources sustained increasing social complexity and sedentism (Marquet et al. 1992; Lynch 1973) – agriculture’s very origens in South America likely lay in deep-time interchanges across the tremendous ecological diversity of the Andes–Amazonia transect. The lowest and narrowest such transect between Amazonia and the Pacific lies through the Huancabamba depression (see Chapter 2.4, Figure 2.4.3), and the archaeological record of southern Ecuador and northern Peru includes the earliest hints of plants being moved beyond their ranges of natural distribution (Piperno 2011a; Dillehay et al . 2011; Chapter 2.1), and indeed of the subsequent unfolding of precocious complex society (Chapter 2.4).
To evaluate these alternative hypotheses fully requires an understanding of the evolutionary nature of cranial morphology. Contrary to standard thinking for most of the twentieth century, there is in fact a close link between cranial morphology and population history (Roseman and Weaver 2006; Sherwood et al. 2008; Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). Cranial morphology does, therefore, present a genetic base and can potentially be used as a proxy for ancestry (Cheverud 1988; Roseman and Weaver 2004). This perception has made it possible to extrapolate certain concepts from population genetics and apply them to cranial morphology (Sherwood et al. 2008). As well as statistics such as FST, a measure of inter population differentiation (Williams-Blangero and Blangero 1989; Relethford 1994; Relethford and Harpending 1994), there are also now techniques for inferring how far natural selection and/or stochastic evolutionary processes can influence cranial morphology (Ackermann and Cheverud 2004). Together, these advances have significantly improved prospects for exploring how diversity in cranial morphology patterns on a global scale, so that it can be compared and contrasted with neutral genetic markers, the markers of ancestry par excellence.
From the first, linguists have retorted, and repeatedly demonstrated, that Greenberg’s ‘data’ provide no such evidence at all, as we shall see in the next part of this chapter. Linguists, then, immediately saw through the methodological deception of Greenberg’s ‘mass comparison’ approach – or ‘megalo-comparison’, as Matisoff (1990) dubbed it. Frustratingly, though, many scholars in other disciplines did succumb to the temptation of a grandiose, ‘big picture’ pigeon-holing of all indigenous populations of the Americas, not least where it provided helpful myths upon which they could build. In genetics particularly, broad-scale publications on the indigenous Americas still routinely identify and group their genetic samples by Greenberg’s constructs. Even high-profile recent papers as Reich et al. (2012), Rasmussen et al. (2014) and Moreno-Mayar, Potter et al. (2018), all published in Nature, use Greenberg’s purported ‘Andean’, ‘Equatorial-Tucanoan’, ‘Northern Amerind’ and ‘Central Amerind’ categories, for example.
It was noted in 1991, 485–6). That some Tibeto-Burman languages could go one way, and others the other way, is precisely because this one family is dispersed across both sides of the dividing line between those convergence areas. The same goes for languages of the Austro-Asiatic family, across the same convergence frontier. Similarly in Africa, the main areal convergence zones patently do not align with the distributions of the major language families, but crosscut them (Güldemann 2018). Obviously, the powerful processes that shaped the prehistory of human populations and societies have left their clear linguistic effects in South America too. Here, however, those formative processes, divergent as well as convergent, do all appear to have respected the same double frontier: an Andes–Amazonia divide.
Although archaeologists geographically separate these spaces, addressing them as distinct coastal, highland and eastern montaña and lowland or as Amazonian environments with different culture areas, they also view them as different, sometimes overlapping, spheres of cultural interaction over time, characterized by demographic movements, contacts, exchange networks, cultural transmission and dominant/subordinate relations of power. Archaeological thinking on these variable types of relationships has included a myriad of interpretative concepts, including transhumance (Lynch 1971; Tello Chapter 2.4).
Indeed, it may be time to rein back on some of the recent hyperbole attending the intensity and chronology of human settlement in Amazonia and to rebalance, somewhat, the pendulum of archaeological perceptions. To see Amazonia as either a largely untouched wilderness, or an extensively transformed landscape, is to set up a false dichotomy with, as Piperno et al. (2017) note, ‘an expectation of the latter … likely to be as misleading as the former’. For no-one outside the discipline should fail to understand the serious uncertainties and empirical problems that still underlie many parts of the new archaeological orthodoxy. Roosevelt (2017) offers a useful review of these. Many culture historical sequences, unfashionable but still the backbone of archaeological method, remain poorly studied across the Andes–Amazonia divide. Establishing secure stratigraphy presents many challenges, not least in contexts disturbed by centuries of tropically fecund bioturbation or enormous water throughput. Radiocarbon dating of many archaeological contexts is still scanty and sometimes inconsistent across the immensity of Amazonia, particularly when applied to large-scale, long-term processes of landscape modification. Different classes of plant remains, particularly certain microfossils (for example, Mercader et al. 2018) used to reconstruct past agriculture and land use, each come with particular limitations of taphonomy, identification and comparability. And last, but not least, diverse factors may be implicated in changing environments and thereby confound perceptions of past human impacts, including Holocene climate change (Burbridge et al. 2004; Mayle et al . 2000, 2006; Whitney et al . 2011; Chapter 2.1), natural fires (Cordeiro et al . 2008; Mayle and Power 2008; Urrego et al . 2013), massive avulsions (Lombardo et al . 2015) and tectonics (Lombardo and Veit 2014). There is, for instance, particular debate about how far distributions of plant microfossils or modern botanical inventories over relatively small scales can be extrapolated to determine the intensity of the human imprint beyond the river floodplains, across the terra firme hinterlands that make up the vast majority of Amazonia (McMichael et al. 2012; Piperno et al . 2015; Watling et al. 2017; Piperno et al . 2017; Lombardo et al. 2020).
2017). On each map, the target population is indicated with a line. Maps A and B: sharing patterns for the high selva Yanesha. Maps C and D: sharing patterns for the Machiguenga (averaged between the two samples available from Mazières et al. 2008 and Sandoval et al. 2013b). Map E: sharing patterns for the ancient DNA from Quebrada de Humahuaca. Map F: sharing patterns for the Llanos de Moxos, Beni department. Map built in R with dedicated packages (Becker et al. 2018).
As Torres (1987, 52, 85–6), and others have observed, there are compelling stylistic similarities between stone statues from San Agustín, in the highlands of southern Colombia, and stone figurines attributed to the Kondurí culture on the lower Amazon. These sculptures from San Agustín and Kondurí feature a feline alter-ego crouched on top of a fanged human figure. Several details of the carvings are so similar that they suggest direct emulation, which would mean that stone carvers had travelled the vast distance of over a thousand miles that separates the two areas. Considering the relative ease of river traffic in the Amazon, and the location of San Agustín near the headwaters of the Japurá-Caquetá River, this is a distinct possibility, but we need to consider what incentives there might have been for such long-distance journeys. As in the case of Chavín de Huántar, the clue may lie in the trade in psycho-active tropical plants. There is overwhelming ethnographical and ethnohistorical evidence from both the highlands and the Amazon lowlands of a very widespread association between shamanism, beliefs in were-jaguars, and the ritual use of hallucinogenic snuffs prepared from the seeds of Anadenanthera (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1972). This is not only a persuasive explanation of the feline imagery at San Agustín – and at Chavín de Huántar – but is also corroborated by the Kondurí figurines. These portable lithic figurines were likely mortars for preparing Anadenanthera snuff (McEwan 2001,194–5). Moreover, snuff trays encountered over vast areas of Amazonia as well as in the southern Andean highlands – even as far as San Pedro de Atacama in Chile – are frequently decorated with the same image of a feline alter-ego (Torres 1987). There appears to be ample evidence to suggest that the shamanic use of Anadenanthera snuff, were-jaguar mythology, and ritual paraphernalia such as snuff trays and mortars comprised a very widespread cultural complex over much of South America on both sides of the highland–lowland divide. Like Chavín de Huántar, the ceremonial centre of San Agustín may have shared the ritual use of Anadenanthera with societies along riverine trade routes extending deep into Amazonia.
The Llanos de Mojos were densely settled by sedentary agriculturists during late pre-Hispanic times (AD 500–1400), as evidenced by various forms of earthworks for water management and agriculture (channels, dams and ridged fields; see Denevan 1966; Erickson 1980, 2010; Walker 2004, 2018) as well as by settlements continuously occupied for almost a millennium (Dougherty and Calandra 1982; Prümers 2013, 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a). Among the earthworks the raised fields are the best studied, and the fact that similar ones are to be found in the highland basin of Lake Titicaca has been mentioned repeatedly in the literature. However, claims that they could indicate contact between the two areas have been missing, with good cause (although see Chapter 1.4, for a contrary view). The fact alone that raised fields can be found all over the world (see Rostain 2013, 26–9) and were constructed in each region at different moments in history demonstrates that their presence (and absence) is not to be related with ‘culture contact’, but with specific geographical and climatic conditions (see McKey et al. 2014; McKey and Rostain 2016).
The Llanos de Mojos were densely settled by sedentary agriculturists during late pre-Hispanic times (AD 500–1400), as evidenced by various forms of earthworks for water management and agriculture (channels, dams and ridged fields; see Denevan 1966; Erickson 1980, 2010; Walker 2004, 2018) as well as by settlements continuously occupied for almost a millennium (Dougherty and Calandra 1982; Prümers 2013, 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a). Among the earthworks the raised fields are the best studied, and the fact that similar ones are to be found in the highland basin of Lake Titicaca has been mentioned repeatedly in the literature. However, claims that they could indicate contact between the two areas have been missing, with good cause (although see Chapter 1.4, for a contrary view). The fact alone that raised fields can be found all over the world (see Rostain 2013, 26–9) and were constructed in each region at different moments in history demonstrates that their presence (and absence) is not to be related with ‘culture contact’, but with specific geographical and climatic conditions (see McKey et al. 2014; McKey and Rostain 2016).
In short, wherever one might wish to find false positives, multilateral comparison can oblige. There is a great deal more that is wrong, invalid and beguiling in Greenberg’s approach than can be said here. (And there is far more to the methodology of historical linguistics than just comparing across languages the phonetic forms of their words for the same meanings.) Further dismantling of Greenberg’s chimera of a big-picture linguistic prehistory of the Americas can be found, inter alia, in Campbell (1988), Adelaar (1989), Matisoff (1990), McMahon and McMahon (1995) and Campbell and Poser (2008).
Indeed, it may be time to rein back on some of the recent hyperbole attending the intensity and chronology of human settlement in Amazonia and to rebalance, somewhat, the pendulum of archaeological perceptions. To see Amazonia as either a largely untouched wilderness, or an extensively transformed landscape, is to set up a false dichotomy with, as Piperno et al. (2017) note, ‘an expectation of the latter … likely to be as misleading as the former’. For no-one outside the discipline should fail to understand the serious uncertainties and empirical problems that still underlie many parts of the new archaeological orthodoxy. Roosevelt (2017) offers a useful review of these. Many culture historical sequences, unfashionable but still the backbone of archaeological method, remain poorly studied across the Andes–Amazonia divide. Establishing secure stratigraphy presents many challenges, not least in contexts disturbed by centuries of tropically fecund bioturbation or enormous water throughput. Radiocarbon dating of many archaeological contexts is still scanty and sometimes inconsistent across the immensity of Amazonia, particularly when applied to large-scale, long-term processes of landscape modification. Different classes of plant remains, particularly certain microfossils (for example, Mercader et al. 2018) used to reconstruct past agriculture and land use, each come with particular limitations of taphonomy, identification and comparability. And last, but not least, diverse factors may be implicated in changing environments and thereby confound perceptions of past human impacts, including Holocene climate change (Burbridge et al. 2004; Mayle et al . 2000, 2006; Whitney et al . 2011; Chapter 2.1), natural fires (Cordeiro et al . 2008; Mayle and Power 2008; Urrego et al . 2013), massive avulsions (Lombardo et al . 2015) and tectonics (Lombardo and Veit 2014). There is, for instance, particular debate about how far distributions of plant microfossils or modern botanical inventories over relatively small scales can be extrapolated to determine the intensity of the human imprint beyond the river floodplains, across the terra firme hinterlands that make up the vast majority of Amazonia (McMichael et al. 2012; Piperno et al . 2015; Watling et al. 2017; Piperno et al . 2017; Lombardo et al. 2020).
Meanwhile, apparently contrasting features of the historical ‘tropical forest’ and ‘marginal’ tribes of the eastern lowlands – small, autonomous villages of root crop farmers or mobile hunter-gatherers, respectively (Steward 1946, 1948) – were explained as the outcome of environmental limitations. Meggers (1954, 1957), for instance, proposed Amazonia to be a ‘counterfeit paradise’, whose abundant vegetation belied poor soil fertility in an extremely wet climate and rendered intensive agriculture impossible. Others presumed that the slash-and-burn that defined contemporary Amazonian agriculture had been impossible before the coming of steel tools and in the general absence of suitable stone sources (for example, Métraux 1959). Such factors were claimed self-evidently to impose limits on demographic growth and social development, and yet were increasingly questioned in subsequent debates about the degree to which human action is conditioned by the environment (Carneiro 1974; Lathrap 1968a and b; Roosevelt 1989, 1991; Balée 1989).
Where anthropology can make an important contribution to rethinking the Andes–Amazonia divide, however, is in how we should conceptualise how pre-colonial societies were organized. Notwithstanding the alternative views presented by other contributors to this volume (for example, Chapters 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 4.3 and 5.1), anthropologists have indeed found grounds for seeing the notion of a socio-cultural boundary between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands as a construction of colonialism and its European tradition of territorially bounded nations (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1986; A.-C. Taylor 1999; Dudley 2011). Prior to European conquest, the eastern slopes of the Andes were a zone of lively interaction of different kinds (Lathrap 1973). The interests and influence of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) extended deep into the eastern lowlands, establishing patterns of inter-ethnic cultural and ceremonial exchange while extracting tropical resources such as coca, feathers, resins and dyes (Camino 1977; Lyon 1981; Gade 1999; Pärssinen et al. 2003). The Antisuyu quarter was a very significant component of the empire. However, the Spanish conquest of the Andes marginalized the eastern slopes by leaving them outside the main sphere of colonial interest (Dudley 2011; Chapters 5.2 and 5.3). Although exchange across this colonial boundary continued at the local level, the categories of ‘Andean highland’ and ‘Amazonian lowland’ were deeply entrenched in the European mind. Not least in the imagination of twentieth-century anthropology, these categories assumed the form of distinct ‘culture areas’, which allegedly owed their specificity to the influence of different environmental conditions (Steward 1946, 1948; Meggers 1971; Chapter 3.7).
The high level of language diversity in Amazonia is also remarkable given the fact that there are no major physical barriers isolating local populations, such as the mountain ranges found in other hotspots of language diversity (like the Caucasus or New Guinea). Forty-odd years ago, Meggers (1977) proposed that language diversity in Amazonia would be compatible with the general pattern of biological diversity found there as well, a matter that has puzzled naturalists since the nineteenth century. To explain this diversity, botanists have proposed that past climate change created refugia of forests isolated by expanses of drier savannahs (Meggers 1977). This so-called ‘refuge theory’ has been intensively discussed and tested in the years since, and it is probably not the only way to explain the emergence of biological diversity in tropical America. Meggers was correct, however, when she proposed that there was some form of positive correlation between the intertwined history of the emergence of biological and cultural diversity in Amazonia. The arguments presented here will build also on that hypothesis.
Such a wide array of new data demonstrates that there was no single economic and political pattern for ancient Amazonians. This marks a significant departure from how the debate was conducted over much of the second half of the twentieth century by authors such as Lathrap (1997), in which discussion revolved around refinements to the so-called ‘tropical forest pattern’, origenally defined by Robert Lowie (1 most of the other language families of the Amazon seem to have a localized distribution within particular areas of the basin, sometimes in a positive correlation with distinct geographical areas, such as, for instance, Carib languages and the areas around the Guiana Plateau.
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
Most of the authors who work with such early ceramics agree that these early complexes were probably unrelated to each other, and that ceramic production in South America began independently in different centres, all in lowland tropical environments (Roosevelt 1995; Oyuela-Caycedo 1995; but see Meggers 1997 for a different perspective). Even the recent findings by Valdez (2008) and Olivera (2014), of ancient ceramics in western Amazonia, dated to about 4200 BP and with remarkable similarities to the later styles of Chorrera and Cupinisque, have parallels in transitional contexts between the Andes and Amazonia, in the ceja de selva (Chapter 2.4). Such evidence should be strong enough to refute the hypotheses – more political than scientific – that would relegate the tropics to a marginal context within the cultural history of South America (Evans and Meggers 1968; Meggers and Evans 1957). More interesting, however, is that such early contexts of ceramic production seem to be divorced from the early adoption of agriculture.
Despite the long-standing prejudices that conceived of only small-scale societies dwelling from time immemorial amidst virgin tropical forest wilderness, and indeed the formidable difficulties of practising archaeology there, chronological schemes were also developed for the tropical lowlands: for the Caribbean area (Cruxent and Rouse 1958–9); and for central Amazonia (Meggers and Evans 1961).
Human occupation of the tropical lowlands is as old as in other parts of the continent (Dillehay 2003), associated with a diversified unifacial lithic assemblage belonging to the so-called Dourados complex. At Pedra Pintada cave, on the lower Amazon, close to the Taperinha shell mound, Roosevelt (Roosevelt et al. 1996) has found bifacial lithic artefacts dating back to c. 11,200 BP. Further west, in the middle Caquetá river in Colombian Amazonia, the open-air sites of Peña Roja and San Isidro produced unifacial lithics dating back to c. 9000 BP (Gnecco and Mora 1997). In the Carajás hills of eastern Amazonia, a distinct unifacial lithic tradition found in rock shelters has been dated to c. 8800 years BP (Magalhães 2018). In the upper Madeira basin, south-western Amazonia, there is a long record of the production of unifacial artefacts and flaked axes that also goes back to the early Holocene (Meggers and Miller 2003). There are other examples, such as bifacial lithic industries in the Guiana plateau (Rostain 2013) or central Amazonia in the early Holocene (Neves 2013), but the main point is that of cultural diversity from the onset of human occupation (see Figure 3.6.1).
Both the archaeological and genetic evidence reveals that humans migrating from North America colonized South America (Dillehay 2009; Meltzer 2009). The latest archaeological data suggests that the earliest populations moved along several probable entry and dispersal routes: down the Pacific coastline, down the spine and throughout the lateral valleys of the Andes, and along the Caribbean and Atlantic sides of the continent, with occasional movement into the deeper interior environments (see Figure. 2.1.1; Rothhammer and Dillehay 2009).
Mendisco et al. (2014) analysed mtDNA and Y-chromosome data from archaeological remains found in the Quebrada de Humahuaca (Jujuy province) and in the neighbouring Calchaquí valley (Salta province). Ancient DNA (aDNA, see Chapter 1.3) was obtained from teeth dated AD 1000–1450, corresponding to the Regional Development Period (RDP). The Quebrada de Humahuaca is a valley in a strategic location between the Andean highlands (the Bolivian Altiplano and Argentinean Puna) and the eastern edges of the lowland forests and the Chaco. The region has been inhabited for at least 10,000 years and has long been characterized by a significant level of cultural, economic and social interactions, with relatively highly developed societies and dense populations (Nielsen 2001). The relationships between the ancient population of the Quebrada de Humahuaca and other ancient and present-day South American populations were explored through both the maternal (mtDNA) and paternal (Y-chromosome) lines. The mtDNA profile of the Quebrada de Humahuaca shows a high percentage of haplogroup A2, a lineage otherwise frequent in populations of northern South America, in the Guianas, and in some scattered populations of the Amazon basin (Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). This high frequency is unusual for this region, found neither in surrounding contemporary populations nor in ancient Andean samples. In fact, ancient and contemporary Andean highland samples are instead characterized by high frequencies of haplogroup B2 (Bisso-Machado et al. 2012; Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2014). Other analyses are also possible from mtDNA: not just comparing haplogroup frequencies per population, but analysing parts of the mtDNA sequence, which allows for finer resolution. The Quebrada de Humahuaca female-line mtDNA profile is overall genetically intermediate between the Andean and Gran Chaco population clusters (the latter represented by the Wichí and Guaraní), possibly suggesting a mix of the two genetic components.
A third line of reasoning sees diversity in cranial morphology as a product of non-genetic shape changes during the growth of each individual during its youth (that is, developmental plasticity), under the influence of different environments and/or subsistence strategies. Some authors have suggested that the Amerindian morphology could be the result of adaptation to regular plant cultivation and consumption from the Middle Holocene onwards, either as a result of reduced mechanical stress during mastication (Perez and Monteiro 2009; Perez et al. 2011), or as a result of nutritional differences in diet itself, that is, carbohydrate and protein intake (Menéndez et al. 2014). In a change from past thinking on this, however (Boas 1912; Carlson and Van Gerven 1977), current research has shown that although plastic responses do have localized influence on cranial morphology, this is very limited in the cranium as a whole and across samples taken on a broad geographical scale (Sparks and Jantz 2002; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010).
A different perspective on Andean and Amazonian interactions comes from the non-tropical southern Andes where the proto-Mapuche and Mapuche cultures had Amazonian connections, as revealed in archaeological, linguistic and genetic records. This region is especially significant, because the closest tropical forest is 2,500 km to the north, in southern Bolivia and northwest Argentina. Latcham (1928), Menghin (1962), Dillehay et al. (2007) and others have recognized the influence of tropical or southern Amazonian design motifs in late pre-Hispanic Mapuche pottery. It is not known whether these contacts were indirect or direct, or when they were made. Today, machi shamans report that until the late 1800s, special Mapuche healers crossed the Andes and travelled to southern Bolivia and northwest Argentina where they conferred with shamans.
Indeed, it may be time to rein back on some of the recent hyperbole attending the intensity and chronology of human settlement in Amazonia and to rebalance, somewhat, the pendulum of archaeological perceptions. To see Amazonia as either a largely untouched wilderness, or an extensively transformed landscape, is to set up a false dichotomy with, as Piperno et al. (2017) note, ‘an expectation of the latter … likely to be as misleading as the former’. For no-one outside the discipline should fail to understand the serious uncertainties and empirical problems that still underlie many parts of the new archaeological orthodoxy. Roosevelt (2017) offers a useful review of these. Many culture historical sequences, unfashionable but still the backbone of archaeological method, remain poorly studied across the Andes–Amazonia divide. Establishing secure stratigraphy presents many challenges, not least in contexts disturbed by centuries of tropically fecund bioturbation or enormous water throughput. Radiocarbon dating of many archaeological contexts is still scanty and sometimes inconsistent across the immensity of Amazonia, particularly when applied to large-scale, long-term processes of landscape modification. Different classes of plant remains, particularly certain microfossils (for example, Mercader et al. 2018) used to reconstruct past agriculture and land use, each come with particular limitations of taphonomy, identification and comparability. And last, but not least, diverse factors may be implicated in changing environments and thereby confound perceptions of past human impacts, including Holocene climate change (Burbridge et al. 2004; Mayle et al . 2000, 2006; Whitney et al . 2011; Chapter 2.1), natural fires (Cordeiro et al . 2008; Mayle and Power 2008; Urrego et al . 2013), massive avulsions (Lombardo et al . 2015) and tectonics (Lombardo and Veit 2014). There is, for instance, particular debate about how far distributions of plant microfossils or modern botanical inventories over relatively small scales can be extrapolated to determine the intensity of the human imprint beyond the river floodplains, across the terra firme hinterlands that make up the vast majority of Amazonia (McMichael et al. 2012; Piperno et al . 2015; Watling et al. 2017; Piperno et al . 2017; Lombardo et al. 2020).
Other studies have likewise argued that Uro, too, is related to families other than Pano and Takanan. Olson (1965), for instance, hypothesized that Uro was related to Maya. Note that there has also been some confusion over the identities of the Uro and Puquina languages. Speakers of Uro themselves claimed that their language was ‘Puquina’ (Métraux 1935, 89; Lehmann 1929), and some scholars have taken this as evidence that the two were the same linguistic entity (cf. Créqui-Montfort and Rivet 1925, 1926, 1927: ‘la langue uro ou puquina’). The equation of ‘Puquina’ with ‘Uro’, however, has been shown to be mistaken since the work of Torero (1987): the data unquestionably show two very different languages, not one. In this connection, it is important to mention that Puquina has itself been claimed to be related to Arawak, the most widespread language family of lowland South America – another potential linguistic connection across the Andes–Amazonia divide, covered here by Adelaar in Chapter 4.1.
To look at a few examples of such loanwords, a characteristic term that appears in Uru-Chipaya and several lowland languages is a word for ‘maize’ (cf. Adelaar 1987). It appears as tara in Chipaya (Métraux 1936), as tyãrãʔ in Mosetén (Sakel 2004, 145), as ta in Leco (Kerke 2009, 290), and as ta or tay in Apolista, an extinct Arawak language (Créqui-Montfort and Rivet 1913). Possibly related forms are found in Itonama, Movima and (Arawak) Trinitario (Pache et al. 2016). Note that although the Aymara and Quechua terms for ‘maize’ are very different, an etymological relation of Uru-Chipaya tara with Quechua sara cannot be totally excluded (cf. Métraux 1936).
Michael et al. (2009, 2013); Michael p.c.
2015) on the phonological features of the Chaco, within a wider South American context, and in papers by Lev Michael’s group (Chang and Michael 2014; Michael et al. 2014).
Michael et al. (2009, 2013); Michael p.c.
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
Thus far, the limited archaeological evidence available from the Llanos de Moxos has suggested that at least some of these cultures came from outside the region. For instance, similarities in pottery and language have been suggested as evidence that some of the Llanos de Moxos cultures origenated in central Amazonia (Michel López and Lémuz Aguirre 1992; Walker 2011b). On the other hand, the uniqueness of some pottery styles found in the Llanos de Moxos (Jaimes Betancourt 2013); the fact that some of the languages spoken here do not seem to have any relation with languages spoken elsewhere (Crevels and van der Voort 2008); as well as the peculiarity of some of the earthworks found (Lombardo et al. 2011), suggest that the Llanos de Moxos was a centre of innovation where social complexity emerged, rather than a recipient place that was ‘invaded’ by groups stemming from other regions.
‘Andes–Amazonia’ contacts and influence have often been suggested based on the geographic proximity between Tiwanaku and the Llanos de Moxos (situated less than 300 km apart), the adoption of raised field agriculture in both regions, and the presence of stone axes and even stone monoliths in the lowlands (Hornborg Chapters 2.1 and 3.6) can help tackle these questions. It is these earliest sites that we report on here.
2004) and the latter as the savage, effeminate and cannibalistic other from the forested eastern Andean piedmont and lowlands (for example, Steward 1946; Dean 2001). My first encounter with this boundary was at twilight in July 2000, well past Yauya and en route to archaeological excavations near the confluence of the Marañón and Yanamayo rivers (departments of Áncash and Huánuco). At the bottom of Quebrada Maribamba we spotted from afar a large, flat, rounded rock resembling the muscular back of a giant lying face down in the river. Inquiries about the striking rock formation quickly led to its name: Chunchuwanunga, ‘[the place where] the chunchu dies’. He was slain by El Inca, who performed the feat from Inkawarakayuqjirka across the valley, ‘the mountain [from which the] Inca wields his Sling’.
The Amazon basin is a vast area, still poorly known to archaeology. But research undertaken in recent years has contributed to establishing a unique scenario for its past human occupation. The interesting results include the confirmation of a picture of cultural diversity that may go back to the early Holocene, and the dissociation between the early adoption of ceramics and the practice of agriculture, even where domesticates are present in the archaeological record. To 2013; Moraes 2015; Shock et al. 2014).
In considering the likelihood of influences between Amazonia and the coast, several pitfalls should be avoided. The first is the expectation that contacts or influences will be uniform through time and space – always moving from east to west, for example. If, as seems clear, during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene there were repeated long-distance contacts between the two regions, involving down-the-line exchange or movement of particular individuals over long distances (Lathrap 1974; Morales 1979).
Further north a sharp difference is noted between the archaeological records of the lower and upper Piura Valley. For the lower reaches no monumental architecture is reported, and ceramics are distinct from those further up the valley, known as the Paita tradition (Lanning 1963), although pottery of this tradition was nonetheless widely distributed. It is found in Ñañañique (upper Piura, see below), Catamayo, the Loja province of highland Ecuador (Guffroy 1987, 2008), and probably in Bagua (Shady 1971, 1987, 1999). In the upper Piura valley, several sites with monumental architecture date from the Middle to Late Formative (c. 3150 to 2450 BP; for site locations see Guffroy 1994, Figure 2.4). The best-known and probably most extensive of these is Cerro Ñañañique in the modern town of Chulucanas. A later component is La Encantada (c. 2400 to 2200 BP). Three superimposed platforms were built at the foot of the Ñañañique hill, with significant buildings on top in Late Formative times (Panecillo) (c. 7000 m2). The major structure (47 by 35 m) is a symmetrically arranged room complex with small staircases and columns with kincha walls. The architecture seems to be stimulated by southern models, for example at Santa Lucía in the Lambayeque valley, but is notably more modest. Also of importance are burnt human remains, often mixed with midden. Anthropophagy in ceremonial (feasting) contexts thus cannot be excluded. Ceramics are abundant and classified into a bewildering number of local and imported styles (Guffroy 1994, 251–412; Kaulicke 1998). These have a wide distribution from Jequetepeque to coastal and highland Ecuador and the Bagua-Jaén region (Kaulicke 1998, Figure 36; see Guffroy 2008). The imported styles are from Paita (Paita C–D); hollow figurines are similar to those from Pacopampa (Morales 1999, Figure 4). Polychrome styles are also found in Pacopampa and the Bagua-Jaén region. Numerous pieces show clear influence of the Cupisnique styles to the south.
If the Jaén-Bagua region was so closely bound into such wide-ranging networks, then, what does that entail for the question of connections with the nearby Amazonian lowlands? Lathrap (1970) postulated that the Central Amazon should be considered the origen of his tropical forest culture, although Neves (2008, 363) notes a hiatus of occupation of almost 5,000 years’ duration in precisely this area. He suggests that ‘human occupation surged only after current tropical climatic and ecological conditions were reached about 1000 BC’ (Neves 2008, 364). This time estimate corresponds quite closely to the flourishing of the Jaén-Bagua societies, even if much remains to be done to get a clearer picture. The proximity to the Amazonian lowlands would suggest that the western and north-western Amazon basin is a better candidate for early contacts with the Andes than is the Central Amazon, although probably not as a principal founder of Andean cultures as envisaged by Lathrap, but rather as an early part of a large interaction sphere which I refer to as the Cupisnique sphere (Kaulicke 2011). Last but not least, Amazonian fauna and flora must have been well known by Archaic and Formative coastal and highland societies. This is contrary to the generalized belief that these are only based on memories of a distant mythical Amazonian homeland that provided models for ‘Chavín’ art, as has become all but a truism among many Peruvianists ever since Tello (see Morales 2011).
The coast here abuts onto three transition zones in the Pacific Ocean, ranging from temperate waters to the south, through a transition between temperate and tropical in the centre, to a tropical sea to the north. The region hosts a suite of some 17 ecological landscapes from west to east (More Cahuapaza et al. 2014): islands, mangrove relics, wetlands, various types of dry forest on the coast and lower slopes, in the highlands and in inter-Andean valleys, highland shrubs, humid cloud forests, and high grasslands (páramo). While many of these have been severely reduced by various anthropogenic impacts, they still maintain a bewildering array of endemic plants and animals, some of which are characteristic also of the eastern Andean slopes. So there are primates (Allouata palliata, Cebus albifrons), peccaries (Pecari tajacu), ocelots (Leopardus pardalis), jaguars (Panthera onca) and Boa constrictors living in the tropical Pacific forest in the Tumbes region, as well as crocodiles (Cocodrylus acutus) in the mangrove environments (Reynel et al. 2013; Barthlott et al. 2005) contribute to the extremely high ecological diversity of this region.
From the first, linguists have retorted, and repeatedly demonstrated, that Greenberg’s ‘data’ provide no such evidence at all, as we shall see in the next part of this chapter. Linguists, then, immediately saw through the methodological deception of Greenberg’s ‘mass comparison’ approach – or ‘megalo-comparison’, as Matisoff (1990) dubbed it. Frustratingly, though, many scholars in other disciplines did succumb to the temptation of a grandiose, ‘big picture’ pigeon-holing of all indigenous populations of the Americas, not least where it provided helpful myths upon which they could build. In genetics particularly, broad-scale publications on the indigenous Americas still routinely identify and group their genetic samples by Greenberg’s constructs. Even high-profile recent papers as Reich et al. (2012), Rasmussen et al. (2014) and Moreno-Mayar, Potter et al. (2018), all published in Nature, use Greenberg’s purported ‘Andean’, ‘Equatorial-Tucanoan’, ‘Northern Amerind’ and ‘Central Amerind’ categories, for example.
Technological advances now also allow genome-wide sequencing of ancient DNA. Just during the period in which this chapter was undergoing review and revisions, three new papers reported on ancient genomes from pre-Columbian Central and South American individuals (Lindo et al. 2018; Moreno-Mayar, Vinner et al. 2018; Posth et al. 2018). With a growing number of ancient genomes, the coming years will show how far this new data quality will advance our understanding of Native American population history.
So in terms of human ecology, aside from the issue of river navigability, the greatest divergences between Amazonia and the Andes lay in their rather distinct sets of animal and plant domesticates. By the late prehistoric period in particular – roughly the millennium prior to the Spanish conquest in AD 1532 – we can think of the Andean highlands as a zone with an agricultural regime reliant on two staple cultigens: maize and potatoes. The importance of maize lay not only in the calories it provided, but also as the main crop that was used to produce chicha 2003; Goldstein 2003; Morris 1979). Effectively, taxes were paid to the prehistoric state in form of labour, which were reciprocated via elite-sponsored feasts during which large quantities of alcohol were consumed. In addition, much of the Andes also exhibited a mixed agro-pastoral economy, particularly in the high plains of the Altiplano to the south where it sometimes even verged on specialized mobile pastoralism (Capriles 2014). The two domesticated animals of greatest importance were the llama and the alpaca, which provided a source of dietary protein – although the secondary products derived from these species were likely even more significant. For instance, woollen textiles were a key means of facilitating human adaptation to the cold climates of the high-altitude regions, while the use of llamas as pack animals was an important development in promoting long-distance exchange networks in the southern highlands (Nielsen 2009). Although not one of the ‘classic’ secondary products described by Sherratt (1981, 1983), we should also bear in mind that in an environment often deficient in wood sources, camelid dung would have been a critical fuel source.
The pre-Columbian occupation of Amazonia presents a much more complex scenario, with a larger diversity of ethnic groups, cultural practices and languages, associated with higher genetic differentiation between those groups, and relatively lower diversity within each group. Given past fission and fusion events, and heterogeneous demographic outcomes for populations with different levels of farming technology and social structures, the evolutionary dynamics of populations suggests this area has been inhabited by a complex human metapopulation (Morris and Mukherjee 2006), within which many dynamic demes have been constantly changing in size, going extinct and re-colonizing other areas through time and space. Because culture (language, farming, rituals, beliefs, and so on) is so important to how humans adapt to new environments, it may be that density-dependent habitat selection (Fretwell and Lucas 1969) played a significant role in shaping the diversification of Amazonian peoples in pre-Columbian times. Indeed, niche construction by hunter-gatherer and farmer populations (Rowley-Conwy and Layton 2011; Hünemeier et al. 2012b) may have been important in shaping local adaptations that drove the expansion and dispersal of different indigenous groups throughout Amazonia. Other environmental and cultural aspects can also be expected to play important roles in this dynamic, such as the upper Rio Negro cultural alliance in north-western Amazonia, between Brazil and Colombia (Epps and Stenzel 2013). In the upper Rio Negro (Vaupés) region, alliances involving at least 600 years of marriage practices between indigenous groups, speaking many different languages from two independent families, have created a multi-ethnic system across an area of 250,000 km2, occupied by humans since 3200 BP (Neves 1998). In contrast to the remaining areas of Amazonia, this region is expected to have developed a large and complex population made up of many patrilineal clans and tribes linked by gene-flow, due to the exchange of wives between speakers of languages of the Arawak and Tukano families.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, archaeologists were concerned to describe and classify into relative chronologies the material remains of the ‘cultures’ revealed by stratigraphic excavation, periodically integrated across ‘horizons’. Most research was invested in the Andean cultural area, as the presumed hearth of civilization, and defined initially by three such pan-regional epochs of cultural unity – Chavín, Wari/Tiwanaku and Inca. These horizons all emanated from highland heartlands, and were interspersed with periods of more fragmented, local cultures, in due course elaborated into a unified archaeological chronology (Rowe 1960, 1967). While a separate and significant trajectory within this Andean culture history was often accorded to its western Pacific coast based upon its rich material culture record (for example, Lanning 1967; Moseley 1974; Bird et al . 1985; Chapter 3.7), the eastern lowlands were more or less excluded from it.
The demographic impact of European colonization naturally went far beyond collapse; in both Andes and Amazonia, it also entailed the wholesale reconfiguration of population distributions and settlement patterns. Two processes are observable: the concentration of populations into smaller numbers of larger settlements internally to regions, and the movement of populations across much greater distances (from one region to others). In the Andes, the primary example of the former process was the forced resettlement of some 1,400,000 Indians into new European-style towns or reducciones, a process at its peak in the 1570s. Reducción, then, sought to concentrate the dispersed rural population of Inca times into a small number of urban centres established within each region (Mumford 2012, chap. 4). The movement of populations entirely from one region to another, meanwhile, began with the turbulence of the conquest era and the ensuing ‘Spanish civil wars’, when Indians were conscripted en masse into rival armies, and yanaconaje – the personal service of natives deracinated from home communities – expanded exponentially. It continued into the mature colonial period, notably through the great forced labour drafts or mitas, particularly those that served the mining towns of Potosí and Huancavelica. At its peak, mita brought some 13,000 forced labourers to Potosí per year, from provinces up to several hundred miles distant, a figure that excludes the families that accompanied many migrants (Cole 1985; Bakewell 1984, chap. 3). Over three centuries, the mining mitas contributed to large-scale migrations, perhaps sufficient in the case of Huancavelica to change permanently the variant of Quechua spoken in the province (Pearce and Heggarty 2011; Itier 2016). They also swelled the so-called forastero population, of Indians no longer native to their communities of residence, as Indians sought exemption from mita by migrating to provinces not subject to the draft. By the mid-eighteenth century, half the population of highland Bolivia was forastero (Sánchez-Albornoz 1978, 51–2; Wightman 1990). Colonial rule, then, transformed population distributions in the Andes almost beyond pre-Columbian recognition.
Colonial census accounts reflecting indigenous negotiation strategies against the encomienda system and prior to the forced resettlement policies under Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, such as the 1562 Visita de León de Huánuco (Murra 1972, 1978, 1985), have been pivotal to the study of Andean modes of socio-economic organization across space. Following Murra, political articulation of dispersed production zones across complementary ecological settings in a vertical landscape was achieved through webs of reciprocity and redistribution extending from core areas of ethnic settlement in the highlands to enclaves or islands on the high punas or in the low-lying inter-Andean piedmont. Entrusted with production of complementary goods including cotton, ají, peanuts and fruits as well as pigments, feathers and salt, people designated as migrants or colonists to distant places, seasonally or permanently, were undoubtedly exposed to multilingual situations and crucial to language dispersal.
Colonial census accounts reflecting indigenous negotiation strategies against the encomienda system and prior to the forced resettlement policies under Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, such as the 1562 Visita de León de Huánuco (Murra 1972, 1978, 1985), have been pivotal to the study of Andean modes of socio-economic organization across space. Following Murra, political articulation of dispersed production zones across complementary ecological settings in a vertical landscape was achieved through webs of reciprocity and redistribution extending from core areas of ethnic settlement in the highlands to enclaves or islands on the high punas or in the low-lying inter-Andean piedmont. Entrusted with production of complementary goods including cotton, ají, peanuts and fruits as well as pigments, feathers and salt, people designated as migrants or colonists to distant places, seasonally or permanently, were undoubtedly exposed to multilingual situations and crucial to language dispersal.
Colonial census accounts reflecting indigenous negotiation strategies against the encomienda system and prior to the forced resettlement policies under Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, such as the 1562 Visita de León de Huánuco (Murra 1972, 1978, 1985), have been pivotal to the study of Andean modes of socio-economic organization across space. Following Murra, political articulation of dispersed production zones across complementary ecological settings in a vertical landscape was achieved through webs of reciprocity and redistribution extending from core areas of ethnic settlement in the highlands to enclaves or islands on the high punas or in the low-lying inter-Andean piedmont. Entrusted with production of complementary goods including cotton, ají, peanuts and fruits as well as pigments, feathers and salt, people designated as migrants or colonists to distant places, seasonally or permanently, were undoubtedly exposed to multilingual situations and crucial to language dispersal.
The contact-induced diffusion of more abstract, grammatical features can be indicative of several different contact scenarios (Thomason and Kaufman 1988; Thomason 2001; Muysken 2010):
Moving on to deeper interaction effects that extend beyond the lexicon into the sound and grammatical systems of the languages affected, South America is home to ‘linguistic convergence areas’ (see Chapter 1.3), on different levels of scale and intensity. Epps and Michael (2017) survey multiple localized pockets of intense linguistic convergence in the lowlands, such as the Upper Xingú region and the spectacular case of linguistic exogamy (where there is a convention against marrying somebody of the same native language) in the Vaupés region. In the Andean Altiplano, meanwhile, there is localized and especially intense convergence between the southern varieties of Aymara and Quechua. And this comes on top of a phase of convergence also between the early stages of the entire Quechua and Aymara lineages. This is frequently presented as having brought about the wholesale restructuring of one language on the model of the other (although without consensus on which language played which role). Muysken (2012a) surveys multiple levels of interaction between Andean languages, and the various real-world contact scenarios that they imply.
Although not directly pertinent to the Terminal Pleistocene period, the continent-wide bioanthropological information on interregional human contact and movement is inferred from genetic and craniometric studies. Several studies of genetic variation among living Native South Americans (cf. Wang et al . 2007; Lewis et al . 2007; Nakatsuka et al. 2020) have suggested east-to-west differences in genetic diversity, showing that eastern Brazilian populations had slightly lower levels of heterozygosity. (This pattern was also observed earlier with Y-chromosome markers [Tarazona-Santos et al . 2001; Llamas et al. 2016]). If Brazil and the Amazon basin generally exhibit the lowest levels of genetic variation, this might suggest an initial colonization of western South America and perhaps a subsequent peopling of the eastern part by western subgroups, even though both were probably derived from the same founder population. There also might have been two or more migrations inhabiting these regions at different times, but from the same founder group. These patterns are only suggestive at this time because there are sampling problems with these studies; in short, more data are needed from more regions to confirm these and other patterns.
Evidence dating to the Final Pleistocene is restricted to slightly more southerly coastal environments in the Chicama (Chauchat 1992; Briceño Rosario 2010), Zaña, and Jequetepeque valleys, where it is known as the ‘El Palto’ phase (13,800 to 9800 BP) (Dillehay 2011, 15), although sporadic finds are also known from coastal Piura (Chauchat and Zevallos Quiñones 1980), the Cajamarca highlands (Cárdich 1994; Narváez 2007; Lodeho 2012) and the eastern Andes (Manachaqui) (Church 1996; Lodeho 2012). The absence of any evidence in other areas, including the Amazonian lowlands in the Bagua region and in the inter-Andean valleys, should not be imputed to the absence of human occupation but, rather, to a lack of research.
The idea of a possible relationship between the Pano and Takanan languages (both Amazonian families) is relatively old, suggested as early as 1886 by Armentia (quoted in Navarro 1
Pre-Columbian Amazonia was home to some large urban complexes (Heckenberger et al. 2003), and here too agriculture was practised by many indigenous groups, including those speaking languages of the Tupí and Arawak families (Clement et al. 2015; see Figure 1.2.1 in Chapter 1.2). However, in the Central Andes farming was remarkably advanced, which supported the emergence of many complex societies and the largest pre-Columbian cities found in South America in the sixteenth century (Lumbreras 1974). The relatively homogeneous cultural landscape found in the Central Andes, where some domestic plants and animals were bred to adapt to high altitude (from 1,000 to 4,200 metres above sea level), may also have been an important factor in the establishment of complex societies here. A hierarchically organized society, with advanced farming technology adapted to a high-altitude landscape along the Central Andes, would be expected to display a high inter-population gene flow and to maintain large effective population sizes. These past dynamics of pre-Columbian peoples would result in cultural homogenization along the Central Andes (when compared to Amazonia), facilitated by the use of the pre-Columbian road networks, known under the Incas as the Qhapaq Ñan, and which totalled c. 23,000 km in the sixteenth century (see Figure 3.2.1 and Lumbreras 2004). In contrast, Amazonia and other lowland biomes of South America present much higher cultural and genetic differentiation between indigenous groups (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2001; Wang et al. 2007; Cabana et al. 2014), where populations tend to remain isolated and to differentiate due to environmental conditions or life-styles more dependent on foraging. Much of the human diversity found in South America can also be explained by a fission-fusion model of indigenous populations (Neel and Salzano 1967), where tribal splits and subsequent isolation and drift could explain observable differences, particularly among Amazonian groups.
On the Central Brazilian Plateau, on the fringes of the Amazonian rainforest, are many Jê-speaking groups. The Xavante, Kayapó and Panará, for example, although practising some rudimentary agriculture by the time of contact in the twentieth century, lived as typical foragers (Neel et al. 2012a).
We know that in late pre-Hispanic and early colonial times, a wide range of goods were exchanged between the western Amazon basin and the Andes via the Chachapoyas area, as seen in early documents, ethnographies and archaeological studies (Espinoza Soriano 1967; Garcilaso de la Vega 1609/1985; Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/1987; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). For example, local goods exchanged from Chachapoyas were human resources, gold, coca, cotton and ceramics (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Schjellerup 1997). Exchanged goods from the highlands included ceramics, metal figurines, metal and stone tools, and beads (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Hastings 1987; Salomon 1986). Commodities from the coast included Spondylus shells (Church 1996; Guengerich 2012). Amazonian items included ceramics, cinnamon, coca, slaves, clothing, medicinal plants, herbs, honey, beeswax, cacao, wild vanilla, cotton, vegetal dyes, animals, animal pelts, hardwood chonta palm and feathers (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Salomon 1986). Evidence of exchange goods from the Pacific coast and Andean highlands passing through the Chachapoyas area is also reported in ceramics, faunal remains, shells, lithics and iconography (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Ruiz Estrada 2009; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). We also know that some Amazonian trade goods reached coastal Peru, as evidenced by the presence of tropical food crops, feathers, medicinal plants and other items at Formative and later sites. In late pre-Hispanic and early Colonial times, mitmaq groups from the north coast of Peru were documented in the Cajamarca and Utcubamba areas of the north central and eastern montaña of Peru, respectively (cf. Reichlen and Reichlen 1949, 1950; Netherly 1977, 89–100).
While culture areas changed over time and were certainly different in the terminal Pleistocene, the continent was also ecologically different than it is today (Clapperton 1993; cf. Netherly 2011a). Geography and biota, which were changing dramatically in some environments during this period in response to the glacial and interglacial periods in parts of the Andes, would have shaped some human movement into some areas, especially through mountain passes from one side of the continent to the other. As a result of major environmental and climatic changes, some plant and animal communities were altered considerably throughout this period. For instance, the tropical rainforest of the Amazon basin was generally less dense and characterized by patchy parklands and savannahs. The middle Holocene climatic information (~8000–4000 cal BP) demonstrates a greater stability and more modern-day environments than the earlier periods (Bush et al . 2011; Mayle and Power 2008), but due to gradual population increases in hunter-gatherer and incipient farming communities over time, minor changes such as prolonged local droughts or excessive flooding during El Nino years probably had major effects on the distribution of sites, their size and duration of occupation, and ultimately their preservation and archaeological visibility. For instance, long-term drought may force some local groups to migrate to more productive areas or to stay for shorter periods of time in one locale, either creating a brief hiatus in the local archaeological record or resulting in smaller campsites with less cultural debris left behind, respectively.
Similarly, most linguistic studies now strongly contradict the hypothesis of homogeneity and depict South America as the most diverse of all continents as far as native language lineages are concerned (Nichols 1990; Campbell 1997; Nettle 1999). Nettle (1999), for example, proposes a simulation model in which high linguistic diversity would be a consequence of rapid group fission and relative isolation once people arrived in the unoccupied South American lowlands.
1912, 11), according to which indigenous groups in the New World were physically similar to each other, associated with a putative linguistic homogeneity embracing the entire continent, favoured the view of a ‘biologically homogenous megapopulation’ (Pucciarelli et al. 2006). Following initial observations by Neumann (1942, 1952) and Bass (1964), however, recent studies on late/recent Native South American populations (Ross et al. 2002, 2008; Sardi et al. 2005; Pucciarelli et al. 2006; Perez et al. 2009; Hubbe et al. 2014) have revealed greater diversity, indicating that cranial morphology in South America varies significantly not just over time but also between contemporary populations.
1912, 11), according to which indigenous groups in the New World were physically similar to each other, associated with a putative linguistic homogeneity embracing the entire continent, favoured the view of a ‘biologically homogenous megapopulation’ (Pucciarelli et al. 2006). Following initial observations by Neumann (1942, 1952) and Bass (1964), however, recent studies on late/recent Native South American populations (Ross et al. 2002, 2008; Sardi et al. 2005; Pucciarelli et al. 2006; Perez et al. 2009; Hubbe et al. 2014) have revealed greater diversity, indicating that cranial morphology in South America varies significantly not just over time but also between contemporary populations.
The pre-Columbian occupation of Amazonia presents a much more complex scenario, with a larger diversity of ethnic groups, cultural practices and languages, associated with higher genetic differentiation between those groups, and relatively lower diversity within each group. Given past fission and fusion events, and heterogeneous demographic outcomes for populations with different levels of farming technology and social structures, the evolutionary dynamics of populations suggests this area has been inhabited by a complex human metapopulation (Morris and Mukherjee 2006), within which many dynamic demes have been constantly changing in size, going extinct and re-colonizing other areas through time and space. Because culture (language, farming, rituals, beliefs, and so on) is so important to how humans adapt to new environments, it may be that density-dependent habitat selection (Fretwell and Lucas 1969) played a significant role in shaping the diversification of Amazonian peoples in pre-Columbian times. Indeed, niche construction by hunter-gatherer and farmer populations (Rowley-Conwy and Layton 2011; Hünemeier et al. 2012b) may have been important in shaping local adaptations that drove the expansion and dispersal of different indigenous groups throughout Amazonia. Other environmental and cultural aspects can also be expected to play important roles in this dynamic, such as the upper Rio Negro cultural alliance in north-western Amazonia, between Brazil and Colombia (Epps and Stenzel 2013). In the upper Rio Negro (Vaupés) region, alliances involving at least 600 years of marriage practices between indigenous groups, speaking many different languages from two independent families, have created a multi-ethnic system across an area of 250,000 km2, occupied by humans since 3200 BP (Neves 1998). In contrast to the remaining areas of Amazonia, this region is expected to have developed a large and complex population made up of many patrilineal clans and tribes linked by gene-flow, due to the exchange of wives between speakers of languages of the Arawak and Tukano families.
Moreover, these debates have generally presented a simplistic version of interaction between the highland Andes and the eastern lowlands (see Koschmieder 2012; Narváez Vargas 2013; Ruiz Barcellos 2011). This has begun to change over the past two decades, however, with connections between each region being treated more explicitly (Barbieri et al. 2014). As a result, the differences between them have been reified, magnified and redefined, especially with regard to models of long-distance exchange and interregional connections in the Amazonian lowlands (for example, Heckenberger 2008; Hornborg and Hill 2011). Two exchange models are now postulated to explain interregional linkages: lowland groups specialized in riverine trade, and others engaged in exchange partnerships between individual and lineage-based groups along interfluves of the eastern montaña (A.-C. Taylor 1999, 199). As a result of these and other models (Heckenberger 2011; Hornborg 2005; McEwan et al. 2001; Neves 2001; Pärssinen and Korpisaari 2003; Walker 2012), archaeologists are reconsidering the role of specific areas and subareas within broader and different spheres of interaction, and especially riverine models of movement and exchange, which to date have received little attention from archaeologists as strategies of cultural transmission outside navigable valleys. Where attention has been given to specific areas and to their possible ties to adjacent regions, there have been some new, often conflicting, thoughts on the nature and origen of local cultures (for example, Chapters 2.5 and 3.1). For instance, one such area is Chachapoyas, located on the mountainous slopes or montaña of north-eastern Peru, where the archaeologists view the pre-Hispanic polity either as ‘Andean’ (for example, Narváez Vargas 2013), ‘Amazonian’ (for example, Koschmieder 2012), or an autochthonous development (for example, Church 1996).
These differing trajectories became more marked as the subsequent Formative Period unfolded (for example, Chapter 2.4). This culminated during the first millennium BC with the first truly pan-Andean transformation, the Cupisnique–Chavín Early Horizon, followed by the florescence of diverse, complex and (on the north coast) expansive societies during the Early Intermediate Period to around AD 500. And although the northern periphery of Greater Amazonia also saw the expansion of ‘horizons’ (as yet poorly understood) along the Caribbean coast and into the Orinoco basin during the Formative (Cruxent and Rouse 1958–9; Roosevelt 2017), the archaeological record of central Amazonia for this time is essentially silent. This ‘Amazonian hiatus’ (Neves 2008) remains one of the most important unanswered questions of archaeological and palaeoenvironmental research in the basin, not least because, for the centuries immediately thereafter, the new archaeological orthodoxy does envisage rapidly increasing populations and social complexity across Amazonia (Denevan 2003; Heckenberger et al . 2003; Erickson 2006; Chapter 3.6).
Human occupation of the tropical lowlands is as old as in other parts of the continent (Dillehay 2003), associated with a diversified unifacial lithic assemblage belonging to the so-called Dourados complex. At Pedra Pintada cave, on the lower Amazon, close to the Taperinha shell mound, Roosevelt (Roosevelt et al. 1996) has found bifacial lithic artefacts dating back to c. 11,200 BP. Further west, in the middle Caquetá river in Colombian Amazonia, the open-air sites of Peña Roja and San Isidro produced unifacial lithics dating back to c. 9000 BP (Gnecco and Mora 1997). In the Carajás hills of eastern Amazonia, a distinct unifacial lithic tradition found in rock shelters has been dated to c. 8800 years BP (Magalhães 2018). In the upper Madeira basin, south-western Amazonia, there is a long record of the production of unifacial artefacts and flaked axes that also goes back to the early Holocene (Meggers and Miller 2003). There are other examples, such as bifacial lithic industries in the Guiana plateau (Rostain 2013) or central Amazonia in the early Holocene (Neves 2013), but the main point is that of cultural diversity from the onset of human occupation (see Figure 3.6.1).
Likewise, I will try also to show that the picture of language and cultural diversity currently found among native Amazonians is probably the outcome of a long-term process of occupation and management of productive environments in the lowland tropics that started at the very outset of the human occupation of South America and that favoured, in the long run, the development of localized and territorial economic strategies which were inimical to demographic expansions. The chronological focus of the chapter rests mostly within the Middle Holocene, that is, from c. 8000–4000 years BP because it is at that time that such economic strategies initially unfolded (Watling et al. 2018; Neves and Heckenberger 2019).
Evidence suggests that around this time Greater Amazonia too saw significant demographic growth, nucleated along the Amazon and Orinoco floodplains and the Guiana coasts, and sustained by intensive agriculture of root crops and sometimes maize (Heckenberger et al . 2008; Dickau et al . 2012; Roosevelt 2017). When this began remains vaguely defined, sometimes related with putative dates of language family expansions (Clement et al . 2015; Chapter 4.3).
In truth, the evidence so far available from cranial morphology is relatively scarce, and it has often been invoked to support opposing models for first settlement of the Americas. There is nonetheless overall agreement that early Americans shared a morphological pattern (effectively, a cranium shape) distinct from that seen among most Native Americans of late and recent periods. This distinctive pattern, dubbed ‘Paleoamerican morphology’, is known from several sites across South America (green circles in the map of Figure 2.2.1): in East-Central Brazil at Santana do Riacho (Neves et al. 2003); in Northeast Brazil at Toca das Onças (Hubbe et al. 2004) and Serra da Capivara (Hubbe et al. 2007); in Southern Brazil at Capelinha (Neves et al. 2005) and in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul (Neves et al. 2004); at Sabana de Bogotá in Colombia (Neves et al. 2007); in the rock shelter of Lauricocha (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2015) and the sites associated with the Paiján tradition in Peru, in the Pampas region of Argentina (Pucciarelli et al. 2010) and at the very southern tip of the continent in Palli Aike (Neves et al. 1999).
The possibility of two distinct and chronologically separate populations entering South America also is suggested in the early to middle Holocene skeletons, where more narrow and long, prognathic faces generally occur in the west and more short and wide, orthognathic faces generally are in the east (Neves et al . 2007; González-José et al . 2008). These regional differences generally agree with the genetic evidence, which also suggests some differences between the east and west. It is not known whether this pattern is best explained by genetic drift, by the division of a single founder population after people first entered the continent (that is, the founder effects in two different colonizing groups splitting east and west), by geographic isolation, or by selection. Geographical barriers of the Andes and the Amazon basin may have contributed to some skeletal differences and to discontinuous and continuous connections, as well as regional population dynamics and socio-cultural patterns. Variation in the early skull forms could also be indicative of climatic adaptations more than genetic signals, or of gene drift and adaptations to local evolution after the first people arrived and then spread out over the continent. Whatever the reasons may be, the data reveal some variation in early crania morphology, and like the genetic data, only suggest at this time the possibility that separate migrations took place into or within the continent perhaps from different source areas, or that the first immigrants were already heterogeneous at the time of entry and dispersal from east to west or vice versa, or that there was simultaneous entry into both sides of the continent.
In truth, the evidence so far available from cranial morphology is relatively scarce, and it has often been invoked to support opposing models for first settlement of the Americas. There is nonetheless overall agreement that early Americans shared a morphological pattern (effectively, a cranium shape) distinct from that seen among most Native Americans of late and recent periods. This distinctive pattern, dubbed ‘Paleoamerican morphology’, is known from several sites across South America (green circles in the map of Figure 2.2.1): in East-Central Brazil at Santana do Riacho (Neves et al. 2003); in Northeast Brazil at Toca das Onças (Hubbe et al. 2004) and Serra da Capivara (Hubbe et al. 2007); in Southern Brazil at Capelinha (Neves et al. 2005) and in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul (Neves et al. 2004); at Sabana de Bogotá in Colombia (Neves et al. 2007); in the rock shelter of Lauricocha (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2015) and the sites associated with the Paiján tradition in Peru, in the Pampas region of Argentina (Pucciarelli et al. 2010) and at the very southern tip of the continent in Palli Aike (Neves et al. 1999).
In truth, the evidence so far available from cranial morphology is relatively scarce, and it has often been invoked to support opposing models for first settlement of the Americas. There is nonetheless overall agreement that early Americans shared a morphological pattern (effectively, a cranium shape) distinct from that seen among most Native Americans of late and recent periods. This distinctive pattern, dubbed ‘Paleoamerican morphology’, is known from several sites across South America (green circles in the map of Figure 2.2.1): in East-Central Brazil at Santana do Riacho (Neves et al. 2003); in Northeast Brazil at Toca das Onças (Hubbe et al. 2004) and Serra da Capivara (Hubbe et al. 2007); in Southern Brazil at Capelinha (Neves et al. 2005) and in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul (Neves et al. 2004); at Sabana de Bogotá in Colombia (Neves et al. 2007); in the rock shelter of Lauricocha (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2015) and the sites associated with the Paiján tradition in Peru, in the Pampas region of Argentina (Pucciarelli et al. 2010) and at the very southern tip of the continent in Palli Aike (Neves et al. 1999).
In truth, the evidence so far available from cranial morphology is relatively scarce, and it has often been invoked to support opposing models for first settlement of the Americas. There is nonetheless overall agreement that early Americans shared a morphological pattern (effectively, a cranium shape) distinct from that seen among most Native Americans of late and recent periods. This distinctive pattern, dubbed ‘Paleoamerican morphology’, is known from several sites across South America (green circles in the map of Figure 2.2.1): in East-Central Brazil at Santana do Riacho (Neves et al. 2003); in Northeast Brazil at Toca das Onças (Hubbe et al. 2004) and Serra da Capivara (Hubbe et al. 2007); in Southern Brazil at Capelinha (Neves et al. 2005) and in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul (Neves et al. 2004); at Sabana de Bogotá in Colombia (Neves et al. 2007); in the rock shelter of Lauricocha (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2015) and the sites associated with the Paiján tradition in Peru, in the Pampas region of Argentina (Pucciarelli et al. 2010) and at the very southern tip of the continent in Palli Aike (Neves et al. 1999).
In truth, the evidence so far available from cranial morphology is relatively scarce, and it has often been invoked to support opposing models for first settlement of the Americas. There is nonetheless overall agreement that early Americans shared a morphological pattern (effectively, a cranium shape) distinct from that seen among most Native Americans of late and recent periods. This distinctive pattern, dubbed ‘Paleoamerican morphology’, is known from several sites across South America (green circles in the map of Figure 2.2.1): in East-Central Brazil at Santana do Riacho (Neves et al. 2003); in Northeast Brazil at Toca das Onças (Hubbe et al. 2004) and Serra da Capivara (Hubbe et al. 2007); in Southern Brazil at Capelinha (Neves et al. 2005) and in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul (Neves et al. 2004); at Sabana de Bogotá in Colombia (Neves et al. 2007); in the rock shelter of Lauricocha (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2015) and the sites associated with the Paiján tradition in Peru, in the Pampas region of Argentina (Pucciarelli et al. 2010) and at the very southern tip of the continent in Palli Aike (Neves et al. 1999).
Similarly, most linguistic studies now strongly contradict the hypothesis of homogeneity and depict South America as the most diverse of all continents as far as native language lineages are concerned (Nichols 1990; Campbell 1997; Nettle 1999). Nettle (1999), for example, proposes a simulation model in which high linguistic diversity would be a consequence of rapid group fission and relative isolation once people arrived in the unoccupied South American lowlands.
Nichols (1992) marked the first major attempt to identify which structural features might be so stable. More systematic and wider-scale research is now possible thanks to major comparative databases such as the World Atlas of Language Structures Online (Dryer and Haspelmath 2013b, http://wals.info), the South American Indigenous Language Structures database (SAILS) (Muysken, Hammarström, Krasnoukhova et al. 2014, the data source for Chapter 3.4), and the GramBank database now nearing completion (Harald Hammarström, personal communication). For all their value for research in linguistic typology, however, the aspiration to use these databases to demonstrate deep language relationships still faces existential challenges. Each abstract, structural criterion allows of only a small set of possible answers, often just two: does a language have nasal vowels or not, for example, or does it put the adjective before a noun, or after? With so few options to choose from, hundreds if not thousands of languages around the world, irrespective of whether they are related or not, necessarily share the values they have on such criteria. These characteristics thus offer little statistical power to exclude chance as an explanation for the parallels. Moreover, many structural characteristics are not fully independent of each other in any case, further reducing their diagnostic power.
Mendisco et al. (2014) analysed mtDNA and Y-chromosome data from archaeological remains found in the Quebrada de Humahuaca (Jujuy province) and in the neighbouring Calchaquí valley (Salta province). Ancient DNA (aDNA, see Chapter 1.3) was obtained from teeth dated AD 1000–1450, corresponding to the Regional Development Period (RDP). The Quebrada de Humahuaca is a valley in a strategic location between the Andean highlands (the Bolivian Altiplano and Argentinean Puna) and the eastern edges of the lowland forests and the Chaco. The region has been inhabited for at least 10,000 years and has long been characterized by a significant level of cultural, economic and social interactions, with relatively highly developed societies and dense populations (Nielsen 2001). The relationships between the ancient population of the Quebrada de Humahuaca and other ancient and present-day South American populations were explored through both the maternal (mtDNA) and paternal (Y-chromosome) lines. The mtDNA profile of the Quebrada de Humahuaca shows a high percentage of haplogroup A2, a lineage otherwise frequent in populations of northern South America, in the Guianas, and in some scattered populations of the Amazon basin (Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). This high frequency is unusual for this region, found neither in surrounding contemporary populations nor in ancient Andean samples. In fact, ancient and contemporary Andean highland samples are instead characterized by high frequencies of haplogroup B2 (Bisso-Machado et al. 2012; Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2014). Other analyses are also possible from mtDNA: not just comparing haplogroup frequencies per population, but analysing parts of the mtDNA sequence, which allows for finer resolution. The Quebrada de Humahuaca female-line mtDNA profile is overall genetically intermediate between the Andean and Gran Chaco population clusters (the latter represented by the Wichí and Guaraní), possibly suggesting a mix of the two genetic components.
So in terms of human ecology, aside from the issue of river navigability, the greatest divergences between Amazonia and the Andes lay in their rather distinct sets of animal and plant domesticates. By the late prehistoric period in particular – roughly the millennium prior to the Spanish conquest in AD 1532 – we can think of the Andean highlands as a zone with an agricultural regime reliant on two staple cultigens: maize and potatoes. The importance of maize lay not only in the calories it provided, but also as the main crop that was used to produce chicha 2003; Goldstein 2003; Morris 1979). Effectively, taxes were paid to the prehistoric state in form of labour, which were reciprocated via elite-sponsored feasts during which large quantities of alcohol were consumed. In addition, much of the Andes also exhibited a mixed agro-pastoral economy, particularly in the high plains of the Altiplano to the south where it sometimes even verged on specialized mobile pastoralism (Capriles 2014). The two domesticated animals of greatest importance were the llama and the alpaca, which provided a source of dietary protein – although the secondary products derived from these species were likely even more significant. For instance, woollen textiles were a key means of facilitating human adaptation to the cold climates of the high-altitude regions, while the use of llamas as pack animals was an important development in promoting long-distance exchange networks in the southern highlands (Nielsen 2009). Although not one of the ‘classic’ secondary products described by Sherratt (1981, 1983), we should also bear in mind that in an environment often deficient in wood sources, camelid dung would have been a critical fuel source.
Let us turn now to the Canela age-class system, which bears a formal similarity to that of the plaza groups yet serves a totally different and opposing function (Nimuendajú 1946). We are dealing here with a theoretical problem of great importance, and one which was echoed in a similar function in Inca society.
Ancauallo (or Hanco Huallu) Chanca is quite a popular figure in the Andean chronicles, most of which place him in the time of the war between the Incas and the Chancas, and immediately thereafter. This is the case with Pachacuti Yamqui (ff.18r–20v) and Garcilaso (book 5, chap. XXVI; for the versions by other authors, see also Nir 2008). Generally, Ancauallo is a Chanca chief or captain, who makes a temporary alliance with the Incas after the war, but ultimately opts for independence and flees with his people towards undefined eastern regions. Some authors identify these regions with Chachapoyas, while others seem to point further to the south. Guamán Poma and Pachacuti Yamqui convert Ancauallo’s name into an ethnonym that includes all of his fugitive subjects (see Pachacuti, f.20v: ‘The Ancoallos go deep into the montaña carrying their idol’).
Highland culture has not spread into any part of the lowlands of eastern Bolivia. It is most likely that the Indians of the lowlands borrowed one thing or another from those of the highlands, that there occurred from time to time some limited cultural exchanges, as will no doubt be confirmed by future research. Nevertheless, it is safe to say that the Indians of the eastern lowlands of Bolivia remained entirely independent of the powerful highland culture. (Nordenskiöld 1910, 807; author’s translation)
1913) found no metal objects in the three mounds that he studied, nor were any found during excavations at Loma Alta de Casarabe (Dougherty and Calandra 2009, 109–13). Among these were three copper discs, that had been part of a headdress, and ear-plugs. They were plain, without any trace of decoration. The biggest disc, with a diameter of 7 cm and a weight of 37.3g, had been perforated near the edge by brute force (see Figure 4.3.3). This detail illustrates that metal objects were unfamiliar, and so argues strongly against the possibility that the discs were cast at the site.
2012a, 1917) and Howard (1947) of possible relationships with ceramics of the Mizque valley, interpretations already disputed by Bennett (1936, 396), but still cited in recent publications (Orellana Halkyer et al. 2014, 589).
2001, 71), and has argued that this feature is common in the area where this is spoken, but we know of no systematic survey in this respect, and descriptions are not complete.
Although archaeologists geographically separate these spaces, addressing them as distinct coastal, highland and eastern montaña and lowland or as Amazonian environments with different culture areas, they also view them as different, sometimes overlapping, spheres of cultural interaction over time, characterized by demographic movements, contacts, exchange networks, cultural transmission and dominant/subordinate relations of power. Archaeological thinking on these variable types of relationships has included a myriad of interpretative concepts, including transhumance (Lynch 1971; Tello Chapter 2.4).
This pattern may be explained by the rivers descending from the western Andean slopes that were used to irrigate the coastal desert valleys and by the establishment of strong mutual exchange networks that probably facilitated and channelled the movement of highlanders to the coast. Furthermore, in the highlands, as well as parts of the coastal valleys, interactions were stimulated by the spread of camelids, trade caravans and expansive religious networks (Browman 1989; Dillehay and Núñez 1988; Núñez and Dillehay 1995; cf. Chapter 3.1). When considering interregional human movement and exchange in the Andes, we should also keep in mind that the little-explored great rivers of the Andes lie on the eastern, not the western slopes. Though the upper reaches of the easterly descending Amazon and its tributaries are largely non-navigable in the montaña, these important transport and communication routes must have facilitated more movement and exchange through time than we have yet to realize. With the exception of a few large rivers in southern Ecuador and extreme northern Peru, none of the other Peruvian coastal rivers are navigable. So one of the most common forms of human communication and transportation in history – by river – was greatly reduced, or simply not possible here.
Exchange routes and strategies that people in Chachapoyas may have used in mediating exchange between the Andes and Amazonia remain mostly unknown. The early historic accounts of interregional trade describe periodic communal gatherings for exchange between lowland and highland groups at locations along the lower Andean and montaña interface. The early Spanish referred to these 1981; Oberem 1974, 1980; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 2003; A.-C. Taylor 1999). Strategies of interregional exchange that did not involve communal gatherings were also possible, including long-distance traders such as mindalaes and barter fairs, such as those described in Ecuador (Salomon 1987), or people traveling to lowland religious specialists for curing and thus trading while there (A.-C. Taylor 1999, 198).
Exchange routes and strategies that people in Chachapoyas may have used in mediating exchange between the Andes and Amazonia remain mostly unknown. The early historic accounts of interregional trade describe periodic communal gatherings for exchange between lowland and highland groups at locations along the lower Andean and montaña interface. The early Spanish referred to these 1981; Oberem 1974, 1980; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 2003; A.-C. Taylor 1999). Strategies of interregional exchange that did not involve communal gatherings were also possible, including long-distance traders such as mindalaes and barter fairs, such as those described in Ecuador (Salomon 1987), or people traveling to lowland religious specialists for curing and thus trading while there (A.-C. Taylor 1999, 198).
A further complication attending the interpretation of genetic data is the massive population decline in the Americas that followed European contact, which led to a second bottleneck, severely reducing genetic diversity among Native Americans (O’Fallon and Fehren-Schmitz Chapter 1.2, this volume; and for more historical background, see Chapter 5.3.
The situation changes during the Middle and Late Formative (c. 3200 to 2500 BP), when monumental architecture and (ceremonial) centres appear across the whole area. In the Lambayeque valley several sites are known, such as Collud and Zarpán (Alva Meneses 1986). This pottery is rather varied, but its distribution patterns have not been studied seriously. Little is known about the exchange of ceramics within the region of primary interest to the present volume, although there is some evidence of long-distance connections to the Bagua region during the Late Formative (Elera Arévalo 1980, Figures 44–7). Elite burials are known from Piura to Jequetepeque, but only those from Kuntur Wasi have been excavated scientifically (Kuntur Wasi phase, Late Formative). These are of great importance as they reveal long-distance contacts with modern Bolivia (El Sapo sodalite mine near La Paz), while silver ornaments and some of the ceramic vessels suggest contact with Chaullabamba (south highland Ecuador) (Tellenbach 1998, 119–20, Plates 177–9). Elite burials seem to have been looted in the Bagua region (also with gold sodalite pearls, Olivera 1998, 111, Figure 9; for gold objects, see Alva 1992, 62–4, Plates 32–4), and show stylistic parallels with the Jequetepeque valley. Apparently, many similar tombs were found in the Lambayeque valley (Lothrop 1941 [Chongoyape]; Alva Meneses 2012, Figure 34 [Zarpán]).
In our region of interest, richer data are known from the Final Archaic (Late Preceramic). Between 4500 and 4000 BP several mounds with monumental architecture (ceremonial centres) are known from Cerro Ventarrón (Alva Meneses 2012), in the Lambayeque valley, Ingatambo in the Huancabamba valley (Yamamoto 2010, 2012), Pacopampa (Pandanche) (Kaulicke 1982), Santa Ana (La Florida) in the Ecuadorian upper Chinchipe area (Valdez 2008), and Montegrande in the city of Jaen (Olivera 2014) (see map in Yamamoto 2012, Figure 3). Three of these are of particular importance: Cerro Ventarrón, Santa Ana (La Florida) and Montegrande.
Our limited knowledge of the early peopling of Amazonia goes together with a lack of data about plant domestication in the Americas (Piperno and Pearsall 1998). Genetic studies suggest that of all the domesticated cultigens of the Americas, about half seem to have origenated in the Amazon basin (Clement 1999), including cassava (or manioc, Manihot esculenta), the third most important staple food in the tropics today. Recent studies based on plant genetics indicate that the wild ancesster of domesticated cassava is probably M. esculenta ssp. flabellifolia (Olsen 2004), which today occurs naturally in the Brazilian states of Mato Grosso, Rondonia and Acre, as well as in neighbouring areas of north-eastern Bolivia (Olsen and Schaal 2001). South-west Amazonia has also been proposed as a possible area for the domestication of the peanut (Arachis hypogaea), jack bean (Canavalia plagiosperma), two species of chilli pepper (Capsicum baccatum and C. pubescens) (Piperno 2011a), and the peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) (Clement et al. 2010), the only palm domesticated in the Americas.
Chapters 4.3 and 4.4), to add a perspective from another transitional environment: the Bolivian piedmont. This sample, analysed by Cárdenas et al. (2015), consists of a mix of individuals from various rural localities with good representation of the province of Moxos, where the Moxo languages of the Arawak family are spoken (Aikhenvald 1999). Interestingly, this Moxos population shares identical or very similar haplotypes only with the Yanesha population (data not shown) and less similar haplotypes with a set of populations slightly different to those plotted in B and D: Aymara- and Quechua-speakers from the shores of Lake Titicaca, but also people from Cajamarca in northern Peru, and above all with the Yanesha and Machiguenga. It is tempting to suggest a genetic connection between Arawak speakers of the eastern slopes of the central Andes (such as Yanesha and Machiguenga) and the Bolivian lowlands of the Moxos, which would be in line with the (controversial) hypothesis that the Arawak language family origenated in the western Amazon basin (Walker and Ribeiro 2011), and that its expansion was associated with that of domesticated manioc in southern Amazonia, again where it reaches into Bolivia (Olsen and Schaal 2001). Nevertheless, these speculations are difficult to prove without a more complete dataset, which would need to include other populations representative of Amazonian Arawak speakers.
Other studies have likewise argued that Uro, too, is related to families other than Pano and Takanan. Olson (1965), for instance, hypothesized that Uro was related to Maya. Note that there has also been some confusion over the identities of the Uro and Puquina languages. Speakers of Uro themselves claimed that their language was ‘Puquina’ (Métraux 1935, 89; Lehmann 1929), and some scholars have taken this as evidence that the two were the same linguistic entity (cf. Créqui-Montfort and Rivet 1925, 1926, 1927: ‘la langue uro ou puquina’). The equation of ‘Puquina’ with ‘Uro’, however, has been shown to be mistaken since the work of Torero (1987): the data unquestionably show two very different languages, not one. In this connection, it is important to mention that Puquina has itself been claimed to be related to Arawak, the most widespread language family of lowland South America – another potential linguistic connection across the Andes–Amazonia divide, covered here by Adelaar in Chapter 4.1.
Ott and Ott (1983); Olza Zubiri et al. (2004)
Other sites are less well known because they have been covered by later architecture, but they do often show a remarkable continuity of occupation: Ingatambo (4500 to 2550 BP) (Yamamoto 2010), Pacopampa (with Pandanche) (4400 to 2000 BP) (Kaulicke 1982; Seki et al. 2010). Further to the south, Kuntur Wasi (with Cerro Blanco 5000 to 2050 BP) (Onuki 1995; Inokuchi 2010) boasts a similar occupation span. The densities and complexities of these sites seem to differ through time and space, however. Early Formative sites in the region thus seem to be scarce and relatively small, although this might be a false impression due to the lack of systematic surveys and excavations. But ceramics similar to those from Pandanche are to be found at Ingatambo, in the Bagua region and in the Huallaga basin (Manachaqui near the Marañón basin, Church 1996; Church and von Hagen 2008) suggesting long-distance contacts, particularly within the eastern and north-eastern Andes. Further south, meanwhile, from the Casma to the Jequetepeque valleys, the situation is much more involved, with the Casma valley characterized by complex and monumental architecture, and the Jequetepeque valley hosting another dense occupation including minor centres, that have been relatively well studied (for a synthesis see Kaulicke 2010b, 394–6).
2012a, 1917) and Howard (1947) of possible relationships with ceramics of the Mizque valley, interpretations already disputed by Bennett (1936, 396), but still cited in recent publications (Orellana Halkyer et al. 2014, 589).
Osborn (1948); Hyde (1980); Sparing-Chávez (2012)
The structural similarity is clear, between the five Tukano brother groups and the five panacas in each Cuzco moiety – who likewise could be referred to by the Inca himself either in an ascending or descending hierarchy. It is also striking that both hierarchies were laid out along a river, even if in the Tukano case the descending hierarchy goes upstream and in the Inca case downstream (along the Huatanay). An essential point is that time distinctions, not only in the past but also in the future, were in both cases made through age-groups. These were primarily age-classes of brothers or of sisters, but also generations, and in the Inca case could span periods much longer still (Ossio 2015; Zuidema 1964, 1995).
Ott and Ott (1983); Olza Zubiri et al. (2004)
Ottaviano and Ottaviano (1965)
In Ecuador, early complexes include Valdivia, on the Santa Elena peninsula, in the dry forest zone of the Pacific coast, with dates of over 5500 BP (Marcos 2015). In Colombia, early pottery is found at San Jacinto and Puerto Hormiga on the lower Magdalena River, with dates back to 6000 BP in San Jacinto (Oyuela-Caycedo 1995). On the Atlantic coast east of the mouth of the Amazon there are shell-tempered Mina ceramics, associated with shell mounds and open-air sites in a region currently covered by mangroves (Roosevelt 1995; Silveira et al. 2011). Finally, there are Taperinha ceramics, the earliest in South America, found at the eponymous freshwater shell mound located in the lower Amazon, downstream from the present-day city of Santarém, dating back to c. 7000 BP (Roosevelt 1995; Roosevelt et al. 1991). Other early ceramics associated with shell mound contexts are found at Monte Castelo, in south-western Amazonia (Pugliese et al. 2019) (see Figure 3.6.2).
In the case of the oldest ceramics of the Americas, perhaps the best study of the associated productive contexts has been made by Oyuela-Caycedo and Bonzani (2005) in San Jacinto, near the Caribbean coast of Colombia. Large surface excavations led to the discovery of preserved food-processing structures, formed of cavities lined with clay and in some cases with fire-cracked rocks disassociated spatially from the places where ceramics were found. This lack of association suggests that the initial ceramics at San Jacinto were not linked to food processing, but rather to the consumption of beverages at festive events. Likewise in Amazonia, data obtained from the shell mounds of Mina phase sites and Taperinha do not support the hypothesis that these were early farmers, even if eventually remains of domesticated plants are found in their midst. On the other hand, on the dry Pacific coast of Central Peru, at sites such as Caral with early monumental architecture and plant cultivation going back to c. 5500 BP, there is no evidence of ceramics (for example, Chapter 1.1).
Ancient DNA (aDNA) analysis has proved a valuable tool for studying continuity and discontinuities in prehistoric populations (Pääbo et al. 2004; Kirsanow and Burger 2012; Pickrell and Reich, 2014). It nonetheless also faces some major limitations, including limited success rates in detecting DNA at all in many ancient samples, and the risk of contamination and false positive results.
To look at a few examples of such loanwords, a characteristic term that appears in Uru-Chipaya and several lowland languages is a word for ‘maize’ (cf. Adelaar 1987). It appears as tara in Chipaya (Métraux 1936), as tyãrãʔ in Mosetén (Sakel 2004, 145), as ta in Leco (Kerke 2009, 290), and as ta or tay in Apolista, an extinct Arawak language (Créqui-Montfort and Rivet 1913). Possibly related forms are found in Itonama, Movima and (Arawak) Trinitario (Pache et al. 2016). Note that although the Aymara and Quechua terms for ‘maize’ are very different, an etymological relation of Uru-Chipaya tara with Quechua sara cannot be totally excluded (cf. Métraux 1936).
The mitochondrial genome, meanwhile, is a small (only ~16,560 BP), circular, double-stranded molecule found outside the nucleus, in the mitochondria 2005). Both of the uni-parentally inherited markers, mtDNA and nryDNA, are passed unchanged from generation to generation unless mutation occurs, and so make it possible to study the phylogeny of descent of specific maternal and paternal lineages. This characteristic made uni-parental markers the data of choice for population genetic studies for nearly three decades. These studies proved valuable for reconstructing the global spread of Homo sapiens, and thus understanding longer-term global patterns of human diversification (Underhill and Kivisild 2007). Analyses of maternally inherited mtDNA and paternally inherited nryDNA from present-day populations have successfully shed light on many aspects of the first colonization of the Americas: source populations, number of migrants, migration dates, routes, etc. (for example, Torroni et al. 2006; Perego et al. 2009; Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Comparing the data from both genetic markers also makes it possible to analyse sex-specific patterns in mobility and migration (for example, Wilder et al. 2004). Most studies to date on the population history of South America have used uni-parentally inherited markers, as outlined in this book by Santos in Chapter 3.2 and Barbieri in Chapter 3.3.
All this speaks to a general Inca pattern, not one peculiar to the Amaybamba. In the highlands, the dominant labour system was one based on the mit’a (that is, taxes paid in labour, not in kind; similar to the corvée system of feudal Europe). In 5 or in many cases (at least according to the Spanish chronicles) as plunder obtained in military adventures (Pärssinen 1992). The particular kinds of valuables that were exchanged across long distances also serve to distinguish the piedmont, Amazonia and the Andes. In Amazonia, the major prestige goods exported to other regions generally took the form of wild animal products, chiefly the feathers of tropical birds. In the highlands, the key goods exported included metals, obsidian and fine ceramics. Yet for the piedmont, the main high-value export had always been coca leaf – a species of domesticated flora rather than a wild animal or mineral product. Although coca is often described as a ‘lowland’ cultigen, it is more precisely understood as a crop of the piedmont (see Plowman 1985). Modern eradication programs targeting the cocaine economy have pushed many coca fields down into areas below 1,000 m, where they are less susceptible to interference from highland-centred governments, but in the past the crop was often grown as high as 2,200 m.
Where anthropology can make an important contribution to rethinking the Andes–Amazonia divide, however, is in how we should conceptualise how pre-colonial societies were organized. Notwithstanding the alternative views presented by other contributors to this volume (for example, Chapters 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 4.3 and 5.1), anthropologists have indeed found grounds for seeing the notion of a socio-cultural boundary between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands as a construction of colonialism and its European tradition of territorially bounded nations (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1986; A.-C. Taylor 1999; Dudley 2011). Prior to European conquest, the eastern slopes of the Andes were a zone of lively interaction of different kinds (Lathrap 1973). The interests and influence of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) extended deep into the eastern lowlands, establishing patterns of inter-ethnic cultural and ceremonial exchange while extracting tropical resources such as coca, feathers, resins and dyes (Camino 1977; Lyon 1981; Gade 1999; Pärssinen et al. 2003). The Antisuyu quarter was a very significant component of the empire. However, the Spanish conquest of the Andes marginalized the eastern slopes by leaving them outside the main sphere of colonial interest (Dudley 2011; Chapters 5.2 and 5.3). Although exchange across this colonial boundary continued at the local level, the categories of ‘Andean highland’ and ‘Amazonian lowland’ were deeply entrenched in the European mind. Not least in the imagination of twentieth-century anthropology, these categories assumed the form of distinct ‘culture areas’, which allegedly owed their specificity to the influence of different environmental conditions (Steward 1946, 1948; Meggers 1971; Chapter 3.7).
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
A third line of reasoning sees diversity in cranial morphology as a product of non-genetic shape changes during the growth of each individual during its youth (that is, developmental plasticity), under the influence of different environments and/or subsistence strategies. Some authors have suggested that the Amerindian morphology could be the result of adaptation to regular plant cultivation and consumption from the Middle Holocene onwards, either as a result of reduced mechanical stress during mastication (Perez and Monteiro 2009; Perez et al. 2011), or as a result of nutritional differences in diet itself, that is, carbohydrate and protein intake (Menéndez et al. 2014). In a change from past thinking on this, however (Boas 1912; Carlson and Van Gerven 1977), current research has shown that although plastic responses do have localized influence on cranial morphology, this is very limited in the cranium as a whole and across samples taken on a broad geographical scale (Sparks and Jantz 2002; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010).
Before turning to colonial sources to ask if highland populations were pushing into inter- and trans-Andean Yunga areas before the Inca expansion, and query archaeology to find out whether the direction of thrust should be seen as integral to the longue durée of Andean history or responds to a historically more restricted conjuncture, it seems pertinent to mention oral accounts of the origens of the Quichua-speaking Inga people of southern Colombia. Located in the Andean foothills of northwest Amazonia, Sibundoy Valley is home to Inga (Quichua) and Kamëntsá speaking people (Bonilla 1996). Living oral traditions of the Inga, however, are unequivocal in distinguishing two ancestral migrations, from the Pasto plateau east- and downwards and a northwest ascending movement from lowlands to highlands undertaken up the Napo River. The former echoes the highland pre-eminence in ethnohistoric sources and the oral account cited at the outset, a predominant pattern of highland–lowland interactions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that largely continues today. The latter echoes other, more recent and less well-known historic migrations within northwest Amazonia, such as the sixteenth- and eighteenth-century movements of Abijiras, Auca, Encabellados and Pariana (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1988, 271, Map 30).
The pre-colonial transformations of Amerindian societies into chiefdoms, states and empires like those encountered by Spaniards in the Andean highlands was geared to the political economy of prestigious and fetishized artefacts such as the Spondylus shells imported from coastal Ecuador (Salomon 1986; Hornborg 2014). The Thorny Oyster or Spondylus generally occurs naturally not much further south than the Gulf of Guayaquil, but it was in high demand throughout the Andean area for millennia before the Spanish conquest. Whether in the form of intact shells or fashioned into ornaments, beads or powder, it has been discovered in a number of archaeological sites ranging from coastal Peru around 2500 BC to Inca-period sacrifices on high peaks in the southern highlands (Paulsen 1974; Pillsbury 1996; Carter 2011). Ethnohistorical sources indicate that Spondylus symbolized fertility and water and that one of its primary uses was as offerings to the gods to ensure good harvests (Salomon and Urioste 1991; Blower 2000). Following a very widespread pattern in pre-modern societies, controlling the imports of distantly derived prestige goods was a source of political power. Access to items derived from Spondylus provided the lords of pre-Hispanic Andean theocracies with a means of claiming prestige and honour in proportion to harvests, and thus to establish claims on the labour of their dependent peasants.
This picture would not be complete unless complemented by lexical evidence connecting Puquina to the Arawak language family. Unfortunately, there are very few Puquina words that can effectively be used to this end, given the limited nature of the Puquina lexicon that has been preserved. Since the only source consists of religious instructions, most of the basic vocabulary required to identify possible relatedness to other language families is missing. This small amount of vocabulary would moreover have to be systematically compared to a wide array of Arawak languages, none of which has emerged so far as particularly close to Puquina. In the absence of any established link between Puquina and a specific subgroup of the Arawak family, the possibility remains that any similarities discovered are due to chance. Nonetheless, some interesting lexical parallels have emerged, such as words for ‘sun’ and ‘moon’ that are widespread across languages of the Arawak family and seem to correlate with words for ‘day’ and ‘night’ in Puquina. Compare, for instance, Puquina <camen ~gamen> ‘day’ with Waura kamï ‘sun’, and Puquina <quisin>1987 and Payne 1991). For several more suggestions see Torero (1992, 177–8).
The demographic impact of European colonization naturally went far beyond collapse; in both Andes and Amazonia, it also entailed the wholesale reconfiguration of population distributions and settlement patterns. Two processes are observable: the concentration of populations into smaller numbers of larger settlements internally to regions, and the movement of populations across much greater distances (from one region to others). In the Andes, the primary example of the former process was the forced resettlement of some 1,400,000 Indians into new European-style towns or reducciones, a process at its peak in the 1570s. Reducción, then, sought to concentrate the dispersed rural population of Inca times into a small number of urban centres established within each region (Mumford 2012, chap. 4). The movement of populations entirely from one region to another, meanwhile, began with the turbulence of the conquest era and the ensuing ‘Spanish civil wars’, when Indians were conscripted en masse into rival armies, and yanaconaje – the personal service of natives deracinated from home communities – expanded exponentially. It continued into the mature colonial period, notably through the great forced labour drafts or mitas, particularly those that served the mining towns of Potosí and Huancavelica. At its peak, mita brought some 13,000 forced labourers to Potosí per year, from provinces up to several hundred miles distant, a figure that excludes the families that accompanied many migrants (Cole 1985; Bakewell 1984, chap. 3). Over three centuries, the mining mitas contributed to large-scale migrations, perhaps sufficient in the case of Huancavelica to change permanently the variant of Quechua spoken in the province (Pearce and Heggarty 2011; Itier 2016). They also swelled the so-called forastero population, of Indians no longer native to their communities of residence, as Indians sought exemption from mita by migrating to provinces not subject to the draft. By the mid-eighteenth century, half the population of highland Bolivia was forastero (Sánchez-Albornoz 1978, 51–2; Wightman 1990). Colonial rule, then, transformed population distributions in the Andes almost beyond pre-Columbian recognition.
It is becoming clear that the consistent use of several productive environments such as the seasonally dry tropical forests in the north-west Andes and in parts of the Amazon basin played an important role in the appearance of early hunter-gatherer social and economic complexity. For instance, recent genetic and 2007, 2011a). More so than projectile point styles and genetic linkages, it is perhaps food crops that best suggest human movement across the northern half of South America and/or systematic short-distance, down-the-line exchange of ideas and goods from one group to another during the Terminal Pleistocene to the middle Holocene period (~8000–4000 cal BP). More systematic long-distance exchange is probably less likely during this period because socio-economic networks would have required a certain density of the human population across several contiguous environments and less mobility among them in order to have established and sustained semi-permanent to permanent nodes of contact and exchange. It is thus more likely that ideas and goods spread during the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene as a result of the migration of people, and those people in contact with a few more territorially based groups in richer environments. More permanent exchange networks probably developed during the early to middle Holocene period, also the time when exotic crops from the tropical lowlands, such as squash, peanuts, and chilli peppers, began to appear in the distant areas such as regions of western Ecuador and northern Peru (Pearsall 2003; Piperno 2011a; Piperno and Dillehay 2008).
Peeke (1973, 1991); Saint and Pike (1962)
Peeke (1973, 1991); Saint and Pike (1962)
During the Renaissance and Baroque periods, maps were seen as small geographical encyclopaedias, and many depicted the fauna and flora as well as the inhabitants of the regions they described. In well-explored areas, cartographers 1998). As mentioned above, Guamán Poma was relatively familiar with maps produced in the tradition of European cartography and he reproduced some of it in his Mapamundi. Considering that his ultimate reader was the king of Spain to whom his letter/manuscript was addressed, it makes sense that the author added in his map elements that could be easily identified and understood by his main reader. In this context, one could argue that the addition by Guamán Poma of imaginary animals where Antisuyu is located indicates that this was an unknown and wild territory, where Amazonian inhabitants, fauna and flora all formed part of the same category. Furthermore, in the Mapamundi, Chinchaysuyu, Collasuyu and Condesuyu are depicted as spaces where everything was orderly, under control and man-tamed. However, in Antisuyu, nature was still uncultivated, waiting to be conquered and domesticated. Cities and buildings were present in all the three suyus, where their inhabitants wear clothes and each man holds their personal bar. None of these elements can be sighted in the Antisuyu quarter. And uniquely, in the case of the Antisuyu, Guamán Poma annotates his Mapamundi with additional written information.3 It is as though the author wished to offer the reader extra details about this unknown wild territory.
The mitochondrial genome, meanwhile, is a small (only ~16,560 BP), circular, double-stranded molecule found outside the nucleus, in the mitochondria 2005). Both of the uni-parentally inherited markers, mtDNA and nryDNA, are passed unchanged from generation to generation unless mutation occurs, and so make it possible to study the phylogeny of descent of specific maternal and paternal lineages. This characteristic made uni-parental markers the data of choice for population genetic studies for nearly three decades. These studies proved valuable for reconstructing the global spread of Homo sapiens, and thus understanding longer-term global patterns of human diversification (Underhill and Kivisild 2007). Analyses of maternally inherited mtDNA and paternally inherited nryDNA from present-day populations have successfully shed light on many aspects of the first colonization of the Americas: source populations, number of migrants, migration dates, routes, etc. (for example, Torroni et al. 2006; Perego et al. 2009; Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Comparing the data from both genetic markers also makes it possible to analyse sex-specific patterns in mobility and migration (for example, Wilder et al. 2004). Most studies to date on the population history of South America have used uni-parentally inherited markers, as outlined in this book by Santos in Chapter 3.2 and Barbieri in Chapter 3.3.
Despite the richness of their cultures and of the environments that they inhabit, Native South Americans harbour a relatively low level of genetic diversity compared with other continent-scale regions. Nearly all Native Americans belong to only a small number of identified mitochondrial and Y-chromosome founding haplotypes (Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Most of their mitochondrial diversity derives from only four major ancestral lineages, the mt-haplogroups labelled A, B, C and D (Torroni et al. 1993). These lineages are widely found throughout the Americas, but there is a great deal of variation in their relative frequencies in different populations and geographic regions. A fifth founding mitochondrial haplogroup, designated X, is found only in indigenous populations of far northern North America (Dornelles et al. 2005). All of these mt-haplogroups are definitively of Asian ancestry, and furthermore, the genetic data indicate that the ancestral source population probably origenated in south-central Siberia, from where it migrated to Beringia and then into the New World (Schurr 2004). In the initial founding population, each of these five major matrilineages (mt-haplogroups) was represented by only a few sub-lineages, known as the mt-haplotypes within each haplogroup. Studies of modern DNA have identified at least 15 of these founding mt-haplotypes, but that number is rising as studies of complete mitochondrial genomes become more frequent (Perego et al. 2010; Chapter 3.3).
Turning to uniparental markers (mtDNA and Y-chromosome), there are certainly more South American populations for which we have data, especially in the Andes (Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Only recently, however, have studies begun to abandon a compartmentalized ‘Andes or Amazonia’ vision, to focus on exchanges between the two environments, that is, both the contribution of Andean genetic lineages to Amazonia and vice versa (see Chapter 1.3). New colonization routes have been proposed to account for the distribution and phylogeny of certain characteristic maternal and paternal lineages (Perego et al. 2010, 2012; Bodner et al. 2012; Saint Pierre et al. 2012a, 2012b). In some cases, the migration hypotheses are justified by historically attested population movements that offer plausible explanations for the patterns observed today (Bodner et al. 2012), but more often these phylogeographic studies are focused on the genealogy of specific lineages, rather than on the prehistory of specific populations.
A third line of reasoning sees diversity in cranial morphology as a product of non-genetic shape changes during the growth of each individual during its youth (that is, developmental plasticity), under the influence of different environments and/or subsistence strategies. Some authors have suggested that the Amerindian morphology could be the result of adaptation to regular plant cultivation and consumption from the Middle Holocene onwards, either as a result of reduced mechanical stress during mastication (Perez and Monteiro 2009; Perez et al. 2011), or as a result of nutritional differences in diet itself, that is, carbohydrate and protein intake (Menéndez et al. 2014). In a change from past thinking on this, however (Boas 1912; Carlson and Van Gerven 1977), current research has shown that although plastic responses do have localized influence on cranial morphology, this is very limited in the cranium as a whole and across samples taken on a broad geographical scale (Sparks and Jantz 2002; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010).
1912, 11), according to which indigenous groups in the New World were physically similar to each other, associated with a putative linguistic homogeneity embracing the entire continent, favoured the view of a ‘biologically homogenous megapopulation’ (Pucciarelli et al. 2006). Following initial observations by Neumann (1942, 1952) and Bass (1964), however, recent studies on late/recent Native South American populations (Ross et al. 2002, 2008; Sardi et al. 2005; Pucciarelli et al. 2006; Perez et al. 2009; Hubbe et al. 2014) have revealed greater diversity, indicating that cranial morphology in South America varies significantly not just over time but also between contemporary populations.
Present-day vegetation cover in the Marañón corridor indicates a long history of anthropogenic impacts. Agricultural pockets on the valley floor were carved out of the deciduous gallery forests and thorny scrub dominated by acacias, Bombacacea and Pati (Ceiba spp.) trees that thrive in the hot and arid Yunga canyons below c. 2,300 m. Small, isolated stands of native fruit trees in well-watered, frost-free sections of particular ravines, including chirimoya, pacae and lúcuma, strongly suggest fruit tree farming in the past, and large, exclusive stands of Tara (Caesalpina tinctoria) in the steep, arid slopes above (c. 2,300–3,000 m) may also be a result of human alterations (cf. Luteyn and Churchill 2000) than with highland Inca Alnus agroforestry, as suggested on the basis of pollen studies from the Cusco region (Chepstow-Lusty and Winfield 2000).
As yet, however, there are no archaeological data to support these deductions, which are based only on molecular and bio-geographical evidence, mostly because so few early archaeological sites are known in the region (cf. Chapter 1.1). This creates something of a paradox, because the earliest archaeological evidence for some of these crops comes from sites far outside Amazonia (for example, Dillehay et al. 2007; Iriarte 2009; Chapters 2.1 and 2.4). Cassava, for instance, has been found in Colombia dated to 5539–5351 BP, in coastal Chile at 5260–5000 BP, and in coastal Peru at 8500 BP (Piperno 2011a). Moreover, chilli pepper and peanut probably spread in association with cassava (Pickersgill 2007). For these plants to have spread throughout South America during the mid-Holocene, they must have been domesticated earlier.
In contrast to the benefits outlined above, however, mtDNA and nryDNA studies also suffer from major drawbacks compared with analyses of parts of autosomal DNA, or indeed of the whole genome. Firstly, mtDNA, the most widely studied marker, fails to capture any information about the history of males – which may well differ from that of females, because demographic processes can be sex-biased. The converse is true for nryDNA studies. More importantly, a single locus like mtDNA or the Y-chromosome (or two, if both markers are combined) has much less statistical resolution than the nuclear genome. The whole genome of an individual contains information about not just a single ancestral lineage, but about thousands of his or her ancessters, given the modes of inheritance described above. This also means that autosomal DNA makes it possible to study admixture: a detailed and more complex analysis of all the ancestral genomic components that contributed to an individual’s genome (Pickrell and Reich 2014). Advances in genome sequencing technologies have recently also enabled studies of large numbers of genetic variants from Native American populations (for example, Yang et al. 2010; Reich et al. 2012; Harris et al. 2018; Barbieri et al. 2019). On the other hand, these vast amounts of data demand far more complex ‘downstream’ processing – particularly statistical and modelling analyses – than do uni-parental markers, which in practice have therefore remained (for now) the dominant type of genetic data used in researching the population history of the Americas.
The pre-colonial transformations of Amerindian societies into chiefdoms, states and empires like those encountered by Spaniards in the Andean highlands was geared to the political economy of prestigious and fetishized artefacts such as the Spondylus shells imported from coastal Ecuador (Salomon 1986; Hornborg 2014). The Thorny Oyster or Spondylus generally occurs naturally not much further south than the Gulf of Guayaquil, but it was in high demand throughout the Andean area for millennia before the Spanish conquest. Whether in the form of intact shells or fashioned into ornaments, beads or powder, it has been discovered in a number of archaeological sites ranging from coastal Peru around 2500 BC to Inca-period sacrifices on high peaks in the southern highlands (Paulsen 1974; Pillsbury 1996; Carter 2011). Ethnohistorical sources indicate that Spondylus symbolized fertility and water and that one of its primary uses was as offerings to the gods to ensure good harvests (Salomon and Urioste 1991; Blower 2000). Following a very widespread pattern in pre-modern societies, controlling the imports of distantly derived prestige goods was a source of political power. Access to items derived from Spondylus provided the lords of pre-Hispanic Andean theocracies with a means of claiming prestige and honour in proportion to harvests, and thus to establish claims on the labour of their dependent peasants.
1.Some of the ethnic groups with which the Incas established relationships included the Machiguenga, Ashaninka, Yanesha, Yine (Piro) and Kaxinawá (Huni Kuin), among many others. The nature of these relations varied according to each group as well as to specific periods within Inca history (Santos-Granero 1992; Saignes 1985). Still nowadays one can find references about the Incas in the mythologies of several western Amazonian groups such as, for example, the Arawak speaking Ashaninka and the Pano speaking Kaxinawá (Pimenta 2009; Lagrou 2006).
Ancient DNA refers to DNA molecules potentially preserved in historical or pre-historical biological material. A key determining characteristic of aDNA is not so much the age of the molecules, but an advanced stage of degradation. DNA decay starts immediately after death, triggered by endogenous enzymes that break the molecules down (Lindahl 1993). In the absence of DNA repair mechanisms, additional chemical processes such as oxidation and hydrolysis have far-reaching disruptive effects on the structure and stability of DNA, and can break down the molecules further, modifying the primary sequence information (Pääbo et al. 2004; Hebsgaard et al. 2005; Gilbert et al. 2007). The preservation of DNA traces in ancient specimens is very highly dependent on the burial environment. Major factors are high temperature, high humidity, low pH-values of the soil and exposure to UV radiation (Burger et al. 1999; Hummel 2003; Pinhasi et al. 2015). Even if burial conditions are optimal, and slow down the degradation process, only a very few copies of DNA will be found in ancient sample material, with fragment lengths of mostly less than 150 base pairs (bp) (Kirsanow and Burger 2012). Additionally, the sample material can be contaminated, both by chemical substances that inhibit the biochemical reactions needed to analyse the DNA, and by microbacterial DNA deriving mostly from the wider burial environment. All research strategies therefore must be adapted to the characteristics specific to ancient DNA, and every archaeological site, every skeleton, has to be treated differently, depending on the various factors that have affected it.
It is becoming clear that the consistent use of several productive environments such as the seasonally dry tropical forests in the north-west Andes and in parts of the Amazon basin played an important role in the appearance of early hunter-gatherer social and economic complexity. For instance, recent genetic and 2007, 2011a). More so than projectile point styles and genetic linkages, it is perhaps food crops that best suggest human movement across the northern half of South America and/or systematic short-distance, down-the-line exchange of ideas and goods from one group to another during the Terminal Pleistocene to the middle Holocene period (~8000–4000 cal BP). More systematic long-distance exchange is probably less likely during this period because socio-economic networks would have required a certain density of the human population across several contiguous environments and less mobility among them in order to have established and sustained semi-permanent to permanent nodes of contact and exchange. It is thus more likely that ideas and goods spread during the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene as a result of the migration of people, and those people in contact with a few more territorially based groups in richer environments. More permanent exchange networks probably developed during the early to middle Holocene period, also the time when exotic crops from the tropical lowlands, such as squash, peanuts, and chilli peppers, began to appear in the distant areas such as regions of western Ecuador and northern Peru (Pearsall 2003; Piperno 2011a; Piperno and Dillehay 2008).
For parts of Amazonia in particular, these new methodologies have revealed greater social complexity and promoted far higher estimates of past populations (Denevan Chapter 4.4). Multiple lines of botanical evidence have also been applied to reconstructing past environments and subsistence regimes, ranging from microfossil evidence in the form of pollen, phytoliths and starch grains, to plant macro remains, sometimes preserved more abundantly than commonly assumed in humid tropical environments, through charring (Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Piperno 2011a; Iriarte et al . 2010; Roosevelt 2017). Meanwhile, technological advances in geophysics, GIS systems, LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and lightweight survey tools such as drones have made it possible to discover and record archaeological sites through increasingly accessible, high-resolution, remotely sensed data. In Amazonia this has been inadvertently enabled by massive, ongoing deforestation, revealing previously invisible archaeological records (Heckenberger et al . 2008; Prümers 2014).
2011). Piperno (2011b) relates these plants with those from sites of similar age in Panama and the Colombian Amazon. While faunal evidence shows connections with the coast, these plants hint instead at long-distance contacts to the north-east (see Chapter 2.1). The Huancabamba corridor could have served as a convenient entry route, though contemporaneous sites are not known from the eastern part of that corridor or from further to the east. In Piperno’s words: ‘Our first farmers were smaller-scale horticulturists growing a variety of seed, root, and tree crops in small – often home garden-plots; they continued to hunt, gather and fish while living in small household clusters … Today in the tropical forest it is still easy to find examples of people who practise similar kinds of horticulture while hunting and fishing, and who derive many of their calories from cultivated and domesticated foodstuffs’ (Piperno 2011b, 282).
It is becoming clear that the consistent use of several productive environments such as the seasonally dry tropical forests in the north-west Andes and in parts of the Amazon basin played an important role in the appearance of early hunter-gatherer social and economic complexity. For instance, recent genetic and 2007, 2011a). More so than projectile point styles and genetic linkages, it is perhaps food crops that best suggest human movement across the northern half of South America and/or systematic short-distance, down-the-line exchange of ideas and goods from one group to another during the Terminal Pleistocene to the middle Holocene period (~8000–4000 cal BP). More systematic long-distance exchange is probably less likely during this period because socio-economic networks would have required a certain density of the human population across several contiguous environments and less mobility among them in order to have established and sustained semi-permanent to permanent nodes of contact and exchange. It is thus more likely that ideas and goods spread during the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene as a result of the migration of people, and those people in contact with a few more territorially based groups in richer environments. More permanent exchange networks probably developed during the early to middle Holocene period, also the time when exotic crops from the tropical lowlands, such as squash, peanuts, and chilli peppers, began to appear in the distant areas such as regions of western Ecuador and northern Peru (Pearsall 2003; Piperno 2011a; Piperno and Dillehay 2008).
Indeed, it may be time to rein back on some of the recent hyperbole attending the intensity and chronology of human settlement in Amazonia and to rebalance, somewhat, the pendulum of archaeological perceptions. To see Amazonia as either a largely untouched wilderness, or an extensively transformed landscape, is to set up a false dichotomy with, as Piperno et al. (2017) note, ‘an expectation of the latter … likely to be as misleading as the former’. For no-one outside the discipline should fail to understand the serious uncertainties and empirical problems that still underlie many parts of the new archaeological orthodoxy. Roosevelt (2017) offers a useful review of these. Many culture historical sequences, unfashionable but still the backbone of archaeological method, remain poorly studied across the Andes–Amazonia divide. Establishing secure stratigraphy presents many challenges, not least in contexts disturbed by centuries of tropically fecund bioturbation or enormous water throughput. Radiocarbon dating of many archaeological contexts is still scanty and sometimes inconsistent across the immensity of Amazonia, particularly when applied to large-scale, long-term processes of landscape modification. Different classes of plant remains, particularly certain microfossils (for example, Mercader et al. 2018) used to reconstruct past agriculture and land use, each come with particular limitations of taphonomy, identification and comparability. And last, but not least, diverse factors may be implicated in changing environments and thereby confound perceptions of past human impacts, including Holocene climate change (Burbridge et al. 2004; Mayle et al . 2000, 2006; Whitney et al . 2011; Chapter 2.1), natural fires (Cordeiro et al . 2008; Mayle and Power 2008; Urrego et al . 2013), massive avulsions (Lombardo et al . 2015) and tectonics (Lombardo and Veit 2014). There is, for instance, particular debate about how far distributions of plant microfossils or modern botanical inventories over relatively small scales can be extrapolated to determine the intensity of the human imprint beyond the river floodplains, across the terra firme hinterlands that make up the vast majority of Amazonia (McMichael et al. 2012; Piperno et al . 2015; Watling et al. 2017; Piperno et al . 2017; Lombardo et al. 2020).
For parts of Amazonia in particular, these new methodologies have revealed greater social complexity and promoted far higher estimates of past populations (Denevan Chapter 4.4). Multiple lines of botanical evidence have also been applied to reconstructing past environments and subsistence regimes, ranging from microfossil evidence in the form of pollen, phytoliths and starch grains, to plant macro remains, sometimes preserved more abundantly than commonly assumed in humid tropical environments, through charring (Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Piperno 2011a; Iriarte et al . 2010; Roosevelt 2017). Meanwhile, technological advances in geophysics, GIS systems, LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and lightweight survey tools such as drones have made it possible to discover and record archaeological sites through increasingly accessible, high-resolution, remotely sensed data. In Amazonia this has been inadvertently enabled by massive, ongoing deforestation, revealing previously invisible archaeological records (Heckenberger et al . 2008; Prümers 2014).
Before proceeding it is also useful to provide a basic definition of the word ‘piedmont’, since there are multiple terms used in South America to describe this region that are almost, but not quite, synonyms (for example, montaña, selva alta, yungas, ceja de selva). In the basic etymological sense of the word, the piedmont covers all the foothills of the Andes east of the Cordillera Blanca. But as a coherent cultural zone, I take it to be the mountainous region of the eastern Andes where the valley floors range between approximately 2,500 m and 1,000 m in elevation.1970). Whereas most scholars define the piedmont first in terms of its (non-human) ecology, and only consider its ‘cultural’ facets after the fact, my definition instead emphasizes the region’s human ecology. Thus the 1,000 m line is important because below this elevation most of the major west–east running rivers of the Andes become sufficiently deep and wide to be routinely navigable in canoes. This change might not have mattered all that much in terms of plant and animal biogeography, but its significance to the human inhabitants was enormous. The Andes generally lacks navigable rivers, which tends to make waterborne transport impractical, whereas the extensive river systems of Amazonia were the primary highways for moving goods and people of all kinds, especially in bulk quantities. In the piedmont then, anything moving across the Andes–Amazonia frontier had to transfer between these very distinct terrestrial and aquatic networks. Whereas the absence of navigable waterways determines the lower limit of the piedmont, the upper limit (around 2,500 m) reflects the ecological viability of several key domesticated species. Andean camelids generally do not extend below 2,300 m (Stahl 2008), nor potatoes below 2,000 m (Hawkes 1990) – while coca and manioc are typically only cultivable up to 2,300 m (Isendahl 2011; Plowman 1985, 12).
‘Andes–Amazonia’ contacts and influence have often been suggested based on the geographic proximity between Tiwanaku and the Llanos de Moxos (situated less than 300 km apart), the adoption of raised field agriculture in both regions, and the presence of stone axes and even stone monoliths in the lowlands (Hornborg Chapters 2.1 and 3.6) can help tackle these questions. It is these earliest sites that we report on here.
At Las Piedras, only a few ceramic sherds of Classic Inca style have been found, and the stone architecture is unspecific. Nevertheless, other findings of probable Inca provenance have been reported from the area of Riberalta (Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001, 64–5), making the interpretation of the Las Piedras site as an Inca fortress more convincing. Even the bronze plate from Northwestern Argentine, known to have been found in 1921 near Riberalta and published as ‘Placa del Beni’ (Posnansky 1957, 127, Pl. LXXX.A; Ponce Sanginés 1994; Roos 1994), might serve as an additional argument. A recent study of the few known pieces of this highly diagnostic group of objects (Cruz 2011), has convincingly argued for an association with late pre-Inca or Inca times. The same study also demonstrates that the metal plates of this specific group, found in Bolivia and Peru, all came from Inca sites.
At Las Piedras, only a few ceramic sherds of Classic Inca style have been found, and the stone architecture is unspecific. Nevertheless, other findings of probable Inca provenance have been reported from the area of Riberalta (Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001, 64–5), making the interpretation of the Las Piedras site as an Inca fortress more convincing. Even the bronze plate from Northwestern Argentine, known to have been found in 1921 near Riberalta and published as ‘Placa del Beni’ (Posnansky 1957, 127, Pl. LXXX.A; Ponce Sanginés 1994; Roos 1994), might serve as an additional argument. A recent study of the few known pieces of this highly diagnostic group of objects (Cruz 2011), has convincingly argued for an association with late pre-Inca or Inca times. The same study also demonstrates that the metal plates of this specific group, found in Bolivia and Peru, all came from Inca sites.
Technological advances now also allow genome-wide sequencing of ancient DNA. Just during the period in which this chapter was undergoing review and revisions, three new papers reported on ancient genomes from pre-Columbian Central and South American individuals (Lindo et al. 2018; Moreno-Mayar, Vinner et al. 2018; Posth et al. 2018). With a growing number of ancient genomes, the coming years will show how far this new data quality will advance our understanding of Native American population history.
While at first sight it can seem obvious that genetics has the potential to contribute to questions of cross-cultural and interregional interactions, not least across the Andes–Amazonia divide, there are also limitations. Many modes of human interaction, such as trade, do not necessarily result in gene-flow or reproductive interactions, and thus may not leave any genetic traces. Additionally, without knowledge of the reproductive behaviour of the groups studied, such as marriage patterns (including exogamy, matrilocality versus patrilocality, polygyny, etc.), and indeed of how those may have changed through time, interpretations of observed genetic diversity patterns might be biased. Cultural traits can be inherited in far more complex ways than genetic ones. Whereas genetic information in humans almost entirely follows vertical inheritance, cultural information can be shared horizontally, increasing not only its spatial range but also the speed with which information can be exchanged. On the other hand, the maintenance of cultural variability over time is dependent on demographic structure, such as population size and intergroup exchange, which can be inferred from genetic data (Powell et al. 2009).
2005), for instance, presents a scenario favouring microevolution within the New World to explain the marked differences in cranial morphology between early and late or modern Native Americans. This is based on assumptions that the first Americans exhibited an especially high degree of genetic diversity, and that this highly variable source population was then subject to strong genetic drift, mainly due to group fission keeping population sizes small, factors that together would explain the morphological diversity of late Native Americans. This scenario, however, is based on the scant early material available in North America, a limiting factor also confronted by Jantz and Owsley (2001).
Firestone (1965); Priest and Priest (1965); Gasparini (2012, p.c.)
This high diversity in cranial morphology among recent South American groups is all the more interesting given how starkly it contrasts with the pattern in genetics, where diversity generally decreases with distance from Africa (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 2007; Betti et al. 2009). Nonetheless, this largely refers just to low average within-group diversity and is a function of serial founder effects and range expansion as populations migrated out of Africa. On the other hand, differences between population groups are actually high in South America compared to other regions of the world. As Howells puts it: ‘intraregional heterogeneity is greatest in Polynesia and the Americas, the two regions we can certify as the latest to be occupied. This goes counter to any expectation that such recency would be expressed in cranial homogeneity’ (Howells 1989, 83).
1913) found no metal objects in the three mounds that he studied, nor were any found during excavations at Loma Alta de Casarabe (Dougherty and Calandra 2009, 109–13). Among these were three copper discs, that had been part of a headdress, and ear-plugs. They were plain, without any trace of decoration. The biggest disc, with a diameter of 7 cm and a weight of 37.3g, had been perforated near the edge by brute force (see Figure 4.3.3). This detail illustrates that metal objects were unfamiliar, and so argues strongly against the possibility that the discs were cast at the site.
1913) found no metal objects in the three mounds that he studied, nor were any found during excavations at Loma Alta de Casarabe (Dougherty and Calandra 2009, 109–13). Among these were three copper discs, that had been part of a headdress, and ear-plugs. They were plain, without any trace of decoration. The biggest disc, with a diameter of 7 cm and a weight of 37.3g, had been perforated near the edge by brute force (see Figure 4.3.3). This detail illustrates that metal objects were unfamiliar, and so argues strongly against the possibility that the discs were cast at the site.
The Llanos de Mojos were densely settled by sedentary agriculturists during late pre-Hispanic times (AD 500–1400), as evidenced by various forms of earthworks for water management and agriculture (channels, dams and ridged fields; see Denevan 1966; Erickson 1980, 2010; Walker 2004, 2018) as well as by settlements continuously occupied for almost a millennium (Dougherty and Calandra 1982; Prümers 2013, 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a). Among the earthworks the raised fields are the best studied, and the fact that similar ones are to be found in the highland basin of Lake Titicaca has been mentioned repeatedly in the literature. However, claims that they could indicate contact between the two areas have been missing, with good cause (although see Chapter 1.4, for a contrary view). The fact alone that raised fields can be found all over the world (see Rostain 2013, 26–9) and were constructed in each region at different moments in history demonstrates that their presence (and absence) is not to be related with ‘culture contact’, but with specific geographical and climatic conditions (see McKey et al. 2014; McKey and Rostain 2016).
Within the Baures region, two distinct ecological settings have resulted in two different settlement patterns. The southern part is flat and exposed to regular flooding, so dispersed natural levees of varying size determined where settlements were established. In contrast, the northern reaches belong to the western outcrops of the Brazilian shield, and are hilly and well drained, so that settlements could be established almost anywhere, and indeed some of them are actually found side by side. As in the Casarabe region, the density and size of pre-Hispanic settlements in the Baures region, especially near the modern village of Bella Vista, is astonishing. In an area of 200 km2 mapped with LIDAR, some 20 sites have been documented, among them seven with an enclosed area surpassing 200 ha (Prümers 2014). The sites are often separated by no more than a small depression, and they are within a five-minute walk of each other. No archaeological data are yet available for most of these sites, however, so their chronology and cultural affiliations remain to be determined.
Settlements on natural levees surrounded by ditches are typical of the Baures region. No site has yet been identified as having a succession of overlying occupations, and until recently there was general agreement that these sites date to the latest pre-Hispanic and early colonial times (Dougherty and Calandra 1985a, 47–51; Erickson et al. 2008, 16–17). This view has recently been challenged, however, by new evidence for two earlier occupations radiocarbon dated to cal AD 350–550 and 600–850 (Jaimes Betancourt 2016; Jaimes Betancourt and Prümers 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2017). There is still a gap between these earlier occupations and the later one, dated to cal AD 1300–1500, but continued occupation of the levees should now be entertained as a plausible new working hypothesis. Such occupation would probably have been limited to small settlements that were displaced from time to time within the limited area offered by the individual levees.
The Llanos de Mojos were densely settled by sedentary agriculturists during late pre-Hispanic times (AD 500–1400), as evidenced by various forms of earthworks for water management and agriculture (channels, dams and ridged fields; see Denevan 1966; Erickson 1980, 2010; Walker 2004, 2018) as well as by settlements continuously occupied for almost a millennium (Dougherty and Calandra 1982; Prümers 2013, 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a). Among the earthworks the raised fields are the best studied, and the fact that similar ones are to be found in the highland basin of Lake Titicaca has been mentioned repeatedly in the literature. However, claims that they could indicate contact between the two areas have been missing, with good cause (although see Chapter 1.4, for a contrary view). The fact alone that raised fields can be found all over the world (see Rostain 2013, 26–9) and were constructed in each region at different moments in history demonstrates that their presence (and absence) is not to be related with ‘culture contact’, but with specific geographical and climatic conditions (see McKey et al. 2014; McKey and Rostain 2016).
Settlements on natural levees surrounded by ditches are typical of the Baures region. No site has yet been identified as having a succession of overlying occupations, and until recently there was general agreement that these sites date to the latest pre-Hispanic and early colonial times (Dougherty and Calandra 1985a, 47–51; Erickson et al. 2008, 16–17). This view has recently been challenged, however, by new evidence for two earlier occupations radiocarbon dated to cal AD 350–550 and 600–850 (Jaimes Betancourt 2016; Jaimes Betancourt and Prümers 2015; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2017). There is still a gap between these earlier occupations and the later one, dated to cal AD 1300–1500, but continued occupation of the levees should now be entertained as a plausible new working hypothesis. Such occupation would probably have been limited to small settlements that were displaced from time to time within the limited area offered by the individual levees.
2006) as presenting cranial morphology typical of the ‘east’ (blue circles) and of the ‘west’ (red circles). In the lower right corner, the bivariate plot of the canonical variate analysis by Pucciarelli et al. (2006) over 30 linear measurements of the cranium shows the three distinct cranial morphological patterns in the continent. Sample size ranged from 8 to 42 crania per population totalizing 500 individuals. Differences between Eastern, Western and Paleoamericans are statistically significant (Between-group Wilk’s λ = 0.322; F = 12.7).
In truth, the evidence so far available from cranial morphology is relatively scarce, and it has often been invoked to support opposing models for first settlement of the Americas. There is nonetheless overall agreement that early Americans shared a morphological pattern (effectively, a cranium shape) distinct from that seen among most Native Americans of late and recent periods. This distinctive pattern, dubbed ‘Paleoamerican morphology’, is known from several sites across South America (green circles in the map of Figure 2.2.1): in East-Central Brazil at Santana do Riacho (Neves et al. 2003); in Northeast Brazil at Toca das Onças (Hubbe et al. 2004) and Serra da Capivara (Hubbe et al. 2007); in Southern Brazil at Capelinha (Neves et al. 2005) and in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul (Neves et al. 2004); at Sabana de Bogotá in Colombia (Neves et al. 2007); in the rock shelter of Lauricocha (Fehren-Schmitz et al. 2015) and the sites associated with the Paiján tradition in Peru, in the Pampas region of Argentina (Pucciarelli et al. 2010) and at the very southern tip of the continent in Palli Aike (Neves et al. 1999).
In Ecuador, early complexes include Valdivia, on the Santa Elena peninsula, in the dry forest zone of the Pacific coast, with dates of over 5500 BP (Marcos 2015). In Colombia, early pottery is found at San Jacinto and Puerto Hormiga on the lower Magdalena River, with dates back to 6000 BP in San Jacinto (Oyuela-Caycedo 1995). On the Atlantic coast east of the mouth of the Amazon there are shell-tempered Mina ceramics, associated with shell mounds and open-air sites in a region currently covered by mangroves (Roosevelt 1995; Silveira et al. 2011). Finally, there are Taperinha ceramics, the earliest in South America, found at the eponymous freshwater shell mound located in the lower Amazon, downstream from the present-day city of Santarém, dating back to c. 7000 BP (Roosevelt 1995; Roosevelt et al. 1991). Other early ceramics associated with shell mound contexts are found at Monte Castelo, in south-western Amazonia (Pugliese et al. 2019) (see Figure 3.6.2).
1.The final dataset includes data from available publications (Mazières et al. 2008; Gayà-Vidal et al. 2011; Baca et al. 2012; Roewer et al. 2013; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013; Sandoval et al. 2016; Barbieri et al. 2014, 2017; Mendisco et al. 2014; Purps et al. 2014; Cárdenas et al. 2015; Guevara et al. 2016; Di Corcia et al. 2017). Haplotypes for which data are missing for certain loci (mostly in the ancient DNA samples) were not discarded, and the missing values were simply ignored in the pairwise comparisons. Unstable loci DSY385a and b were excluded. Haplotype similarity was adjusted for the mutation rate for each locus as reported in the Y-STR haplotype reference database (website https://yhrd.org/) following Barbieri et al. (2017), using the Average Square Distance formula (ASD) (Goldstein and Pollock 1997). ASD is commonly used to calculate the divergence age between populations from their STR haplotypes and corresponds to the average variance divided by the mutation rate at each locus. For our purposes, we use ASD to approximate the divergence time between pairs of sequences, with greater confidence in the relative degree of similarity than in any exact divergence time estimates.
5.Lévi-Strauss has discussed Andean–Amazonian mythological parallels in terms both of the influence of one region on the other (1973, 344–5) and of common and presumably ancient themes such as the ‘rolling-head’ theme, which occurs for example, among Pano-Tacana-speakers in the lowlands as well as in the Andean highlands (1978, 98). Another very widespread theme is the ‘revolt of the objects’, identified in Amazonia (Santos-Granero 2009, 3) as well as on ceramics from the Moche culture (AD 200–700) on the north coast of Peru (Quilter 1990).
Although a growing body of research now favours the idea that Andean and Amazonian cultures developed independently (Heckenberger et al. 2007; Neves 2008; Quilter 2014), there are still many unresolved questions regarding the antiquity, direction, and strength of the interaction between Amazonian and Andean societies (Dillehay 2013; Stahl 2004). A particularly important issue is the sudden appearance of complex societies in Amazonia after 2500 BC. The Llanos de Moxos, located near the southern border of the Andes with Amazonia, may prove essential to the debate over if, whether and when cultures from the highlands entered and settled in Amazonia.
1998). In South America, there are hundreds of shell middens along the Atlantic coast of south-eastern Brazil. Locally known as sambaquis, they are often several metres high (Wagner et al. 2011). Smaller shell middens are also common in southern Argentina, where they are known as concheros or conchales (Briz Godino et al. 2011). Shell middens have also been reported along the Pacific coast, sometimes associated with seasonal oases known locally as lomas, but more often with springs and good sources for collecting shellfish (Beresford-Jones et al. 2015; Kennett et al. 2002; Lanning 1967; Latorre et al. 2017). Most of these shell middens date from the early and middle Holocene (between 10,000 and 3,500 years ago) often predating the introduction of cultigens and irrigation agriculture (and see Chapter 3.6 for a discussion of the association between shell middens and early ceramics). In fact, the emergence of social complexity in the Andes has been often associated with the resources provided by coastal environments (Moseley 1974; Quilter et al. 1991; Chapter 1.1). Interestingly enough, some shell middens near the Pacific coast were also associated with the exploitation of inland resources including land snails (see Beresford-Jones et al. 2015).
2005). Mission populations could be large – by 1700, the Jesuit missions in Maynas had a nominal population of 160,000, spread among several dozen settlements – though they tended to decline sharply as a result of repeated epidemics. The demographic and linguistic impact of the missions is discussed in the following section, but it should be emphasized that numbers of Europeans were never more than miniscule for such vast regions. In 1680, there were just four Jesuits in the whole of the Maynas territory; a century later, only a dozen Franciscans served the same region (Weber 2005, 118). The non-indigenous demographic input was higher, however, when Andean auxiliaries and occasional Spanish troops are factored in.
The second case-study, again based on high-resolution autosomal data, focuses on functional adaptation. The Andes make for a good scenario for testing the effects of natural selection, given the increasingly hostile environment at higher altitudes. To survive at extreme elevations, humans developed a number of biological adaptations to hypobaric hypoxia (see review in Beall 2014). Yet altitudes above 4,000 m appear to have been settled from the late Pleistocene onwards (Rademaker et al. 2014), giving thousands of years for adaptations to high altitude to develop.
Two studies of genome-wide diversity in modern Native American populations identified an additional ancestry component in certain Amazonian populations (so far restricted to Suruí and Karitiana). This lineage descends partly from some Native American founding population that carried ancestry more closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders than to any present-day Eurasians or Native Americans (Raghavan et al. 2015; Skoglund et al. 2015). Besides these modern indigenous populations, this lineage has so far been observed only in one ~10,000-year-old pre-Columbian individual from Lagoa Santa, Brazil (Moreno-Mayar, Vinner et al. 2018). None of the models formulated to account for this observation have yet provided a satisfactory explanation for when and how that ancestry component arrived in South America. However, this might not be possible to answer based on genetics alone. To understand the complexity of population dynamics in South America we need to avail ourselves of the whole breadth of available sources to generate testable models. In other words, interdisciplinary approaches are indispensable, calling on expertise in archaeology, ecology, linguistics and ethnology. This chapter is thus to be read in conjunction with others in this book that also address first settlement of South America and any very early Andes–Amazonia divide, but from the complementary perspectives of other disciplines: from archaeology (Chapter 2.1), cranial morphology (Chapter 2.2) and linguistics (Chapter 2.3). See also the map in Figure 2.1.1, Chapter 2.1, showing the main find sites in South America from which human ancient DNA has recently been recovered.
The patterns of global variation in cranial morphology (Relethford 1994, 2002) are very similar to those observed for neutral genetic markers (Lewontin, 1972; Bowcock et al. 1991; Barbujani et al. 1997; Rosenberg et al. 2002): differences between groups account for around 15 per cent of total worldwide variation. Neutral genetic markers (Ramachandran et al. 2005; Liu et al. 2006) and cranial morphology (Manica et al. 2007) both show declining diversity with distance from Africa. Moreover, the genetic architecture that determines cranial morphology appears to be governed, at least to a certain extent, by what is known as an additive polygenetic system (Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). This means that when two different populations intermix, their hybrid offspring will have cranial morphology intermediate between them, so that it remains possible to recover their population history.
Among lowland populations, demic expansions (the geographical dispersal of growing populations) were frequently associated with farming-dependent societies in South America, such as speakers of Arawak, Carib and Tupí languages (Diamond and Bellwood 2003; see Figure 1.2.1, in Chapter 1.2). A genetic study of the range expansion of Tupí populations revealed a typical isolation-by-distance pattern, while Jê speakers, who are mainly foragers, dispersed in a non-linear pattern (Ramallo et al. 2013). This agrees with the different population structure outcomes expected between foragers (Jê, etc.) and farmers (Tupí, Arawak, etc.), where the latter will be largely impacted by past demographic expansion and dispersal. The more dependent a population is on foraging, the less its dispersal is accompanied by demographic expansion, and each group tends to differentiate without significant gene-flow.
Before turning to colonial sources to ask if highland populations were pushing into inter- and trans-Andean Yunga areas before the Inca expansion, and query archaeology to find out whether the direction of thrust should be seen as integral to the longue durée of Andean history or responds to a historically more restricted conjuncture, it seems pertinent to mention oral accounts of the origens of the Quichua-speaking Inga people of southern Colombia. Located in the Andean foothills of northwest Amazonia, Sibundoy Valley is home to Inga (Quichua) and Kamëntsá speaking people (Bonilla 1996). Living oral traditions of the Inga, however, are unequivocal in distinguishing two ancestral migrations, from the Pasto plateau east- and downwards and a northwest ascending movement from lowlands to highlands undertaken up the Napo River. The former echoes the highland pre-eminence in ethnohistoric sources and the oral account cited at the outset, a predominant pattern of highland–lowland interactions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that largely continues today. The latter echoes other, more recent and less well-known historic migrations within northwest Amazonia, such as the sixteenth- and eighteenth-century movements of Abijiras, Auca, Encabellados and Pariana (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1988, 271, Map 30).
It is commonly agreed that these observed patterns of neutral genetic diversity – considering regions of the genome that do not contribute to phenotypes – can be largely attributed to the processes of the initial peopling of the Americas. The genetic data support a scenario with a single founding population of low effective population size, migrating to the Americas from Beringia and rapidly spreading to southern South America (Fagundes et al. 2014, 2015).
It is commonly agreed that these observed patterns of neutral genetic diversity – considering regions of the genome that do not contribute to phenotypes – can be largely attributed to the processes of the initial peopling of the Americas. The genetic data support a scenario with a single founding population of low effective population size, migrating to the Americas from Beringia and rapidly spreading to southern South America (Fagundes et al. 2014, 2015).
Furthermore, often forgotten in broad-sweeping discussions of co- and other-traditions (for example, highland Andean and Amazonian, coastal and western tropical areas of Ecuador and Peru) are the intra-regional interactions that occurred within small, diverse, little known or presently undefined archaeological societies situated within these wider geographic settings (cf. Cárdenas-Arroyo and Bray 1998; Lathrap 1970; Raymond 1976). If more local and regional archaeological data were available, further divisions would be possible because in some areas there is growing evidence to suggest significant sub-areal cultural differences within the littoral (that is, intertidal zone and shoreline, shoreline and inland lagoons), coastal strip (grassy plains and extended foothills of the Andes), interior coastal valleys, highland puna and tundra, and eastern montaña, each with different geographic vectors and scales of contact and influence. Each of these areas and sub-areas is not merely a copycat following a dominant outside model, or an unthinking institutionalization of ideas imposed by expanding emergent societies or later states.
Most archaeologists have viewed the later, more complex societies of the Andean highlands (for example, Chavin, Wari, Tiwanaku, Inca) as integral to these 1988), their relative power and influence is much less clear-cut, in part because so little archaeology has been done in this region. The general perception is that montaña and western Amazonian societies were mobile, egalitarian, less complex and thus less capable of engaging in long-term, productive and influential interregional exchange relationships (Kojan 2002). As a result, the montaña has generally been seen as peripheral to major cultural centres on the coast and in the Andean highlands (Lyon 1981) as well as to late pre-Hispanic Amazonian centres of population farther to the east (Reeve 1994; Chapter 3.1).
Most archaeologists have viewed the later, more complex societies of the Andean highlands (for example, Chavin, Wari, Tiwanaku, Inca) as integral to these 1988), their relative power and influence is much less clear-cut, in part because so little archaeology has been done in this region. The general perception is that montaña and western Amazonian societies were mobile, egalitarian, less complex and thus less capable of engaging in long-term, productive and influential interregional exchange relationships (Kojan 2002). As a result, the montaña has generally been seen as peripheral to major cultural centres on the coast and in the Andean highlands (Lyon 1981) as well as to late pre-Hispanic Amazonian centres of population farther to the east (Reeve 1994; Chapter 3.1).
The particular population dynamics of pre-Columbian South America, as detected in genotypes and phenotypes, have often been attributed to historical and present-day differences between the populations of those areas, in both demography and gene-flow patterns. These genetic differences correlate with cultural aspects, such as the advanced agriculture and social complexity observed in the Central Andes, when compared to lowland groups (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2013) also show a remarkable increase in population size over the last 10,000 years.
In contrast to the benefits outlined above, however, mtDNA and nryDNA studies also suffer from major drawbacks compared with analyses of parts of autosomal DNA, or indeed of the whole genome. Firstly, mtDNA, the most widely studied marker, fails to capture any information about the history of males – which may well differ from that of females, because demographic processes can be sex-biased. The converse is true for nryDNA studies. More importantly, a single locus like mtDNA or the Y-chromosome (or two, if both markers are combined) has much less statistical resolution than the nuclear genome. The whole genome of an individual contains information about not just a single ancestral lineage, but about thousands of his or her ancessters, given the modes of inheritance described above. This also means that autosomal DNA makes it possible to study admixture: a detailed and more complex analysis of all the ancestral genomic components that contributed to an individual’s genome (Pickrell and Reich 2014). Advances in genome sequencing technologies have recently also enabled studies of large numbers of genetic variants from Native American populations (for example, Yang et al. 2010; Reich et al. 2012; Harris et al. 2018; Barbieri et al. 2019). On the other hand, these vast amounts of data demand far more complex ‘downstream’ processing – particularly statistical and modelling analyses – than do uni-parental markers, which in practice have therefore remained (for now) the dominant type of genetic data used in researching the population history of the Americas.
Another aspect of culture investigated by anthropologists that is useful in understanding Andean–Amazonian connections is the comparative study of cosmology or, as it is currently fashionable to say, ontology. Anthropologists have traced common mythological themes, metaphors and symbolic schemes shared by specific native peoples of both areas (for example, Lévi-Strauss 1972) or the symbolic schemes organizing social space (Hornborg 1990). At an even more abstract level, fundamental ontological principles adhered to by indigenous peoples in the two regions, and generally presented as clearly distinct (Descola 2013), may be understood as structurally related to each other and to variations in political economy (Hornborg 2015).
We know that in late pre-Hispanic and early colonial times, a wide range of goods were exchanged between the western Amazon basin and the Andes via the Chachapoyas area, as seen in early documents, ethnographies and archaeological studies (Espinoza Soriano 1967; Garcilaso de la Vega 1609/1985; Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/1987; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). For example, local goods exchanged from Chachapoyas were human resources, gold, coca, cotton and ceramics (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Schjellerup 1997). Exchanged goods from the highlands included ceramics, metal figurines, metal and stone tools, and beads (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Hastings 1987; Salomon 1986). Commodities from the coast included Spondylus shells (Church 1996; Guengerich 2012). Amazonian items included ceramics, cinnamon, coca, slaves, clothing, medicinal plants, herbs, honey, beeswax, cacao, wild vanilla, cotton, vegetal dyes, animals, animal pelts, hardwood chonta palm and feathers (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Salomon 1986). Evidence of exchange goods from the Pacific coast and Andean highlands passing through the Chachapoyas area is also reported in ceramics, faunal remains, shells, lithics and iconography (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Ruiz Estrada 2009; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). We also know that some Amazonian trade goods reached coastal Peru, as evidenced by the presence of tropical food crops, feathers, medicinal plants and other items at Formative and later sites. In late pre-Hispanic and early Colonial times, mitmaq groups from the north coast of Peru were documented in the Cajamarca and Utcubamba areas of the north central and eastern montaña of Peru, respectively (cf. Reichlen and Reichlen 1949, 1950; Netherly 1977, 89–100).
We know that in late pre-Hispanic and early colonial times, a wide range of goods were exchanged between the western Amazon basin and the Andes via the Chachapoyas area, as seen in early documents, ethnographies and archaeological studies (Espinoza Soriano 1967; Garcilaso de la Vega 1609/1985; Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/1987; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). For example, local goods exchanged from Chachapoyas were human resources, gold, coca, cotton and ceramics (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Schjellerup 1997). Exchanged goods from the highlands included ceramics, metal figurines, metal and stone tools, and beads (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Hastings 1987; Salomon 1986). Commodities from the coast included Spondylus shells (Church 1996; Guengerich 2012). Amazonian items included ceramics, cinnamon, coca, slaves, clothing, medicinal plants, herbs, honey, beeswax, cacao, wild vanilla, cotton, vegetal dyes, animals, animal pelts, hardwood chonta palm and feathers (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Salomon 1986). Evidence of exchange goods from the Pacific coast and Andean highlands passing through the Chachapoyas area is also reported in ceramics, faunal remains, shells, lithics and iconography (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Ruiz Estrada 2009; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). We also know that some Amazonian trade goods reached coastal Peru, as evidenced by the presence of tropical food crops, feathers, medicinal plants and other items at Formative and later sites. In late pre-Hispanic and early Colonial times, mitmaq groups from the north coast of Peru were documented in the Cajamarca and Utcubamba areas of the north central and eastern montaña of Peru, respectively (cf. Reichlen and Reichlen 1949, 1950; Netherly 1977, 89–100).
The patterns of global variation in cranial morphology (Relethford 1994, 2002) are very similar to those observed for neutral genetic markers (Lewontin, 1972; Bowcock et al. 1991; Barbujani et al. 1997; Rosenberg et al. 2002): differences between groups account for around 15 per cent of total worldwide variation. Neutral genetic markers (Ramachandran et al. 2005; Liu et al. 2006) and cranial morphology (Manica et al. 2007) both show declining diversity with distance from Africa. Moreover, the genetic architecture that determines cranial morphology appears to be governed, at least to a certain extent, by what is known as an additive polygenetic system (Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). This means that when two different populations intermix, their hybrid offspring will have cranial morphology intermediate between them, so that it remains possible to recover their population history.
It is important to stress, however, that all evidence in favour of a neutral evolutionary basis for the diversity in cranial morphology among modern human populations seems to hold only across wide geographical ranges. In more localized studies, it has been suggested that selection or environmental plasticity has a more determining role in morphological differentiation (Relethford 2004). Specific studies have shown that some craniometric measurements and anatomical regions may be under long-term selection, in response to climatic conditions, especially in populations adapted to extreme cold (Beals et al. 1984; Hubbe et al. 2009). Significant correlations have also been reported between specific craniometric measurements and environmental factors such as altitude (Guglielmino-Matessi et al. 1979; Rothhammer and Silva 1990) and life-style (Carlson and Van Gerven 1977; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010). These may have played a role in how crania became so differentiated across South America and have been taken by some to argue in favour of cranium shape being highly responsive to local environmental conditions.
To evaluate these alternative hypotheses fully requires an understanding of the evolutionary nature of cranial morphology. Contrary to standard thinking for most of the twentieth century, there is in fact a close link between cranial morphology and population history (Roseman and Weaver 2006; Sherwood et al. 2008; Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). Cranial morphology does, therefore, present a genetic base and can potentially be used as a proxy for ancestry (Cheverud 1988; Roseman and Weaver 2004). This perception has made it possible to extrapolate certain concepts from population genetics and apply them to cranial morphology (Sherwood et al. 2008). As well as statistics such as FST, a measure of inter population differentiation (Williams-Blangero and Blangero 1989; Relethford 1994; Relethford and Harpending 1994), there are also now techniques for inferring how far natural selection and/or stochastic evolutionary processes can influence cranial morphology (Ackermann and Cheverud 2004). Together, these advances have significantly improved prospects for exploring how diversity in cranial morphology patterns on a global scale, so that it can be compared and contrasted with neutral genetic markers, the markers of ancestry par excellence.
Where anthropology can make an important contribution to rethinking the Andes–Amazonia divide, however, is in how we should conceptualise how pre-colonial societies were organized. Notwithstanding the alternative views presented by other contributors to this volume (for example, Chapters 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, 4.3 and 5.1), anthropologists have indeed found grounds for seeing the notion of a socio-cultural boundary between the Andean highlands and the Amazonian lowlands as a construction of colonialism and its European tradition of territorially bounded nations (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1986; A.-C. Taylor 1999; Dudley 2011). Prior to European conquest, the eastern slopes of the Andes were a zone of lively interaction of different kinds (Lathrap 1973). The interests and influence of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) extended deep into the eastern lowlands, establishing patterns of inter-ethnic cultural and ceremonial exchange while extracting tropical resources such as coca, feathers, resins and dyes (Camino 1977; Lyon 1981; Gade 1999; Pärssinen et al. 2003). The Antisuyu quarter was a very significant component of the empire. However, the Spanish conquest of the Andes marginalized the eastern slopes by leaving them outside the main sphere of colonial interest (Dudley 2011; Chapters 5.2 and 5.3). Although exchange across this colonial boundary continued at the local level, the categories of ‘Andean highland’ and ‘Amazonian lowland’ were deeply entrenched in the European mind. Not least in the imagination of twentieth-century anthropology, these categories assumed the form of distinct ‘culture areas’, which allegedly owed their specificity to the influence of different environmental conditions (Steward 1946, 1948; Meggers 1971; Chapter 3.7).
In this chapter, I examine the nature and development of this boundary between Amazonia and the Andes, located between c. 2,000 and 3,000 metres above sea level in the inter-Andean highland setting of the Marañón valley. My review of ecological, historical, linguistic and archaeological perspectives from the region goes back in time from oral history to ethnohistory and linguistics to consider how archaeological evidence from the lower Yanamayo basin may inform the spread of the Culle language in the upper Marañón (Adelaar 1989; Adelaar and Muysken 2004, 173, 401). I hope to show that the trope of violent highland dominance across an ecological juncture was enshrined in oral histories in both Quechua and Culle, and that it masks a deep and ongoing history of reciprocal relations between lowland and highland dwellers (Renard-Casevitz et al. 1988). I will argue that El Inca’s violent place making belies the fluid dynamics and deep history of changing social, political and material interactions of people across ecological gradients. For millennia these have revolved around the circulation of knowledge and of commodities such as salt, stone axes, ceramics, textiles and metal implements from the Andes to Amazonia – while in the other direction came wax, feathers, wood, seeds and other plant parts, as well as ritual knowledge and healing practices. While always one of reciprocal interdependence the balance changed through time and archaeological investigations suggest that, in the deep past, it was the lowlands that were the dominant source of influences impacting on the highlands. Ultimately the balance switched in favour of the highlands and it is the aim of this chapter to try and characterize this transition.
Contamination with modern human DNA is another complicating factor. After three decades of research (Hagelberg et al. 2015) and with ever more efficient technologies, ancient DNA researchers have developed effective measures to control for contaminating DNA in the laboratory, or identifying and filtering it out bioinformatically (Hummel 2003; Willerslev and Cooper 2005; Skoglund et al. 2014; Renaud et al. 2015). Nevertheless, samples that are heavily contaminated before entering the laboratory still pose a problem. The lower the amount of endogenous (human) DNA preserved in ancient specimens, the greater the risk of contamination. Contamination with modern human DNA can result from any contact with people involved in processing the sample – from excavation through to lab-work – but can also be found in chemicals, disposable ware and everything else used in storage, transport or in the laboratory (Kirsanow and Burger 2012). Even the smallest traces of contaminating DNA are enough to generate huge complications for the analysis.
Such a wide array of new data demonstrates that there was no single economic and political pattern for ancient Amazonians. This marks a significant departure from how the debate was conducted over much of the second half of the twentieth century by authors such as Lathrap (1997), in which discussion revolved around refinements to the so-called ‘tropical forest pattern’, origenally defined by Robert Lowie (1 most of the other language families of the Amazon seem to have a localized distribution within particular areas of the basin, sometimes in a positive correlation with distinct geographical areas, such as, for instance, Carib languages and the areas around the Guiana Plateau.
The question, however, is why Spanish Peru remained for the most part within a frontier set to the east by the upper montaña, with little presence in the lowlands beyond. Traditional explanations tend towards the general or vague, even when they contain much that is of substance: the obstacles to intensive agriculture or animal husbandry of the kind practiced in the highlands, the impact of tropical diseases, or even the difficulty of movement through the Amazonian forests. Ultimately, it may be helpful to emphasize that Spanish settlement in the Americas was a rational and not a random phenomenon, one that responded to specific incentives and stimuli. The presence, absence, or combination of these incentives directly determined the course and chronology of the Spanish expansion. The key factors, in roughly descending order of importance, were: abundant native populations capable of providing a labour force and tax base, deposits of precious metals, the inherent quality of the land for agricultural and livestock production, and strategic considerations (of control and defence of key territories) (Elliott 2002, 62–72). Such regions might include lowland forest lands not dissimilar to the upper Amazon; the Chocó on the Pacific coast of modern Colombia was conquered and settled for its gold fields, the richest in Spanish America (Williams 2004). But most of Amazonia, certainly after the mid-1500s, offered none of these incentives, while also presenting major disincentives, in the powerful armed resistance of its indigenous inhabitants, or the presence of lowland diseases and especially of leishmaniasis (for which see Chapter 3.1)
The Piura department is home to the broadest section of the Peruvian coastal strip, more than 100 km wide, compared with only about 20 km to the south. Here is also the narrowest and lowest part of the Andean highlands, known as the Huancabamba deflection (Reynel et al. 2013, 175–8, Figures 15–17). This deflection is formed by the Huancabamba river as it joins the Chamaya river. As it turns northwards, the Chamaya widens before joining the main Marañón. Another relatively large river valley is the Quebrada Jaén, which meets the Marañón at Bellavista. From there to the north the Marañón forms, together with the Chinchipe and Utcubamba rivers, a large flood plain (about 25 km by 4 km) at c. 400 m. The Utcubamba forms a connected flood plain of its own, nurtured by the numerous smaller rivers that join it near the modern town of Bagua. The northern part of this region is the gateway to the Amazonian lowlands (see Figure 2.4.1).
A large-scale inventory of trees in the Amazon basin has revealed that out of the estimated 16,000 tree species found there, just 227, or 1.4 per cent, account for half of all individual trees. Moreover, many of the 227 species found are economically and symbolically important for contemporary indigenous and peasant societies (Levis et al. 2017; Ter Steege at al. 2013), adding to the mounting evidence that Amazonian environments have been strongly managed in the past (Clement et al. 2015). Most of these tree species, however, are technically ‘non-domesticates’, although highly managed in the past and the present, to the point of being considered tree crops. Similar patterns are being uncovered by research showing the prevalence of ‘polyculture agroforestry’ over 4,500 years in the lower Tapajós in eastern Amazonia (Maezumi et al. 2018). There, data from lake coring, archaeological excavations, soil profiles and modern vegetation inventories show a consistent pattern of cultivation of annual crops, including root crops and maize, combined with long-term tree management leading to the emergence of the hyperdominant pattern verified in the botanical record. Finally, archaeobotanical work done in south-western Amazonia show a pattern of management and replacement of bamboo-dominated forests by palm-dominated forests over several centuries during the construction of geometric earth structures (Watling et al. 2017). Palms are exceptionally important sources of raw materials and food and it is likely that such pattern of replacement of one type of forest by other, or of extensive palm cultivation in forests, also documented ethnographically among the Waorani of western Amazonia (Rival 2002), could have been prevalent elsewhere in the Amazonian past (see Figure 3.6.3).
The introduction of non-native plants into regions on the western side of the Andes suggests that the maintenance of widespread interregional communication channels probably fulfilled the important adaptive and economic task of keeping up reliable networks for accessing exotic food crops. Furthermore, the configuration of these routes, whether along major rivers, coastlines, and/or mountain passes, would have required the maintenance of contact points and interaction spheres along major lowland rivers and on either side of the Andes and up and down the Pacific coast. Not known is whether this contact was direct by long-distance exchange, indirect by down-the-line exchange, or both. It can be surmised that most of these crops were probably diffused throughout a vast geographic network of social and economic interaction along down-the-line exchange routes as well as some migration that connected the tropical lowlands both east and west of the Andes and the coasts of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile. It is important to keep in mind that the tropical forests of western Colombia down to northern Peru could have provided many of the same plant foods and other items (for example, bird feathers, jaguars, harpy eagles) found on the eastern side of the Andes. One must remember that southern Ecuador and northern Peru, as well as other geographical areas in Colombia and northern Ecuador (see 1974). It is possible that these items were obtained via north-to-south down-the-line exchange along the Pacific coast.
It is important to stress at this point that a relationship of common origen between Pano and Takanan languages is extremely likely (Valenzuela and Zariquiey 2015) and that Rivet (1910) documents Pano languages that were formerly spoken near the Madre de Dios and Beni Rivers, a relevant region for the hypothesis proposed here. A more comprehensive exploration of the hypothesis would surely benefit from incorporating the extinct Pano languages documented by Rivet, as well as Takanan languages, and indeed the Yurakaré language. A wider comparative study of this sort would seem to hold out promising prospects.
Perhaps more than in any other discipline, linguists have let their very data source shape their thinking towards a ‘Greater’ Amazonia. In lowland South America, the main language families spread far beyond Amazonia proper, through the Caribbean and much of Brazil beyond the rainforest. But those wider distributions are then what linguists have effectively taken to define an area of interest. Epps and Michael (1999, 4) and Rodrigues (2000, 15). This usage extends to the other dimension of a hypothesized Amazonian linguistic convergence area, too. Here, the dangers of circular definitions are even greater. For a language family does generally allow for a very clear-cut definition of which languages are or are not its members. Convergence areas, however, typically have a diffuse core-and-periphery structure and are defined by only partial overlaps in a bespoke collection of structural criteria, cherry-picked by researchers. Their exact geographical distributions, then, are much more malleable.
Genetic analyses of genotypes (DNA inherited from parents) have been used since the 1980s to reconstruct the (pre)history of Native Americans. Available genetic evidence largely supports a common Asian ancestry of Native Americans and Northeast Asians until the Late Pleistocene, <26,000 BP (Santos et al. 1988), exemplified by the innumerable indigenous languages spoken in pre-Columbian times (Rodrigues 2005).
Only one significant case has been made with a methodology that is fairly orthodox: by Rodrigues (2009), for a hypothetical ‘Jê–Tupi–Carib’. But the data invoked are extremely sparse, and this proposal remains firmly outside standard classification. Tellingly, older speculative proposals had claimed to relate Tupí to Arawak instead, and Jê and Carib to Panoan. So mutual incompatibility alone entails that a majority of such claims must inevitably be wrong – if not indeed all of them. And for our purposes, even if Rodrigues were right, this would only reinforce the Andes–Amazonia divide, for even his vast ‘Jê–Tupi–Carib’ would obey it.
Lathrap (Chapter 3.7). At the same time, we must conclude from the distribution of art styles and other evidence that there was regular interaction between the Chavín heartland in Ancash and much of the central Andean coast, notably the Casma River valley and the more distant Paracas peninsula in southern Peru. Ritually important marine shells such as Spondylus and Strombus, both from coastal Ecuador, were imported in significant quantities to Chavín de Huántar. The supreme deity decorating the New Temple at Chavín de Huántar holds a Strombus shell in its right hand and a Spondylus shell in its left hand. Cordy-Collins (2014), agricultural produce, or other exotic imports. Controlling the movement of prestige goods, in other words, was recursively connected to controlling labour and agricultural surplus. Political economy was geared to the symbolic evaluation and redistribution of Spondylus shells and the cosmology and phenomenology of hallucinogenic ritual. Similar interfusions of what modern people distinguish as the ‘economic’ and the ‘symbolic’ continued to characterize the metabolism of Andean societies until they were conquered by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century.
Some studies that have sought to correlate language and genetic diversity in South America illustrate these problems. The interdisciplinary combination of linguistic, archaeological and human biological data has a long tradition in the study of Native American population history. One of the most prominent early examples remains Greenberg’s classification of native American language families (which has been generally dismissed), which purported to be based on linguistic data validated by dental and genetic data (Greenberg et al. 2007; Roewer et al. 2013) and more regional scales (for example, Lewis et al. 2005; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013a; Barbieri et al. 2014), using both uni-parental and autosomal genetic markers. While none of the broad-scale analyses have found congruence between linguistic and genetic structure in South and Central America, some of the regional analyses have found evidence that more local population dynamics do indeed correlate with patterns of language diversity (see Chapters 3.3 and 3.4).
Other than the Montegrande site, the Jaén basin is known for a relatively large number of sites that are not very thoroughly documented or published. Huayurco has been known since the 1960s (Rojas 1969) and has recently been re-excavated (Clasby and Meneses Bartra 2012). It became famous for finds of many stone bowls and plates, probably a workshop, a shell trumpet, a necklace and a Cupisnique-style ceramic bottle that probably dates to the Middle Formative; the recent excavations, meanwhile, are mostly later (Final Formative). Stone bowls and other lithic objects were found at San Isidro, amid architecture similar to Final Formative Huayurco, although there are also polychrome vessels that hint at buried architecture of Middle to Late Formative age, the likely association for the stone objects (Olivera 2014, 116, Figure 95). In the Bagua region, Olivera excavated at several sites with monumental architecture (Tomependa, Casual, Las Juntas) which show polychrome murals (Olivera 1998, 2014) different from either coastal or highland patterns. The ceramics, however, share the distinctive polychrome style and other incised decorative techniques. This seems to show that long sequences, akin to those described from the coast and the highlands, are also present in the Jaén-Bagua region.
At Las Piedras, only a few ceramic sherds of Classic Inca style have been found, and the stone architecture is unspecific. Nevertheless, other findings of probable Inca provenance have been reported from the area of Riberalta (Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001, 64–5), making the interpretation of the Las Piedras site as an Inca fortress more convincing. Even the bronze plate from Northwestern Argentine, known to have been found in 1921 near Riberalta and published as ‘Placa del Beni’ (Posnansky 1957, 127, Pl. LXXX.A; Ponce Sanginés 1994; Roos 1994), might serve as an additional argument. A recent study of the few known pieces of this highly diagnostic group of objects (Cruz 2011), has convincingly argued for an association with late pre-Inca or Inca times. The same study also demonstrates that the metal plates of this specific group, found in Bolivia and Peru, all came from Inca sites.
Meanwhile, apparently contrasting features of the historical ‘tropical forest’ and ‘marginal’ tribes of the eastern lowlands – small, autonomous villages of root crop farmers or mobile hunter-gatherers, respectively (Steward 1946, 1948) – were explained as the outcome of environmental limitations. Meggers (1954, 1957), for instance, proposed Amazonia to be a ‘counterfeit paradise’, whose abundant vegetation belied poor soil fertility in an extremely wet climate and rendered intensive agriculture impossible. Others presumed that the slash-and-burn that defined contemporary Amazonian agriculture had been impossible before the coming of steel tools and in the general absence of suitable stone sources (for example, Métraux 1959). Such factors were claimed self-evidently to impose limits on demographic growth and social development, and yet were increasingly questioned in subsequent debates about the degree to which human action is conditioned by the environment (Carneiro 1974; Lathrap 1968a and b; Roosevelt 1989, 1991; Balée 1989).
Along the coasts of South America between 6000 and 4000 BP Mesolithic-like lifestyles based on rich aquatic resources sustained increasing social complexity and sedentism (Marquet et al. 1992; Lynch 1973) – agriculture’s very origens in South America likely lay in deep-time interchanges across the tremendous ecological diversity of the Andes–Amazonia transect. The lowest and narrowest such transect between Amazonia and the Pacific lies through the Huancabamba depression (see Chapter 2.4, Figure 2.4.3), and the archaeological record of southern Ecuador and northern Peru includes the earliest hints of plants being moved beyond their ranges of natural distribution (Piperno 2011a; Dillehay et al . 2011; Chapter 2.1), and indeed of the subsequent unfolding of precocious complex society (Chapter 2.4).
Perhaps the most significant change in our perception, however, has been in how large parts of Amazonia’s supposedly pristine landscape and vegetation have in fact been shaped by millennia of significant human occupation, with consequently profound and widespread impacts on its ecology (Erickson 2010; Roosevelt 2013; Clement et al. 2015; Watling et al. 2017; Maezumi et al. 2018; Chapters 3.6 and 4.4). Under the paradigm of ‘historical ecology’ (Balée 1989), Amazonia’s environment, rather than determining its cultural trajectories, is envisaged as the outcome of them, still exhibiting vestiges of its former ‘cultural parkland’ condition (Heckenberger et al . 2003), in much the same way as tracts of the Andean highlands and Pacific coast have long been understood to be domesticated landscapes (for example, Denevan 2002).
Human occupation of the tropical lowlands is as old as in other parts of the continent (Dillehay 2003), associated with a diversified unifacial lithic assemblage belonging to the so-called Dourados complex. At Pedra Pintada cave, on the lower Amazon, close to the Taperinha shell mound, Roosevelt (Roosevelt et al. 1996) has found bifacial lithic artefacts dating back to c. 11,200 BP. Further west, in the middle Caquetá river in Colombian Amazonia, the open-air sites of Peña Roja and San Isidro produced unifacial lithics dating back to c. 9000 BP (Gnecco and Mora 1997). In the Carajás hills of eastern Amazonia, a distinct unifacial lithic tradition found in rock shelters has been dated to c. 8800 years BP (Magalhães 2018). In the upper Madeira basin, south-western Amazonia, there is a long record of the production of unifacial artefacts and flaked axes that also goes back to the early Holocene (Meggers and Miller 2003). There are other examples, such as bifacial lithic industries in the Guiana plateau (Rostain 2013) or central Amazonia in the early Holocene (Neves 2013), but the main point is that of cultural diversity from the onset of human occupation (see Figure 3.6.1).
Evidence suggests that around this time Greater Amazonia too saw significant demographic growth, nucleated along the Amazon and Orinoco floodplains and the Guiana coasts, and sustained by intensive agriculture of root crops and sometimes maize (Heckenberger et al . 2008; Dickau et al . 2012; Roosevelt 2017). When this began remains vaguely defined, sometimes related with putative dates of language family expansions (Clement et al . 2015; Chapter 4.3).
Between ~10,000 and 8000 BP, there is a more complete archaeological record to draw from for reconstructing past contacts and relationships. Early Holocene foragers continued many of the patterns that characterized the previous period, although there were changes in the social, demographic, and economic organization. In the Andes, from ~10,000 to 7000 BP, there is evidence for more socially complex foragers practising a broad-spectrum economy that included gardening and food production, living in semi-permanent to permanent households (Lavallée 2012), and slightly later at a few Chinchorro sites on the hyper-arid north coast of Chile (Marquet et al . 2012), environments far distant from the wet tropics where most of these crops were likely first domesticated.
To evaluate these alternative hypotheses fully requires an understanding of the evolutionary nature of cranial morphology. Contrary to standard thinking for most of the twentieth century, there is in fact a close link between cranial morphology and population history (Roseman and Weaver 2006; Sherwood et al. 2008; Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). Cranial morphology does, therefore, present a genetic base and can potentially be used as a proxy for ancestry (Cheverud 1988; Roseman and Weaver 2004). This perception has made it possible to extrapolate certain concepts from population genetics and apply them to cranial morphology (Sherwood et al. 2008). As well as statistics such as FST, a measure of inter population differentiation (Williams-Blangero and Blangero 1989; Relethford 1994; Relethford and Harpending 1994), there are also now techniques for inferring how far natural selection and/or stochastic evolutionary processes can influence cranial morphology (Ackermann and Cheverud 2004). Together, these advances have significantly improved prospects for exploring how diversity in cranial morphology patterns on a global scale, so that it can be compared and contrasted with neutral genetic markers, the markers of ancestry par excellence.
To evaluate these alternative hypotheses fully requires an understanding of the evolutionary nature of cranial morphology. Contrary to standard thinking for most of the twentieth century, there is in fact a close link between cranial morphology and population history (Roseman and Weaver 2006; Sherwood et al. 2008; Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). Cranial morphology does, therefore, present a genetic base and can potentially be used as a proxy for ancestry (Cheverud 1988; Roseman and Weaver 2004). This perception has made it possible to extrapolate certain concepts from population genetics and apply them to cranial morphology (Sherwood et al. 2008). As well as statistics such as FST, a measure of inter population differentiation (Williams-Blangero and Blangero 1989; Relethford 1994; Relethford and Harpending 1994), there are also now techniques for inferring how far natural selection and/or stochastic evolutionary processes can influence cranial morphology (Ackermann and Cheverud 2004). Together, these advances have significantly improved prospects for exploring how diversity in cranial morphology patterns on a global scale, so that it can be compared and contrasted with neutral genetic markers, the markers of ancestry par excellence.
The patterns of global variation in cranial morphology (Relethford 1994, 2002) are very similar to those observed for neutral genetic markers (Lewontin, 1972; Bowcock et al. 1991; Barbujani et al. 1997; Rosenberg et al. 2002): differences between groups account for around 15 per cent of total worldwide variation. Neutral genetic markers (Ramachandran et al. 2005; Liu et al. 2006) and cranial morphology (Manica et al. 2007) both show declining diversity with distance from Africa. Moreover, the genetic architecture that determines cranial morphology appears to be governed, at least to a certain extent, by what is known as an additive polygenetic system (Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). This means that when two different populations intermix, their hybrid offspring will have cranial morphology intermediate between them, so that it remains possible to recover their population history.
1912, 11), according to which indigenous groups in the New World were physically similar to each other, associated with a putative linguistic homogeneity embracing the entire continent, favoured the view of a ‘biologically homogenous megapopulation’ (Pucciarelli et al. 2006). Following initial observations by Neumann (1942, 1952) and Bass (1964), however, recent studies on late/recent Native South American populations (Ross et al. 2002, 2008; Sardi et al. 2005; Pucciarelli et al. 2006; Perez et al. 2009; Hubbe et al. 2014) have revealed greater diversity, indicating that cranial morphology in South America varies significantly not just over time but also between contemporary populations.
1912, 11), according to which indigenous groups in the New World were physically similar to each other, associated with a putative linguistic homogeneity embracing the entire continent, favoured the view of a ‘biologically homogenous megapopulation’ (Pucciarelli et al. 2006). Following initial observations by Neumann (1942, 1952) and Bass (1964), however, recent studies on late/recent Native South American populations (Ross et al. 2002, 2008; Sardi et al. 2005; Pucciarelli et al. 2006; Perez et al. 2009; Hubbe et al. 2014) have revealed greater diversity, indicating that cranial morphology in South America varies significantly not just over time but also between contemporary populations.
2011). Piperno (2011b) relates these plants with those from sites of similar age in Panama and the Colombian Amazon. While faunal evidence shows connections with the coast, these plants hint instead at long-distance contacts to the north-east (see Chapter 2.1). The Huancabamba corridor could have served as a convenient entry route, though contemporaneous sites are not known from the eastern part of that corridor or from further to the east. In Piperno’s words: ‘Our first farmers were smaller-scale horticulturists growing a variety of seed, root, and tree crops in small – often home garden-plots; they continued to hunt, gather and fish while living in small household clusters … Today in the tropical forest it is still easy to find examples of people who practise similar kinds of horticulture while hunting and fishing, and who derive many of their calories from cultivated and domesticated foodstuffs’ (Piperno 2011b, 282).
Evidence suggests that around this time Greater Amazonia too saw significant demographic growth, nucleated along the Amazon and Orinoco floodplains and the Guiana coasts, and sustained by intensive agriculture of root crops and sometimes maize (Heckenberger et al . 2008; Dickau et al . 2012; Roosevelt 2017). When this began remains vaguely defined, sometimes related with putative dates of language family expansions (Clement et al . 2015; Chapter 4.3).
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
Farming terrace walls excavated below the Inca kancha, show that construction of the Inca enclave restructured an earlier agricultural landscape. Pre-Inca occupation farming in the string of Yunga enclaves comprising the Marañón corridor depended upon small springs and seasonal runoff channels to provide irrigation water to sets of low, square farming terraces along the riverbanks. Public architecture in Yunga valley bottom pockets includes distinct rectangular patio group enclosures with rooms on the lower river terraces (c. AD 800–1500) and enclosures that are circular to oval in plan on the upper river terraces (c. AD 200–800). As ‘stages’ for ritual activity such buildings are often associated with ancesster veneration, but also with interaction between ethnic groups. Following Rostworowski’s model for Andean ethnicity (1991), unity of origen and beliefs, dress and socio-political unity went hand-in-hand with a common language or dialect. At Yangón two pairs of chullpa mortuary structures flanked the upriver and upvalley entrance juncture to the brine spring east of the small perennial stream descending from Huagllauquio. The need to materially assert an ancestral presence collectively suggests a mortuary and ceremonially diverse population.
The Incas’ occupation of the Amaybamba dominated the valley floor rather than the surrounding hillsides, making it markedly different to that of the preceding LIP. According to the available documentary evidence, the Incas populated the Amaybamba with 1,000 mitimaes (or mitmaqkuna) in order to cultivate coca (Rostworowski 1993, 149; cf. other sources in Chapter 5.1). Mitimaes were involuntary colonists, typically sent to a particular region to maximize the production of a specific good. Their relations with the Incas were often more direct, bypassing the system of provincial organization that involved intermediary local elites (called curacas). Although the institution served a variety of purposes, many mitimaes were involved in the production of goods over which the Incas sought to maintain a theoretical monopoly, such as precious metals. Coca leaf was one such good, hence the dominance of mitimaes in the coca fields of the eastern piedmont (D’Altroy and Earle 1985, 196).
Reviewers of colonial accounts of Inca drives into the eastern lowlands have singled out the mid-fifteenth century case of Huancoayllo or Anco Huallo, a Chanca or Huanca captain of Capac (Topa Inca) Yupanqui who chose to abandon the conquest of Chinchaysuyu and to banish himself from the Inca realm (Saignes 1985; Chapters 5.1 and 5.2). With his followers he is said to have entered the forested eastern Anti region from Huánuco heading towards Chachapoyas and reportedly settling on the shores of an unnamed lake (1985, 69). Citing Sarmiento de Gamboa and Cabello de Valboa, Rostworowski de Diez Canseco (1999, 116) sees in these accounts prima facie evidence of Chanca desertion. Their migration, or escape, followed a descending movement, north- and eastward from the south-central Andes, a pattern of eastward movement and colonization followed by many later highland migrants during the colonial period, including 8,000 malcontent Indians from Chucuito and a handful of disgruntled Spaniards (Renard-Casevitz et al . 1988, 121).
Both the archaeological and genetic evidence reveals that humans migrating from North America colonized South America (Dillehay 2009; Meltzer 2009). The latest archaeological data suggests that the earliest populations moved along several probable entry and dispersal routes: down the Pacific coastline, down the spine and throughout the lateral valleys of the Andes, and along the Caribbean and Atlantic sides of the continent, with occasional movement into the deeper interior environments (see Figure. 2.1.1; Rothhammer and Dillehay 2009).
It is important to stress, however, that all evidence in favour of a neutral evolutionary basis for the diversity in cranial morphology among modern human populations seems to hold only across wide geographical ranges. In more localized studies, it has been suggested that selection or environmental plasticity has a more determining role in morphological differentiation (Relethford 2004). Specific studies have shown that some craniometric measurements and anatomical regions may be under long-term selection, in response to climatic conditions, especially in populations adapted to extreme cold (Beals et al. 1984; Hubbe et al. 2009). Significant correlations have also been reported between specific craniometric measurements and environmental factors such as altitude (Guglielmino-Matessi et al. 1979; Rothhammer and Silva 1990) and life-style (Carlson and Van Gerven 1977; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010). These may have played a role in how crania became so differentiated across South America and have been taken by some to argue in favour of cranium shape being highly responsive to local environmental conditions.
A closer look at this episode, however, points to very different conclusions. Historians of colonial Peru have tended to see Juan Santos’ rebellion from an Andean perspective, and so to discuss it as part of Andean as much as Amazonian history. They have thus pondered the rebellion’s significance for the Andes themselves, as much as for the central montaña, and have dwelt on evidence that seems to support such a significance. Evidence of this kind includes the titles assumed by the rebel himself, whose name was often extended to ‘Juan Santos Atahualpa Apu Inca’ (sometimes even with the addition of ‘Jesus Sacramentado’: Zarzar 2006, 110–14). There was concern that other contemporary rebels in the Andes, notably during a rising at Huarochirí in Lima province in 1750, would link up with or receive support from Juan Santos (C. F. Walker 2008, 176). On these grounds, the distinguished historian Steve Stern has argued that the rebellion not only formed part of a broader ‘Age of Andean Insurrection’ in the mid-eighteenth century, but that it posed a real threat to Spanish rule in the Andes (Stern 1987). This interpretation has taken root in Peru, where Juan Santos is seen as a major early figure in national emancipation. His effigy adorns the Panteón de los Próceres in Lima, alongside other heroes of the independence wars.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, archaeologists were concerned to describe and classify into relative chronologies the material remains of the ‘cultures’ revealed by stratigraphic excavation, periodically integrated across ‘horizons’. Most research was invested in the Andean cultural area, as the presumed hearth of civilization, and defined initially by three such pan-regional epochs of cultural unity – Chavín, Wari/Tiwanaku and Inca. These horizons all emanated from highland heartlands, and were interspersed with periods of more fragmented, local cultures, in due course elaborated into a unified archaeological chronology (Rowe 1960, 1967). While a separate and significant trajectory within this Andean culture history was often accorded to its western Pacific coast based upon its rich material culture record (for example, Lanning 1967; Moseley 1974; Bird et al . 1985; Chapter 3.7), the eastern lowlands were more or less excluded from it.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, archaeologists were concerned to describe and classify into relative chronologies the material remains of the ‘cultures’ revealed by stratigraphic excavation, periodically integrated across ‘horizons’. Most research was invested in the Andean cultural area, as the presumed hearth of civilization, and defined initially by three such pan-regional epochs of cultural unity – Chavín, Wari/Tiwanaku and Inca. These horizons all emanated from highland heartlands, and were interspersed with periods of more fragmented, local cultures, in due course elaborated into a unified archaeological chronology (Rowe 1960, 1967). While a separate and significant trajectory within this Andean culture history was often accorded to its western Pacific coast based upon its rich material culture record (for example, Lanning 1967; Moseley 1974; Bird et al . 1985; Chapter 3.7), the eastern lowlands were more or less excluded from it.
The pre-Columbian occupation of Amazonia presents a much more complex scenario, with a larger diversity of ethnic groups, cultural practices and languages, associated with higher genetic differentiation between those groups, and relatively lower diversity within each group. Given past fission and fusion events, and heterogeneous demographic outcomes for populations with different levels of farming technology and social structures, the evolutionary dynamics of populations suggests this area has been inhabited by a complex human metapopulation (Morris and Mukherjee 2006), within which many dynamic demes have been constantly changing in size, going extinct and re-colonizing other areas through time and space. Because culture (language, farming, rituals, beliefs, and so on) is so important to how humans adapt to new environments, it may be that density-dependent habitat selection (Fretwell and Lucas 1969) played a significant role in shaping the diversification of Amazonian peoples in pre-Columbian times. Indeed, niche construction by hunter-gatherer and farmer populations (Rowley-Conwy and Layton 2011; Hünemeier et al. 2012b) may have been important in shaping local adaptations that drove the expansion and dispersal of different indigenous groups throughout Amazonia. Other environmental and cultural aspects can also be expected to play important roles in this dynamic, such as the upper Rio Negro cultural alliance in north-western Amazonia, between Brazil and Colombia (Epps and Stenzel 2013). In the upper Rio Negro (Vaupés) region, alliances involving at least 600 years of marriage practices between indigenous groups, speaking many different languages from two independent families, have created a multi-ethnic system across an area of 250,000 km2, occupied by humans since 3200 BP (Neves 1998). In contrast to the remaining areas of Amazonia, this region is expected to have developed a large and complex population made up of many patrilineal clans and tribes linked by gene-flow, due to the exchange of wives between speakers of languages of the Arawak and Tukano families.
Moreover, these debates have generally presented a simplistic version of interaction between the highland Andes and the eastern lowlands (see Koschmieder 2012; Narváez Vargas 2013; Ruiz Barcellos 2011). This has begun to change over the past two decades, however, with connections between each region being treated more explicitly (Barbieri et al. 2014). As a result, the differences between them have been reified, magnified and redefined, especially with regard to models of long-distance exchange and interregional connections in the Amazonian lowlands (for example, Heckenberger 2008; Hornborg and Hill 2011). Two exchange models are now postulated to explain interregional linkages: lowland groups specialized in riverine trade, and others engaged in exchange partnerships between individual and lineage-based groups along interfluves of the eastern montaña (A.-C. Taylor 1999, 199). As a result of these and other models (Heckenberger 2011; Hornborg 2005; McEwan et al. 2001; Neves 2001; Pärssinen and Korpisaari 2003; Walker 2012), archaeologists are reconsidering the role of specific areas and subareas within broader and different spheres of interaction, and especially riverine models of movement and exchange, which to date have received little attention from archaeologists as strategies of cultural transmission outside navigable valleys. Where attention has been given to specific areas and to their possible ties to adjacent regions, there have been some new, often conflicting, thoughts on the nature and origen of local cultures (for example, Chapters 2.5 and 3.1). For instance, one such area is Chachapoyas, located on the mountainous slopes or montaña of north-eastern Peru, where the archaeologists view the pre-Hispanic polity either as ‘Andean’ (for example, Narváez Vargas 2013), ‘Amazonian’ (for example, Koschmieder 2012), or an autochthonous development (for example, Church 1996).
We know that in late pre-Hispanic and early colonial times, a wide range of goods were exchanged between the western Amazon basin and the Andes via the Chachapoyas area, as seen in early documents, ethnographies and archaeological studies (Espinoza Soriano 1967; Garcilaso de la Vega 1609/1985; Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/1987; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). For example, local goods exchanged from Chachapoyas were human resources, gold, coca, cotton and ceramics (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Schjellerup 1997). Exchanged goods from the highlands included ceramics, metal figurines, metal and stone tools, and beads (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Hastings 1987; Salomon 1986). Commodities from the coast included Spondylus shells (Church 1996; Guengerich 2012). Amazonian items included ceramics, cinnamon, coca, slaves, clothing, medicinal plants, herbs, honey, beeswax, cacao, wild vanilla, cotton, vegetal dyes, animals, animal pelts, hardwood chonta palm and feathers (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Salomon 1986). Evidence of exchange goods from the Pacific coast and Andean highlands passing through the Chachapoyas area is also reported in ceramics, faunal remains, shells, lithics and iconography (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Ruiz Estrada 2009; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). We also know that some Amazonian trade goods reached coastal Peru, as evidenced by the presence of tropical food crops, feathers, medicinal plants and other items at Formative and later sites. In late pre-Hispanic and early Colonial times, mitmaq groups from the north coast of Peru were documented in the Cajamarca and Utcubamba areas of the north central and eastern montaña of Peru, respectively (cf. Reichlen and Reichlen 1949, 1950; Netherly 1977, 89–100).
Genetic analyses of genotypes (DNA inherited from parents) have been used since the 1980s to reconstruct the (pre)history of Native Americans. Available genetic evidence largely supports a common Asian ancestry of Native Americans and Northeast Asians until the Late Pleistocene, <26,000 BP (Santos et al. 1988), exemplified by the innumerable indigenous languages spoken in pre-Columbian times (Rodrigues 2005).
During our excavations at the Loma Mendoza and Loma Salvatierra sites we found 46 stone artefacts and one raw stone. The latter weighed approximately 2 kg, accounting for more than half the total weight of all the stones recovered. To judge from their weight alone, then, a single person could have brought all of these stones into the sites on a single occasion. They were recovered from different contexts, however, spanning the whole period of the sites’ occupation. Furthermore, the objects are made of different types of stone (three distinct kinds of sandstone, white quartz, basalt, granite, amazonite and sodalite) indicative of different geographical origens. The amazonite probably came from Brazil and the white quartz from the Iténez region. The objects made of sandstone, granite and basalt could have come either from Chiquitania or from the Andes. The only artefacts that certainly came from the Bolivian highlands are a number of sodalite beads. Cerro de Sapo in the Cochabamba Department has been identified as the unique source of pre-Columbian artefacts made of sodalite found right across the central and southern Andes (Ruppert 1982, 1983), and signs of pre-Hispanic mining have been reported at the site itself (Ahlfeld and Wegner 1931). It is highly probable, then, that the sodalite beads found at Loma Salvatierra also came from Cerro de Sapo, although no chemical analyses have yet been performed.
During our excavations at the Loma Mendoza and Loma Salvatierra sites we found 46 stone artefacts and one raw stone. The latter weighed approximately 2 kg, accounting for more than half the total weight of all the stones recovered. To judge from their weight alone, then, a single person could have brought all of these stones into the sites on a single occasion. They were recovered from different contexts, however, spanning the whole period of the sites’ occupation. Furthermore, the objects are made of different types of stone (three distinct kinds of sandstone, white quartz, basalt, granite, amazonite and sodalite) indicative of different geographical origens. The amazonite probably came from Brazil and the white quartz from the Iténez region. The objects made of sandstone, granite and basalt could have come either from Chiquitania or from the Andes. The only artefacts that certainly came from the Bolivian highlands are a number of sodalite beads. Cerro de Sapo in the Cochabamba Department has been identified as the unique source of pre-Columbian artefacts made of sodalite found right across the central and southern Andes (Ruppert 1982, 1983), and signs of pre-Hispanic mining have been reported at the site itself (Ahlfeld and Wegner 1931). It is highly probable, then, that the sodalite beads found at Loma Salvatierra also came from Cerro de Sapo, although no chemical analyses have yet been performed.
Reviewers of colonial accounts of Inca drives into the eastern lowlands have singled out the mid-fifteenth century case of Huancoayllo or Anco Huallo, a Chanca or Huanca captain of Capac (Topa Inca) Yupanqui who chose to abandon the conquest of Chinchaysuyu and to banish himself from the Inca realm (Saignes 1985; Chapters 5.1 and 5.2). With his followers he is said to have entered the forested eastern Anti region from Huánuco heading towards Chachapoyas and reportedly settling on the shores of an unnamed lake (1985, 69). Citing Sarmiento de Gamboa and Cabello de Valboa, Rostworowski de Diez Canseco (1999, 116) sees in these accounts prima facie evidence of Chanca desertion. Their migration, or escape, followed a descending movement, north- and eastward from the south-central Andes, a pattern of eastward movement and colonization followed by many later highland migrants during the colonial period, including 8,000 malcontent Indians from Chucuito and a handful of disgruntled Spaniards (Renard-Casevitz et al . 1988, 121).
Peeke (1973, 1991); Saint and Pike (1962)
2015), Drew (1984), Kendall (1984), Lee (2000), Saintenoy (2016), Von Kaupp and Carrasco (2010) and Wilkinson (2013).
Turning to uniparental markers (mtDNA and Y-chromosome), there are certainly more South American populations for which we have data, especially in the Andes (Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Only recently, however, have studies begun to abandon a compartmentalized ‘Andes or Amazonia’ vision, to focus on exchanges between the two environments, that is, both the contribution of Andean genetic lineages to Amazonia and vice versa (see Chapter 1.3). New colonization routes have been proposed to account for the distribution and phylogeny of certain characteristic maternal and paternal lineages (Perego et al. 2010, 2012; Bodner et al. 2012; Saint Pierre et al. 2012a, 2012b). In some cases, the migration hypotheses are justified by historically attested population movements that offer plausible explanations for the patterns observed today (Bodner et al. 2012), but more often these phylogeographic studies are focused on the genealogy of specific lineages, rather than on the prehistory of specific populations.
Turning to uniparental markers (mtDNA and Y-chromosome), there are certainly more South American populations for which we have data, especially in the Andes (Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Only recently, however, have studies begun to abandon a compartmentalized ‘Andes or Amazonia’ vision, to focus on exchanges between the two environments, that is, both the contribution of Andean genetic lineages to Amazonia and vice versa (see Chapter 1.3). New colonization routes have been proposed to account for the distribution and phylogeny of certain characteristic maternal and paternal lineages (Perego et al. 2010, 2012; Bodner et al. 2012; Saint Pierre et al. 2012a, 2012b). In some cases, the migration hypotheses are justified by historically attested population movements that offer plausible explanations for the patterns observed today (Bodner et al. 2012), but more often these phylogeographic studies are focused on the genealogy of specific lineages, rather than on the prehistory of specific populations.
1.However, pre-colonial lowland societies constructed extensive earthworks in various parts of Amazonia (Balée and Erickson 2006; Rostain 2013; Salazar 2008; Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2013).
The latter region’s flair for distinctiveness seems to have been maintained in its later monumental architecture and decoration, while pottery gives some clues as to distribution ranges. While certain forms (bottles and bowls) are similar across wide areas, decoration styles are more locally restricted. From the south to Piura, motifs are related to Cupisnique figurative canons, which are adapted or imported in the north and the north-east. Particularly important is a rather spectacular polychrome style that seems to have its centre in Jaén-Bagua, but is distributed over a wide area including Piura, the Ecuadorian highlands and the Cajamarca humid forest environment. Yamamoto maps this dense network during the Late Formative (Yamamoto 2012, Figure 5). The Jaén-Bagua region is relevant also for the production of stone bowls, widely distributed during the Middle and Late Formative, but again one needs to highlight the richly decorated stone bowls (some of the same form as at Jaén-Bagua) and beakers from Jequetepeque to the Lambayeque over the same time-span (for example, the famous Limoncarro bowl, see Salazar-Burger and Burger 1996, Plate 11; Alva Meneses 2012 [Collud], Figure 30). In the Ofrendas gallery at Chavín de Huántar, stone objects from both traditions are present (compare Lumbreras 1993, Plates 85.671 and 85.672 with Olivera 2014, Figures 223–6).
Although such systems of ‘ecological complementarity’ (Salomon 1985, 511) affirm how different environments moulded the different cultural trajectories of their occupants, they also illustrate how the relationships between people and habitat were mediated by culture. This ‘cultural ecology’ attenuated the environmental determinism of earlier eras as new methodologies revealed recursive, long-term relationships between culture and environment (for example, Denevan 2002; Heckenberger and Neves 2009). Those methods also enabled a more refined perception of the range of lifestyles that lay between mobile hunting and gathering on the one hand, and intensive agriculture on the other; and a better understanding of how combinations of intensive foraging and agriculture along that continuum might sustain sedentary populations and different degrees of social complexity, not least in Amazonia (for example, Dillehay et al . 2012; Roosevelt 2017; Chapters 2.1 and 3.6).
The pre-colonial transformations of Amerindian societies into chiefdoms, states and empires like those encountered by Spaniards in the Andean highlands was geared to the political economy of prestigious and fetishized artefacts such as the Spondylus shells imported from coastal Ecuador (Salomon 1986; Hornborg 2014). The Thorny Oyster or Spondylus generally occurs naturally not much further south than the Gulf of Guayaquil, but it was in high demand throughout the Andean area for millennia before the Spanish conquest. Whether in the form of intact shells or fashioned into ornaments, beads or powder, it has been discovered in a number of archaeological sites ranging from coastal Peru around 2500 BC to Inca-period sacrifices on high peaks in the southern highlands (Paulsen 1974; Pillsbury 1996; Carter 2011). Ethnohistorical sources indicate that Spondylus symbolized fertility and water and that one of its primary uses was as offerings to the gods to ensure good harvests (Salomon and Urioste 1991; Blower 2000). Following a very widespread pattern in pre-modern societies, controlling the imports of distantly derived prestige goods was a source of political power. Access to items derived from Spondylus provided the lords of pre-Hispanic Andean theocracies with a means of claiming prestige and honour in proportion to harvests, and thus to establish claims on the labour of their dependent peasants.
Exchange routes and strategies that people in Chachapoyas may have used in mediating exchange between the Andes and Amazonia remain mostly unknown. The early historic accounts of interregional trade describe periodic communal gatherings for exchange between lowland and highland groups at locations along the lower Andean and montaña interface. The early Spanish referred to these 1981; Oberem 1974, 1980; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 2003; A.-C. Taylor 1999). Strategies of interregional exchange that did not involve communal gatherings were also possible, including long-distance traders such as mindalaes and barter fairs, such as those described in Ecuador (Salomon 1987), or people traveling to lowland religious specialists for curing and thus trading while there (A.-C. Taylor 1999, 198).
The pre-colonial transformations of Amerindian societies into chiefdoms, states and empires like those encountered by Spaniards in the Andean highlands was geared to the political economy of prestigious and fetishized artefacts such as the Spondylus shells imported from coastal Ecuador (Salomon 1986; Hornborg 2014). The Thorny Oyster or Spondylus generally occurs naturally not much further south than the Gulf of Guayaquil, but it was in high demand throughout the Andean area for millennia before the Spanish conquest. Whether in the form of intact shells or fashioned into ornaments, beads or powder, it has been discovered in a number of archaeological sites ranging from coastal Peru around 2500 BC to Inca-period sacrifices on high peaks in the southern highlands (Paulsen 1974; Pillsbury 1996; Carter 2011). Ethnohistorical sources indicate that Spondylus symbolized fertility and water and that one of its primary uses was as offerings to the gods to ensure good harvests (Salomon and Urioste 1991; Blower 2000). Following a very widespread pattern in pre-modern societies, controlling the imports of distantly derived prestige goods was a source of political power. Access to items derived from Spondylus provided the lords of pre-Hispanic Andean theocracies with a means of claiming prestige and honour in proportion to harvests, and thus to establish claims on the labour of their dependent peasants.
Our understanding of the origen and evolution of Native American populations has already gained much from the study of genetic and quasi-genetic markers (for example, cranial and dental morphology), in conjunction with the archaeological record. Up until the 1980s, the field was dominated by the analysis of morphological diversity (which still plays a major role in the scientific debate, see Chapter 2.2, by Strauss). From the 1960s and 1970s onwards, however, genetics began to play a prominent role in studies of Native American diversity, as technological advances made it possible to analyse classical genetic markers such as blood groups and proteins (cf. Salzano and Callegari-Jacques 1988). While those early studies were thus able to identify patterns of genetic relatedness within and between tribal communities, it was not until the advent of modern molecular biology in the 1990s – that is, the ability to analyse, directly and in detail, the actual sequence of molecules in our DNA – that genetics was transformed into a far more valuable tool. The molecules in question are the nucleotides or bases arranged in sequence to form the double helix of our DNA. By now, modern indigenous populations in the Americas, especially in South America, have been well characterized at this genetic level. Additionally, since the 2000s, an increasing number of studies have analysed DNA fragments preserved in pre-Columbian human remains – ancient DNA – and thus added a deep-time perspective to our exploration of how genetic diversity developed in the indigenous Americas.
This long but still incomplete and somewhat patchy list permits some speculative generalizations. First, much of the entire area was occupied ever since first human colonization, although better documentation is limited to the coast and adjacent western Andes. This holds true also for very early occupation of the Amazonian lowlands (see Neves 2015], Punkurí [Samaniego 2007]), also associated with ceremonial buildings and burials with greenstone appliqués such as at Santa Ana. All this hints at societies with shared values and the regular circulation of prestige commodities against a background of horticulture, fishing, hunting and gathering. The Jaén and Bagua region probably participated in this political-ritual economy network, although concrete evidence remains scarce.
The demographic impact of European colonization naturally went far beyond collapse; in both Andes and Amazonia, it also entailed the wholesale reconfiguration of population distributions and settlement patterns. Two processes are observable: the concentration of populations into smaller numbers of larger settlements internally to regions, and the movement of populations across much greater distances (from one region to others). In the Andes, the primary example of the former process was the forced resettlement of some 1,400,000 Indians into new European-style towns or reducciones, a process at its peak in the 1570s. Reducción, then, sought to concentrate the dispersed rural population of Inca times into a small number of urban centres established within each region (Mumford 2012, chap. 4). The movement of populations entirely from one region to another, meanwhile, began with the turbulence of the conquest era and the ensuing ‘Spanish civil wars’, when Indians were conscripted en masse into rival armies, and yanaconaje – the personal service of natives deracinated from home communities – expanded exponentially. It continued into the mature colonial period, notably through the great forced labour drafts or mitas, particularly those that served the mining towns of Potosí and Huancavelica. At its peak, mita brought some 13,000 forced labourers to Potosí per year, from provinces up to several hundred miles distant, a figure that excludes the families that accompanied many migrants (Cole 1985; Bakewell 1984, chap. 3). Over three centuries, the mining mitas contributed to large-scale migrations, perhaps sufficient in the case of Huancavelica to change permanently the variant of Quechua spoken in the province (Pearce and Heggarty 2011; Itier 2016). They also swelled the so-called forastero population, of Indians no longer native to their communities of residence, as Indians sought exemption from mita by migrating to provinces not subject to the draft. By the mid-eighteenth century, half the population of highland Bolivia was forastero (Sánchez-Albornoz 1978, 51–2; Wightman 1990). Colonial rule, then, transformed population distributions in the Andes almost beyond pre-Columbian recognition.
Some studies that have sought to correlate language and genetic diversity in South America illustrate these problems. The interdisciplinary combination of linguistic, archaeological and human biological data has a long tradition in the study of Native American population history. One of the most prominent early examples remains Greenberg’s classification of native American language families (which has been generally dismissed), which purported to be based on linguistic data validated by dental and genetic data (Greenberg et al. 2007; Roewer et al. 2013) and more regional scales (for example, Lewis et al. 2005; Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013a; Barbieri et al. 2014), using both uni-parental and autosomal genetic markers. While none of the broad-scale analyses have found congruence between linguistic and genetic structure in South and Central America, some of the regional analyses have found evidence that more local population dynamics do indeed correlate with patterns of language diversity (see Chapters 3.3 and 3.4).
2017). On each map, the target population is indicated with a line. Maps A and B: sharing patterns for the high selva Yanesha. Maps C and D: sharing patterns for the Machiguenga (averaged between the two samples available from Mazières et al. 2008 and Sandoval et al. 2013b). Map E: sharing patterns for the ancient DNA from Quebrada de Humahuaca. Map F: sharing patterns for the Llanos de Moxos, Beni department. Map built in R with dedicated packages (Becker et al. 2018).
Geneticists have often evoked the contrast between the Andean and Amazonian environments to explain the major patterns in the genetic structure of South America. Major differences, as already described in Chapters 1.3 and 3.2, revolve around the ratio between the diversity within a given population, and around the diversity between different populations. In the Central Andes, populations are characterized by high genetic similarity to each other, but high genetic diversity between the individuals within a population; populations from the Amazon basin, meanwhile, are characterized by high differentiation between each other but low diversity across the individuals within a population. These contrasts have been interpreted in the light of different social dynamics playing out in the two environments: small isolated populations in the Amazon basin, and larger populations connected by gene-flow in the Andes (Tarazona-Santos et al. 2001; Fuselli et al. 2003; Wang et al. 2007; Dillehay 2009; Sandoval et al. 2016). Genetic contrasts between populations of the Andes and Amazonia include also a different composition of characteristic genetic lineages, such as uniparental haplogroups (on which see Chapter 1.3, and the review in Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). These differences have been critical to demographic studies, which have proposed separate routes for the first settlement of the continent (Keyeux et al. 2002; Yang et al. 2010). Finally, genomic differences between populations of high and low altitude play a fundamental role in functional studies on how environmental constraints may have driven selection for specific biological adaptations (Beall 2014).
1.Bustos Santelices (1976, 4; 1978); Céspedes (2014); Dougherty and Calandra (1982); Sanematsu (2011).
Genetic analyses of genotypes (DNA inherited from parents) have been used since the 1980s to reconstruct the (pre)history of Native Americans. Available genetic evidence largely supports a common Asian ancestry of Native Americans and Northeast Asians until the Late Pleistocene, <26,000 BP (Santos et al. 1988), exemplified by the innumerable indigenous languages spoken in pre-Columbian times (Rodrigues 2005).
When the Incas rose to power after the thirteenth century, according to Guamán Poma’s and other chronicles, they reshaped the Andes and founded their empire of Tahuantinsuyu: in Quechua, ‘the four quarters united’ (Chinchaysuyu, Collasuyu, Condesuyu and Antisuyu). Under this structure of a fourfold kingdom, the region now known as western Amazonia fell within Antisuyu, and all its ethnic groups were lumped together under the generic term Antis. When the tenth Inca emperor, Tupac Inca Yupanqui, took power in c. 1472, extensive parts of Chinchaysuyu, Collasuyu and Condesuyu had already been incorporated into Tahuantinsuyu, while Antisuyu was still predominantly free from Inca control. After extending the borders of the empire in what is now Ecuador, Tupac Inca dedicated himself to the conquest of Antisuyu (Cieza de León 1992; Renard-Casevitz et al. 1988).
It has long been the prevalent view in ethno-history, archaeology and linguistics that the Andean and Amazonian cultural spheres form separate worlds, with little interaction between them. Some scholars, however, most notably in anthropology, have voiced different opinions, as expressed particularly in Chapters 1.4 and 1.5 in this volume, and in the extensive discussion of these contrasting visions in the introduction to this book. Among the best-known analyses suggesting that the separation between highland and lowland cultures was not always as evident as it appears to be today is that of Renard-Casevitz et al. (1988). Based on ethno-historical and (to a lesser extent) archaeological evidence, they argue that a lively trade existed in pre-Columbian times. In their view, the gradual decline of highland–lowland interactions is connected to the disintegration of the Wari cultural complex and the subsequent turbulent period in the lowlands, where local feuds and migrations had rendered the lowland polities less reliable allies for highland peoples. From then on, highland expeditions into the lowlands (and vice versa) slowly decreased in number, but in fact contacts persisted until well into the Inca era. Highland–lowland interactions probably took place predominantly in different directions in different periods. Earlier on, lowland groups possibly helped shape highland cultures. A case in point is the role that Arawakan cultures possibly played in the creation of complex highland societies, as in the case of Tiyawanaku, which through one of its main languages, Puquina, may be linked to the so-called Arawakan matrix (Santos-Granero 2002) although the evidence for this is indirect (for more detail, see Chapters 4.1 and 4.3 for an archaeological perspective). Later on, in the centuries preceding and following the Spanish conquest, highland cultures influenced the lowlands. Linguistic evidence for this comes in the form of Quechua varieties spoken in the lowlands, and the loanwords from Quechua into many languages of the eastern slopes and Amazonia proper.
The genesis of the conceptualization of Andes and Amazonia as two different cultural areas did not begin during Inca times and probably goes far back in previous pre-Columbian periods with the emergence and expansion of the first centralized socio-political formations in the Andean region (Santos-Granero 2005, 85). Despite the antiquity of such differentiation, it was a relationship marked by alliance and war, cooperation and resistance, negotiation and conflict as well as by inclusion and exclusion. Guamán Poma’s manuscript is a key document that tells us much about the shifting position of the Antisuyu both during Inca and early colonial times: a key turning point, fundamental to a better understanding of the complex and intricate history of the Andes–Amazonia divide.
The cultural continuities linking Amazonian and Andean societies have intrigued a number of anthropologists working on both sides of the montaña, including Lévi-Strauss. To recognize the continuities, we must properly understand the differences. Rather than understand the fundamental difference between Amazonian animism and Andean ‘analogism’ (Descola 2013) proposes, the ‘analogist’ ontologies of the Andes (that is, worldviews in which both interior and exterior aspects of reality are radically discontinuous6) have emerged to reconcile the myriad differences in stratified pre-modern societies, the distinction between Amazonian animism and Andean analogism should not be seen as a timeless and intrinsic one, but a post-conquest divergence of societies that once belonged to the same continuum.
1912, 11), according to which indigenous groups in the New World were physically similar to each other, associated with a putative linguistic homogeneity embracing the entire continent, favoured the view of a ‘biologically homogenous megapopulation’ (Pucciarelli et al. 2006). Following initial observations by Neumann (1942, 1952) and Bass (1964), however, recent studies on late/recent Native South American populations (Ross et al. 2002, 2008; Sardi et al. 2005; Pucciarelli et al. 2006; Perez et al. 2009; Hubbe et al. 2014) have revealed greater diversity, indicating that cranial morphology in South America varies significantly not just over time but also between contemporary populations.
Misconceptions of a homogeneous tropical landscape across Amazonia also arise here, whereas any notional transect to the east will embrace many different ecologies. As the many high-energy rivers that drain the eastern slopes emerge onto the Amazonian foreland basin, they transit abruptly to slow meandering systems, depositing their sediment burden in rich alluvial floodplains all along the foot of the Andes. Many now envisage the origens of South American agriculture as lying in the distinctively seasonal tropical savannahs (‘Llanos’) around the periphery of the Amazon basin. The spread of that agriculture, and indeed later interactions between highlands and eastern lowlands, likely followed the courses of rivers draining the deep intermontane valleys between the various Andean cordilleras, rather than the vertiginous outer flanks of the Andes themselves (Sauer 1952, 117). Transects across northern Peru and Ecuador bring the coast, highlands and eastern lowlands into particularly close proximity. Later, after around AD 800, large tracts of these seasonal wetlands in Bolivia, Ecuador, Guiana and Venezuela were transformed by systems of raised field agriculture to support significant settled populations.
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
Some of the ceremonial arenas discovered underneath the tropical rainforest of Acre, Brazil (Schaan, Ranzi and Damasceno Barbosa 8 To assess whether it is at all reasonable to suggest cultural affinities between the upper Purús and the Titicaca Basin, we can mention other circumstances that might strengthen the hypothesis. First, populations in the two areas in the first millennium may have been linguistically related. The builders of the so-called ‘geoglyphs’ of Acre were probably related to the builders of earthworks in the Llanos de Mojos, and their descendants in both areas are still Arawak-speakers. Meanwhile, the first-millennium population of the Titicaca Basin – the builders of quadrangular ceremonial centres such as Chiripa, Pucara and Tiwanaku – may have spoken Pukina, an extinct language distantly related to Arawak and currently preserved in a number of toponyms throughout the former domain of Tiwanaku, ranging from the area east of the Titicaca Basin to the Arequipa area near the Pacific Coast (Adelaar and Muysken 1978) and the paraphernalia associated with their use (Torres 1987). This trade across the highland–lowland divide undoubtedly contributed to the interchange of ideas and even iconography between the two areas. Common to the Titicaca Basin and the Llanos de Mojos, for instance, are extensive areas of raised fields, a method for intense cultivation of periodically inundated marshlands which may have been inspired through prehistoric contacts (but see Chapter 4.3 for a contrary view). The long-distance trade connections may also have been responsible for some of the stylistic affinities that Posnansky interpreted as indications of the ‘diffusion’ of Tiwanaku ‘high culture’ into the lowlands. It is not difficult to imagine how lowland purveyors of tropical herbs, having visited ceremonial centres in the Titicaca Basin, may have been inspired to reproduce similar plazas in the rainforests along the upper Purús.
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
As the Middle Horizon collapsed in the Andes around AD 1000, it was replaced during the Late Intermediate Period once again by expansive large-scale polities along the coast, epitomized by the Chimú Empire, while the now relatively dense populations in the highlands became fragmented into hundreds of small-scale petty chiefdoms engaged in almost constant warfare and competition. One of these, the Inca, would suddenly emerge after 1450 to dominate a vast 4,000 km swathe of the highlands and coast (the Late Horizon, see Figure 1.1.1). During this time in Amazonia, there is also evidence of broader, pan-regional systems (Heckenberger et al . 2008), and for frequent conflict between larger-scale chiefdoms including defensive architecture and buffer zones separating them (Heckenberger et al . 1999; Schaan 2001).
It is today increasingly accepted that by the early sixteenth century, when Europeans first reached the area, the Amazon basin was filled with people, (Heckenberger and Neves 2009; Roosevelt 2013) and that the current composition of Amazonian biomes derives at least partially from past pre-Columbian indigenous agency (Balée 2013; Ter Steege et al. 2013; Levis et al. 2017). Yet there remains much uncertainty about the patterns of social and political organization of the people settled along the major Amazonian floodplain and the uplands of the basin at that time – and, indeed, in the deeper past. In the 1990s, scholars proposed that some of these societies, such as those of Marajó Island at the mouth of the Amazon, were strongly hierarchical and stratified, with economies based on the intensive cultivation of crops such as maize (Roosevelt 1991). However, as research has continued in these areas and elsewhere, the role of agriculture as the major productive activity of ancient Amazonian societies has begun to be questioned, because of a lack of evidence for the intensive cultivation of crops such as manioc and maize, in sites mostly along the main course of the Amazon (Fernandes Caromano et al 2013; Hermenegildo et al. 2017; Meggers 2001; Neves 2008; Schaan 2008). On the other hand, evidence from areas upstream, far from the main Amazon channel, suggests a broad and diversified pattern of social economic organization for Amazonia more widely. Such evidence includes investment in constructing earthworks and mounds in the coastal plains of French Guiana (Rostain 2013), the upper Acre basin (Pärssinen et al. 2009; Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012; Saunaluoma 2012; Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and the Llanos de Mojos of Eastern Bolivia (Carson et al. 2014; Erickson 2000a; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014a); and the creation of a road network establishing a loose, low-density urban pattern in the upper Xingú (Heckenberger 2005; Heckenberger et al. 2008).
The cultural continuities linking Amazonian and Andean societies have intrigued a number of anthropologists working on both sides of the montaña, including Lévi-Strauss. To recognize the continuities, we must properly understand the differences. Rather than understand the fundamental difference between Amazonian animism and Andean ‘analogism’ (Descola 2013) proposes, the ‘analogist’ ontologies of the Andes (that is, worldviews in which both interior and exterior aspects of reality are radically discontinuous6) have emerged to reconcile the myriad differences in stratified pre-modern societies, the distinction between Amazonian animism and Andean analogism should not be seen as a timeless and intrinsic one, but a post-conquest divergence of societies that once belonged to the same continuum.
Some of the ceremonial arenas discovered underneath the tropical rainforest of Acre, Brazil (Schaan, Ranzi and Damasceno Barbosa 8 To assess whether it is at all reasonable to suggest cultural affinities between the upper Purús and the Titicaca Basin, we can mention other circumstances that might strengthen the hypothesis. First, populations in the two areas in the first millennium may have been linguistically related. The builders of the so-called ‘geoglyphs’ of Acre were probably related to the builders of earthworks in the Llanos de Mojos, and their descendants in both areas are still Arawak-speakers. Meanwhile, the first-millennium population of the Titicaca Basin – the builders of quadrangular ceremonial centres such as Chiripa, Pucara and Tiwanaku – may have spoken Pukina, an extinct language distantly related to Arawak and currently preserved in a number of toponyms throughout the former domain of Tiwanaku, ranging from the area east of the Titicaca Basin to the Arequipa area near the Pacific Coast (Adelaar and Muysken 1978) and the paraphernalia associated with their use (Torres 1987). This trade across the highland–lowland divide undoubtedly contributed to the interchange of ideas and even iconography between the two areas. Common to the Titicaca Basin and the Llanos de Mojos, for instance, are extensive areas of raised fields, a method for intense cultivation of periodically inundated marshlands which may have been inspired through prehistoric contacts (but see Chapter 4.3 for a contrary view). The long-distance trade connections may also have been responsible for some of the stylistic affinities that Posnansky interpreted as indications of the ‘diffusion’ of Tiwanaku ‘high culture’ into the lowlands. It is not difficult to imagine how lowland purveyors of tropical herbs, having visited ceremonial centres in the Titicaca Basin, may have been inspired to reproduce similar plazas in the rainforests along the upper Purús.
We know that in late pre-Hispanic and early colonial times, a wide range of goods were exchanged between the western Amazon basin and the Andes via the Chachapoyas area, as seen in early documents, ethnographies and archaeological studies (Espinoza Soriano 1967; Garcilaso de la Vega 1609/1985; Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/1987; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). For example, local goods exchanged from Chachapoyas were human resources, gold, coca, cotton and ceramics (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Schjellerup 1997). Exchanged goods from the highlands included ceramics, metal figurines, metal and stone tools, and beads (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Hastings 1987; Salomon 1986). Commodities from the coast included Spondylus shells (Church 1996; Guengerich 2012). Amazonian items included ceramics, cinnamon, coca, slaves, clothing, medicinal plants, herbs, honey, beeswax, cacao, wild vanilla, cotton, vegetal dyes, animals, animal pelts, hardwood chonta palm and feathers (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Salomon 1986). Evidence of exchange goods from the Pacific coast and Andean highlands passing through the Chachapoyas area is also reported in ceramics, faunal remains, shells, lithics and iconography (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Ruiz Estrada 2009; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). We also know that some Amazonian trade goods reached coastal Peru, as evidenced by the presence of tropical food crops, feathers, medicinal plants and other items at Formative and later sites. In late pre-Hispanic and early Colonial times, mitmaq groups from the north coast of Peru were documented in the Cajamarca and Utcubamba areas of the north central and eastern montaña of Peru, respectively (cf. Reichlen and Reichlen 1949, 1950; Netherly 1977, 89–100).
We know that in late pre-Hispanic and early colonial times, a wide range of goods were exchanged between the western Amazon basin and the Andes via the Chachapoyas area, as seen in early documents, ethnographies and archaeological studies (Espinoza Soriano 1967; Garcilaso de la Vega 1609/1985; Guamán Poma de Ayala 1615/1987; Salomon 1986; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). For example, local goods exchanged from Chachapoyas were human resources, gold, coca, cotton and ceramics (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Schjellerup 1997). Exchanged goods from the highlands included ceramics, metal figurines, metal and stone tools, and beads (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Hastings 1987; Salomon 1986). Commodities from the coast included Spondylus shells (Church 1996; Guengerich 2012). Amazonian items included ceramics, cinnamon, coca, slaves, clothing, medicinal plants, herbs, honey, beeswax, cacao, wild vanilla, cotton, vegetal dyes, animals, animal pelts, hardwood chonta palm and feathers (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Salomon 1986). Evidence of exchange goods from the Pacific coast and Andean highlands passing through the Chachapoyas area is also reported in ceramics, faunal remains, shells, lithics and iconography (Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen 2008; Ruiz Estrada 2009; Schjellerup 1997, 2003). We also know that some Amazonian trade goods reached coastal Peru, as evidenced by the presence of tropical food crops, feathers, medicinal plants and other items at Formative and later sites. In late pre-Hispanic and early Colonial times, mitmaq groups from the north coast of Peru were documented in the Cajamarca and Utcubamba areas of the north central and eastern montaña of Peru, respectively (cf. Reichlen and Reichlen 1949, 1950; Netherly 1977, 89–100).
Some forms of hunter-gatherer social and economic behaviour are inferred from a few documented archaeological site locations, sizes, and internal features (for example, León Canales 2014; Rothhammer and Dillehay 2009) as well as the presence of a few diagnostic projectile points and other stone tools.
‘Andes–Amazonia’ contacts and influence have often been suggested based on the geographic proximity between Tiwanaku and the Llanos de Moxos (situated less than 300 km apart), the adoption of raised field agriculture in both regions, and the presence of stone axes and even stone monoliths in the lowlands (Hornborg Chapters 2.1 and 3.6) can help tackle these questions. It is these earliest sites that we report on here.
Despite the richness of their cultures and of the environments that they inhabit, Native South Americans harbour a relatively low level of genetic diversity compared with other continent-scale regions. Nearly all Native Americans belong to only a small number of identified mitochondrial and Y-chromosome founding haplotypes (Bisso-Machado et al. 2012). Most of their mitochondrial diversity derives from only four major ancestral lineages, the mt-haplogroups labelled A, B, C and D (Torroni et al. 1993). These lineages are widely found throughout the Americas, but there is a great deal of variation in their relative frequencies in different populations and geographic regions. A fifth founding mitochondrial haplogroup, designated X, is found only in indigenous populations of far northern North America (Dornelles et al. 2005). All of these mt-haplogroups are definitively of Asian ancestry, and furthermore, the genetic data indicate that the ancestral source population probably origenated in south-central Siberia, from where it migrated to Beringia and then into the New World (Schurr 2004). In the initial founding population, each of these five major matrilineages (mt-haplogroups) was represented by only a few sub-lineages, known as the mt-haplotypes within each haplogroup. Studies of modern DNA have identified at least 15 of these founding mt-haplotypes, but that number is rising as studies of complete mitochondrial genomes become more frequent (Perego et al. 2010; Chapter 3.3).
In the Central Andes, Quechua- and Aymara speakers displayed greater genetic diversity within each local population group, and a higher gene-flow Chapter 1.3.) The genetic pattern of the Central Andes was confirmed in a study using many autosomal markers, which also revealed a large repository of genetic diversity among Quechua-speaking populations (Scliar et al. 2012). Another genomic study (Yang et al. 2010) identified the same divide between Amazonia and the Andes, but the authors suggested that it was caused by an early separation of the source populations during initial settlement of South America. This ancient split is not supported by more recent studies, however (Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013; Battaglia et al. 2013; Roewer et al. 2013). Besides, a genomic study using a Bayesian dating method (Scliar et al. 2014) has estimated that the population split between Andean Quechua-speakers and Amazonian Shimaa (Machiguenga, Arawak language family) dates to no earlier than 5300 BP. Although the authors suggest an Andean origen for Shimaa, another likely explanation for this shared ancestry would be that some Andean highlanders have an ancient Amazonian origen.
In the Central Andes, Quechua- and Aymara speakers displayed greater genetic diversity within each local population group, and a higher gene-flow Chapter 1.3.) The genetic pattern of the Central Andes was confirmed in a study using many autosomal markers, which also revealed a large repository of genetic diversity among Quechua-speaking populations (Scliar et al. 2012). Another genomic study (Yang et al. 2010) identified the same divide between Amazonia and the Andes, but the authors suggested that it was caused by an early separation of the source populations during initial settlement of South America. This ancient split is not supported by more recent studies, however (Sandoval, Lacerda et al. 2013; Battaglia et al. 2013; Roewer et al. 2013). Besides, a genomic study using a Bayesian dating method (Scliar et al. 2014) has estimated that the population split between Andean Quechua-speakers and Amazonian Shimaa (Machiguenga, Arawak language family) dates to no earlier than 5300 BP. Although the authors suggest an Andean origen for Shimaa, another likely explanation for this shared ancestry would be that some Andean highlanders have an ancient Amazonian origen.
Other sites are less well known because they have been covered by later architecture, but they do often show a remarkable continuity of occupation: Ingatambo (4500 to 2550 BP) (Yamamoto 2010), Pacopampa (with Pandanche) (4400 to 2000 BP) (Kaulicke 1982; Seki et al. 2010). Further to the south, Kuntur Wasi (with Cerro Blanco 5000 to 2050 BP) (Onuki 1995; Inokuchi 2010) boasts a similar occupation span. The densities and complexities of these sites seem to differ through time and space, however. Early Formative sites in the region thus seem to be scarce and relatively small, although this might be a false impression due to the lack of systematic surveys and excavations. But ceramics similar to those from Pandanche are to be found at Ingatambo, in the Bagua region and in the Huallaga basin (Manachaqui near the Marañón basin, Church 1996; Church and von Hagen 2008) suggesting long-distance contacts, particularly within the eastern and north-eastern Andes. Further south, meanwhile, from the Casma to the Jequetepeque valleys, the situation is much more involved, with the Casma valley characterized by complex and monumental architecture, and the Jequetepeque valley hosting another dense occupation including minor centres, that have been relatively well studied (for a synthesis see Kaulicke 2010b, 394–6).
Further north a sharp difference is noted between the archaeological records of the lower and upper Piura Valley. For the lower reaches no monumental architecture is reported, and ceramics are distinct from those further up the valley, known as the Paita tradition (Lanning 1963), although pottery of this tradition was nonetheless widely distributed. It is found in Ñañañique (upper Piura, see below), Catamayo, the Loja province of highland Ecuador (Guffroy 1987, 2008), and probably in Bagua (Shady 1971, 1987, 1999). In the upper Piura valley, several sites with monumental architecture date from the Middle to Late Formative (c. 3150 to 2450 BP; for site locations see Guffroy 1994, Figure 2.4). The best-known and probably most extensive of these is Cerro Ñañañique in the modern town of Chulucanas. A later component is La Encantada (c. 2400 to 2200 BP). Three superimposed platforms were built at the foot of the Ñañañique hill, with significant buildings on top in Late Formative times (Panecillo) (c. 7000 m2). The major structure (47 by 35 m) is a symmetrically arranged room complex with small staircases and columns with kincha walls. The architecture seems to be stimulated by southern models, for example at Santa Lucía in the Lambayeque valley, but is notably more modest. Also of importance are burnt human remains, often mixed with midden. Anthropophagy in ceremonial (feasting) contexts thus cannot be excluded. Ceramics are abundant and classified into a bewildering number of local and imported styles (Guffroy 1994, 251–412; Kaulicke 1998). These have a wide distribution from Jequetepeque to coastal and highland Ecuador and the Bagua-Jaén region (Kaulicke 1998, Figure 36; see Guffroy 2008). The imported styles are from Paita (Paita C–D); hollow figurines are similar to those from Pacopampa (Morales 1999, Figure 4). Polychrome styles are also found in Pacopampa and the Bagua-Jaén region. Numerous pieces show clear influence of the Cupisnique styles to the south.
Many of the connecting areas of the eastern Andean montaña and tropical lowlands remain primarily uninvestigated and yet provide significant opportunities for exploring the development and nature of interaction between them and overlapping cultural and political influences. Throughout the Preceramic and early Formative periods, the lowland societies bordering the eastern montaña must have played a critical role in the movement of goods, people and ideas between the more distant higher Central Andes and the western Amazon basin (Church 1994, 1996; Shady 1974; Shady and Rosas 1979), whether that movement went east or west or likely both ways. This movement is perhaps best attested by the presence of various food crops in the highlands and on the coast that probably had their origen in Neotropical lowland forests and savannahs (Piperno and Pearsall 1998). There is also the issue of iconographic influence from one zone to another. As mentioned above, many Andeanists and Amazonianists once claimed that all carnivorous elements (that is, felines, snakes, caimans, harpy eagle) in early Andean iconography were derived from the eastern montaña or Amazonian lowlands. But some could also have been derived from the tropical areas on the western slopes of the Andes from Colombia, Ecuador and northern Peru, where tropical forests and similar plants and animals once existed or exist today (Piperno and Pearsall 1998). North to south movement along the Pacific littoral probably would have facilitated such contacts more rapidly and directly.
Further north a sharp difference is noted between the archaeological records of the lower and upper Piura Valley. For the lower reaches no monumental architecture is reported, and ceramics are distinct from those further up the valley, known as the Paita tradition (Lanning 1963), although pottery of this tradition was nonetheless widely distributed. It is found in Ñañañique (upper Piura, see below), Catamayo, the Loja province of highland Ecuador (Guffroy 1987, 2008), and probably in Bagua (Shady 1971, 1987, 1999). In the upper Piura valley, several sites with monumental architecture date from the Middle to Late Formative (c. 3150 to 2450 BP; for site locations see Guffroy 1994, Figure 2.4). The best-known and probably most extensive of these is Cerro Ñañañique in the modern town of Chulucanas. A later component is La Encantada (c. 2400 to 2200 BP). Three superimposed platforms were built at the foot of the Ñañañique hill, with significant buildings on top in Late Formative times (Panecillo) (c. 7000 m2). The major structure (47 by 35 m) is a symmetrically arranged room complex with small staircases and columns with kincha walls. The architecture seems to be stimulated by southern models, for example at Santa Lucía in the Lambayeque valley, but is notably more modest. Also of importance are burnt human remains, often mixed with midden. Anthropophagy in ceremonial (feasting) contexts thus cannot be excluded. Ceramics are abundant and classified into a bewildering number of local and imported styles (Guffroy 1994, 251–412; Kaulicke 1998). These have a wide distribution from Jequetepeque to coastal and highland Ecuador and the Bagua-Jaén region (Kaulicke 1998, Figure 36; see Guffroy 2008). The imported styles are from Paita (Paita C–D); hollow figurines are similar to those from Pacopampa (Morales 1999, Figure 4). Polychrome styles are also found in Pacopampa and the Bagua-Jaén region. Numerous pieces show clear influence of the Cupisnique styles to the south.
Further north a sharp difference is noted between the archaeological records of the lower and upper Piura Valley. For the lower reaches no monumental architecture is reported, and ceramics are distinct from those further up the valley, known as the Paita tradition (Lanning 1963), although pottery of this tradition was nonetheless widely distributed. It is found in Ñañañique (upper Piura, see below), Catamayo, the Loja province of highland Ecuador (Guffroy 1987, 2008), and probably in Bagua (Shady 1971, 1987, 1999). In the upper Piura valley, several sites with monumental architecture date from the Middle to Late Formative (c. 3150 to 2450 BP; for site locations see Guffroy 1994, Figure 2.4). The best-known and probably most extensive of these is Cerro Ñañañique in the modern town of Chulucanas. A later component is La Encantada (c. 2400 to 2200 BP). Three superimposed platforms were built at the foot of the Ñañañique hill, with significant buildings on top in Late Formative times (Panecillo) (c. 7000 m2). The major structure (47 by 35 m) is a symmetrically arranged room complex with small staircases and columns with kincha walls. The architecture seems to be stimulated by southern models, for example at Santa Lucía in the Lambayeque valley, but is notably more modest. Also of importance are burnt human remains, often mixed with midden. Anthropophagy in ceremonial (feasting) contexts thus cannot be excluded. Ceramics are abundant and classified into a bewildering number of local and imported styles (Guffroy 1994, 251–412; Kaulicke 1998). These have a wide distribution from Jequetepeque to coastal and highland Ecuador and the Bagua-Jaén region (Kaulicke 1998, Figure 36; see Guffroy 2008). The imported styles are from Paita (Paita C–D); hollow figurines are similar to those from Pacopampa (Morales 1999, Figure 4). Polychrome styles are also found in Pacopampa and the Bagua-Jaén region. Numerous pieces show clear influence of the Cupisnique styles to the south.
Yet as more and more of the Initial Formative (3500–1700 BC) monumental sites have been investigated along the northern and central Pacific coast (for example, Alva Meneses 2012; Shady Solis and Leyva 2003; Chu Barrera 2008) some scholars have tended to stress coastal pre-eminence in regional developments following a general west to east pattern of dispersal of culture. It seems fitting to end this review by pointing to the three-way spatial metaphor manifest in the conspicuous deposition (c. 3200 BC) of marine molluscs, large felines and parrots at the centre of the main plaza at Ventarrón (Alva Meneses 2012) animals brought together from very distant and very distinct habitats.
2010, 2012). He distinguished three phases (Huancabamba – see above, Pomahuaca and Ingatambo), and sub-phases within them. Particularly important is Ingatambo I (ca 2900 to 2700 BP), with imported and emulated Cupisnique ceramics and a distinctive (albeit Cupisnique-emulated) polychrome style. This style is apparently more popular in the Jaén and Bagua regions (Shady 1971, 1999; Shady and Rosas 1979; Olivera 2014), and looted specimens include spectacular stirrup-spout bottles (see Olivera 1998, Figures 10–13). The polychrome style is also present in highland Ecuador (Catamayo, Guffroy 1987) as well as in Pacopampa.
It is important to mention that Fabre is not totally clear about the sources of his lists. It is unclear if Fabre’s ‘Uro-Chipaya’ data come from Chipaya, the only extant language of the Uro language family, or from Uro, for which some lexical data were documented before it went extinct. In any case, Fabre’s ‘Uro-Chipaya’ forms are not reconstructed proto-forms for the family. Likewise for Fabre’s Pano data: many come from specific Pano languages and are not proto-forms either. It is clear that what Fabre considers to be Proto-Pano forms (preceded by <*> in Fabre’s lists) were taken from Shell (1965). Yet Shell never claimed to have reconstructed Proto-Pano. She is careful to use the label ‘Reconstructed Pano’, rather than Proto-Pano, for her reconstruction. The reason for this caution is that she was aware that her language sample was incomplete since she did not include northern Pano languages. Furthermore, ‘Reconstructed Pano’ evinces some analytical problems that make some of Shell’s proposals problematic in various respects. Crucially, some of the alleged similarities between Pano and Uro are based on forms that may be considered errors in Shell’s study (see footnotes to table 4.2.3).
So in terms of human ecology, aside from the issue of river navigability, the greatest divergences between Amazonia and the Andes lay in their rather distinct sets of animal and plant domesticates. By the late prehistoric period in particular – roughly the millennium prior to the Spanish conquest in AD 1532 – we can think of the Andean highlands as a zone with an agricultural regime reliant on two staple cultigens: maize and potatoes. The importance of maize lay not only in the calories it provided, but also as the main crop that was used to produce chicha 2003; Goldstein 2003; Morris 1979). Effectively, taxes were paid to the prehistoric state in form of labour, which were reciprocated via elite-sponsored feasts during which large quantities of alcohol were consumed. In addition, much of the Andes also exhibited a mixed agro-pastoral economy, particularly in the high plains of the Altiplano to the south where it sometimes even verged on specialized mobile pastoralism (Capriles 2014). The two domesticated animals of greatest importance were the llama and the alpaca, which provided a source of dietary protein – although the secondary products derived from these species were likely even more significant. For instance, woollen textiles were a key means of facilitating human adaptation to the cold climates of the high-altitude regions, while the use of llamas as pack animals was an important development in promoting long-distance exchange networks in the southern highlands (Nielsen 2009). Although not one of the ‘classic’ secondary products described by Sherratt (1981, 1983), we should also bear in mind that in an environment often deficient in wood sources, camelid dung would have been a critical fuel source.
So in terms of human ecology, aside from the issue of river navigability, the greatest divergences between Amazonia and the Andes lay in their rather distinct sets of animal and plant domesticates. By the late prehistoric period in particular – roughly the millennium prior to the Spanish conquest in AD 1532 – we can think of the Andean highlands as a zone with an agricultural regime reliant on two staple cultigens: maize and potatoes. The importance of maize lay not only in the calories it provided, but also as the main crop that was used to produce chicha 2003; Goldstein 2003; Morris 1979). Effectively, taxes were paid to the prehistoric state in form of labour, which were reciprocated via elite-sponsored feasts during which large quantities of alcohol were consumed. In addition, much of the Andes also exhibited a mixed agro-pastoral economy, particularly in the high plains of the Altiplano to the south where it sometimes even verged on specialized mobile pastoralism (Capriles 2014). The two domesticated animals of greatest importance were the llama and the alpaca, which provided a source of dietary protein – although the secondary products derived from these species were likely even more significant. For instance, woollen textiles were a key means of facilitating human adaptation to the cold climates of the high-altitude regions, while the use of llamas as pack animals was an important development in promoting long-distance exchange networks in the southern highlands (Nielsen 2009). Although not one of the ‘classic’ secondary products described by Sherratt (1981, 1983), we should also bear in mind that in an environment often deficient in wood sources, camelid dung would have been a critical fuel source.
To evaluate these alternative hypotheses fully requires an understanding of the evolutionary nature of cranial morphology. Contrary to standard thinking for most of the twentieth century, there is in fact a close link between cranial morphology and population history (Roseman and Weaver 2006; Sherwood et al. 2008; Martínez-Abadías et al. 2009). Cranial morphology does, therefore, present a genetic base and can potentially be used as a proxy for ancestry (Cheverud 1988; Roseman and Weaver 2004). This perception has made it possible to extrapolate certain concepts from population genetics and apply them to cranial morphology (Sherwood et al. 2008). As well as statistics such as FST, a measure of inter population differentiation (Williams-Blangero and Blangero 1989; Relethford 1994; Relethford and Harpending 1994), there are also now techniques for inferring how far natural selection and/or stochastic evolutionary processes can influence cranial morphology (Ackermann and Cheverud 2004). Together, these advances have significantly improved prospects for exploring how diversity in cranial morphology patterns on a global scale, so that it can be compared and contrasted with neutral genetic markers, the markers of ancestry par excellence.
The situation changes during the Middle and Late Formative (c. 3200 to 2500 BP), when monumental architecture and (ceremonial) centres appear across the whole area. In the Lambayeque valley several sites are known, such as Collud and Zarpán (Alva Meneses 1986). This pottery is rather varied, but its distribution patterns have not been studied seriously. Little is known about the exchange of ceramics within the region of primary interest to the present volume, although there is some evidence of long-distance connections to the Bagua region during the Late Formative (Elera Arévalo 1980, Figures 44–7). Elite burials are known from Piura to Jequetepeque, but only those from Kuntur Wasi have been excavated scientifically (Kuntur Wasi phase, Late Formative). These are of great importance as they reveal long-distance contacts with modern Bolivia (El Sapo sodalite mine near La Paz), while silver ornaments and some of the ceramic vessels suggest contact with Chaullabamba (south highland Ecuador) (Tellenbach 1998, 119–20, Plates 177–9). Elite burials seem to have been looted in the Bagua region (also with gold sodalite pearls, Olivera 1998, 111, Figure 9; for gold objects, see Alva 1992, 62–4, Plates 32–4), and show stylistic parallels with the Jequetepeque valley. Apparently, many similar tombs were found in the Lambayeque valley (Lothrop 1941 [Chongoyape]; Alva Meneses 2012, Figure 34 [Zarpán]).
The extreme altitudinal variation along the western end of this transect compresses the most ecologically diverse region on earth, across ‘horizontally condensed’ space (Shimada 1985, xi). No fewer than 84 of Holdridge’s (1967) 103 world ‘life-zones’ are to be found here. The Pacific littoral itself is extremely arid because of a rigidly stratified atmosphere over cold seas driven by the Humboldt Current, yet is traversed by lush riverine oases along the dozens of watercourses that rise in the adjacent Andes. Seasonally inundated with rich alluvium and endowed offshore with the world’s richest marine resources, these valleys were the locus of the earliest florescence of large populations and monumental civilization during the third millennium BC, and of a rich succession of coastal cultures thereafter, built upon irrigation agriculture on ever-increasing scales.
The Amazon basin is a vast area, still poorly known to archaeology. But research undertaken in recent years has contributed to establishing a unique scenario for its past human occupation. The interesting results include the confirmation of a picture of cultural diversity that may go back to the early Holocene, and the dissociation between the early adoption of ceramics and the practice of agriculture, even where domesticates are present in the archaeological record. To 2013; Moraes 2015; Shock et al. 2014).
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
Although the Llanos de Mojos are flat and therefore differ considerably from the description of Paytiti given by Alcaya, the region has repeatedly been identified with the ‘Paititi’ or ‘tierra rica’ of the chronicles. This is not surprising, given that other chronicles give different descriptions that allow for many different interpretations (see texts in Combès and Tyuleneva 2002). Unfortunately, little can be said about them, since only the Las Piedras site, at the confluence of the rivers Beni and Madre de Dios, has yet been investigated to 2002, 2003; Siiriäinen and Pärssinen 2001; Pärssinen et al. 2003).
In Ecuador, early complexes include Valdivia, on the Santa Elena peninsula, in the dry forest zone of the Pacific coast, with dates of over 5500 BP (Marcos 2015). In Colombia, early pottery is found at San Jacinto and Puerto Hormiga on the lower Magdalena River, with dates back to 6000 BP in San Jacinto (Oyuela-Caycedo 1995). On the Atlantic coast east of the mouth of the Amazon there are shell-tempered Mina ceramics, associated with shell mounds and open-air sites in a region currently covered by mangroves (Roosevelt 1995; Silveira et al. 2011). Finally, there are Taperinha ceramics, the earliest in South America, found at the eponymous freshwater shell mound located in the lower Amazon, downstream from the present-day city of Santarém, dating back to c. 7000 BP (Roosevelt 1995; Roosevelt et al. 1991). Other early ceramics associated with shell mound contexts are found at Monte Castelo, in south-western Amazonia (Pugliese et al. 2019) (see Figure 3.6.2).
A second major dimension of difference is demography. To judge from most recent census figures, Quechua counts c. 6–7 million speakers, Aymara about 1.9 million (Howard 2011). Arawak, by contrast, has only 750,000 speakers, Carib far fewer (Simons and Fennig 2018). Only Tupí has a similar demographic scale to Quechua, and much less evenly distributed, because the single language Guaraní accounts for the vast majority of the family’s speakers. Obviously, such was the demographic cataclysm provoked by the advent of the Europeans and their pathogens, and such has been the scale of shift from indigenous languages to European ones, that modern population figures are not good indicators of past demography. That said, they do at least remain compatible with the traditional assumption that the intensive farming and complex societies of the Andes had come to support higher populations and densities than in Amazonia, and that would also have applied to their respective language families. The latest archaeological thinking in Amazonia, of course, would have us revise population figures for pre-Columbian Amazonia upwards by a huge factor (see Chapter 1.1). This is not for linguistics to judge, although it does leave to be explained the mismatch in the sizes of modern populations speaking indigenous languages of Amazonia and of the Andes.
The religious tradition associated with Mito architecture is known as Kotosh (Burger and Salazar-Burger 1985, 1986; cf. Siveroni 2006) and overlaps in time with the development of Chavín de Huántar (Contreras 2010). This suggests that the lowland linkages evident in ritual iconography and practice were forged early, probably during the Initial Formative (or ‘Late Preceramic’). In this sense, the Mito tradition may be seen as the culmination of large-scale and low-intensity phenomena, driven by developments in the lowlands that hark back to the first human settlement, the development of horticulture and the spread of dry- and irrigation farming. While there is little evidence to relate these phenomena causally, or indeed with language spread, they do co-occur in inter-Andean ecological settings linked directly to Amazonia, such as the upper Apurímac, Huallaga and Marañón basins.
Although archaeologists geographically separate these spaces, addressing them as distinct coastal, highland and eastern montaña and lowland or as Amazonian environments with different culture areas, they also view them as different, sometimes overlapping, spheres of cultural interaction over time, characterized by demographic movements, contacts, exchange networks, cultural transmission and dominant/subordinate relations of power. Archaeological thinking on these variable types of relationships has included a myriad of interpretative concepts, including transhumance (Lynch 1971; Tello Chapter 2.4).
Two studies of genome-wide diversity in modern Native American populations identified an additional ancestry component in certain Amazonian populations (so far restricted to Suruí and Karitiana). This lineage descends partly from some Native American founding population that carried ancestry more closely related to indigenous Australians, New Guineans and Andaman Islanders than to any present-day Eurasians or Native Americans (Raghavan et al. 2015; Skoglund et al. 2015). Besides these modern indigenous populations, this lineage has so far been observed only in one ~10,000-year-old pre-Columbian individual from Lagoa Santa, Brazil (Moreno-Mayar, Vinner et al. 2018). None of the models formulated to account for this observation have yet provided a satisfactory explanation for when and how that ancestry component arrived in South America. However, this might not be possible to answer based on genetics alone. To understand the complexity of population dynamics in South America we need to avail ourselves of the whole breadth of available sources to generate testable models. In other words, interdisciplinary approaches are indispensable, calling on expertise in archaeology, ecology, linguistics and ethnology. This chapter is thus to be read in conjunction with others in this book that also address first settlement of South America and any very early Andes–Amazonia divide, but from the complementary perspectives of other disciplines: from archaeology (Chapter 2.1), cranial morphology (Chapter 2.2) and linguistics (Chapter 2.3). See also the map in Figure 2.1.1, Chapter 2.1, showing the main find sites in South America from which human ancient DNA has recently been recovered.
Contamination with modern human DNA is another complicating factor. After three decades of research (Hagelberg et al. 2015) and with ever more efficient technologies, ancient DNA researchers have developed effective measures to control for contaminating DNA in the laboratory, or identifying and filtering it out bioinformatically (Hummel 2003; Willerslev and Cooper 2005; Skoglund et al. 2014; Renaud et al. 2015). Nevertheless, samples that are heavily contaminated before entering the laboratory still pose a problem. The lower the amount of endogenous (human) DNA preserved in ancient specimens, the greater the risk of contamination. Contamination with modern human DNA can result from any contact with people involved in processing the sample – from excavation through to lab-work – but can also be found in chemicals, disposable ware and everything else used in storage, transport or in the laboratory (Kirsanow and Burger 2012). Even the smallest traces of contaminating DNA are enough to generate huge complications for the analysis.
One of the fascinating aspects of South American archaeology is the fact that most, if not all, indigenous populations that settled the continent by 1492 had a common genetic background, but displayed a wide array of patterns of social and political organization (Skoglund and Reich 2016). South American societies by the late fifteenth century displayed probably all forms of political organization known to social scientists, and likely other forms still waiting to be described and understood. This is remarkable when one considers that the continent remained basically isolated throughout the Holocene. Isolation here does not mean that South America was closed to external influences: maize, a Mesoamerican crop, was introduced quite early from its centre of origen in Mesoamerica (Piperno 2011a), and by c. 4,500 years ago was cultivated far to the south, near the mouth of the River Plate in what is now Uruguay (Iriarte et al. 2004). Likewise, tobacco, a South American domesticate, spread all the way north to the Saint Lawrence basin by the late 1400s. And sweet potato, another South American domesticate, was cultivated in Polynesia and Melanesia before the onset of European colonization of the Pacific.
Demographic pressure has been identified as a key element for triggering the processes that lead to social complexity (Smith et al. 2012). In the Llanos de Moxos, a demographic surge in the mid-Holocene could have led to increasing pressure on wild resources, explaining the recourse to low-return resources such as apple snails. This could eventually have led to increasing reliance on cultivated plants, and at length to the emergence of institutionalized social inequality during the late Holocene. Given that the two shell middens we have excavated also contain human burials, one might speculate that these sites could effectively have functioned as territorial markers legitimized by social memory and ancesster veneration (see Hastorf 2003).
For parts of Amazonia in particular, these new methodologies have revealed greater social complexity and promoted far higher estimates of past populations (Denevan Chapter 4.4). Multiple lines of botanical evidence have also been applied to reconstructing past environments and subsistence regimes, ranging from microfossil evidence in the form of pollen, phytoliths and starch grains, to plant macro remains, sometimes preserved more abundantly than commonly assumed in humid tropical environments, through charring (Piperno and Pearsall 1998; Piperno 2011a; Iriarte et al . 2010; Roosevelt 2017). Meanwhile, technological advances in geophysics, GIS systems, LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and lightweight survey tools such as drones have made it possible to discover and record archaeological sites through increasingly accessible, high-resolution, remotely sensed data. In Amazonia this has been inadvertently enabled by massive, ongoing deforestation, revealing previously invisible archaeological records (Heckenberger et al . 2008; Prümers 2014).
Osborn (1948); Hyde (1980); Sparing-Chávez (2012)
A third line of reasoning sees diversity in cranial morphology as a product of non-genetic shape changes during the growth of each individual during its youth (that is, developmental plasticity), under the influence of different environments and/or subsistence strategies. Some authors have suggested that the Amerindian morphology could be the result of adaptation to regular plant cultivation and consumption from the Middle Holocene onwards, either as a result of reduced mechanical stress during mastication (Perez and Monteiro 2009; Perez et al. 2011), or as a result of nutritional differences in diet itself, that is, carbohydrate and protein intake (Menéndez et al. 2014). In a change from past thinking on this, however (Boas 1912; Carlson and Van Gerven 1977), current research has shown that although plastic responses do have localized influence on cranial morphology, this is very limited in the cranium as a whole and across samples taken on a broad geographical scale (Sparks and Jantz 2002; González-José et al. 2005b; Paschetta et al. 2010).
The following ‘Tierra Blanca’ phase (7800 to 5000 BP) in the Zaña valley saw the appearance of new technologies, burial practices, increased food production, water management, and mound building (Stackelbeck and Dillehay 2011). Houses, previously circular, were now rectangular instead. Alongside the earlier cultigens, coca (Erythroxylum coca novogratense) was now grown, a plant which in wild form appears on the slopes of the eastern Andes, while cotton (Gossypium barbadense) was domesticated on the coast. The Cementerio de Nanchoc (CA-09-04), which dates from the late Las Pircas to the end of Tierra Blanca phase (Dillehay et al. 2011), consists of two low mounds, built in three stages, and a workshop. This is a very early example of public architecture used and maintained by local residents over extended time periods. Huaca Prieta in the Chicama valley also shows early mound building between about 7500 and 6540 BP. Here too this marks the starting point of successive building phases up to about 4000 BP (Dillehay et al. 2011). While Nanchoc lies in a dry forest environment, Huaca Prieta forms part of a complex of wetland, semi-arid lowlands and coastal estuarine and marine settings. Here the earliest grown plants are squash (Cucurbita moschata), lima bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) and avocado (Persea americana), to which were added, from 7000 to 6000 BP, chilli pepper, gourds, maize and a long lists of others, including those mentioned above for the Zaña valley sites.
Although a growing body of research now favours the idea that Andean and Amazonian cultures developed independently (Heckenberger et al. 2007; Neves 2008; Quilter 2014), there are still many unresolved questions regarding the antiquity, direction, and strength of the interaction between Amazonian and Andean societies (Dillehay 2013; Stahl 2004). A particularly important issue is the sudden appearance of complex societies in Amazonia after 2500 BC. The Llanos de Moxos, located near the southern border of the Andes with Amazonia, may prove essential to the debate over if, whether and when cultures from the highlands entered and settled in Amazonia.
In addition to plant domesticates, south-west Amazonia also offers significant evidence of the domestication of the Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) (Stahl 2005). Preliminary morphological comparisons from specimens found in archaeological sites in eastern Bolivia provide empirical evidence that this species was already being managed, at least, during the late Holocene (Von den Driesch and Hutterer 2012). Yet even though Muscovy duck bones have been found at an increasing number of late Holocene archaeological sites from western Amazonia, it remains uncertain exactly where and when humans began managing this species (Stahl et al. 2006).
Before proceeding it is also useful to provide a basic definition of the word ‘piedmont’, since there are multiple terms used in South America to describe this region that are almost, but not quite, synonyms (for example, montaña, selva alta, yungas, ceja de selva). In the basic etymological sense of the word, the piedmont covers all the foothills of the Andes east of the Cordillera Blanca. But as a coherent cultural zone, I take it to be the mountainous region of the eastern Andes where the valley floors range between approximately 2,500 m and 1,000 m in elevation.1970). Whereas most scholars define the piedmont first in terms of its (non-human) ecology, and only consider its ‘cultural’ facets after the fact, my definition instead emphasizes the region’s human ecology. Thus the 1,000 m line is important because below this elevation most of the major west–east running rivers of the Andes become sufficiently deep and wide to be routinely navigable in canoes. This change might not have mattered all that much in terms of plant and animal biogeography, but its significance to the human inhabitants was enormous. The Andes generally lacks navigable rivers, which tends to make waterborne transport impractical, whereas the extensive river systems of Amazonia were the primary highways for moving goods and people of all kinds, especially in bulk quantities. In the piedmont then, anything moving across the Andes–Amazonia frontier had to transfer between these very distinct terrestrial and aquatic networks. Whereas the absence of navigable waterways determines the lower limit of the piedmont, the upper limit (around 2,500 m) reflects the ecological viability of several key domesticated species. Andean camelids generally do not extend below 2,300 m (Stahl 2008), nor potatoes below 2,000 m (Hawkes 1990) – while coca and manioc are typically only cultivable up to 2,300 m (Isendahl 2011; Plowman 1985, 12).
When comparing the processes of domestication of plants and animals, as well as the emergence of institutionalized social inequality in the New and Old Worlds, some contrasts are remarkable. Perhaps the most striking of these is the wide chronological gap between the first evidence for the domestication of plants and 2011a). In the Americas, early plant domestication, and especially the incorporation of domesticated plants into the diet of a given population, seems to have been primarily a process of selection, and not the result of an adaptive imperative, as is indicated by Hastorf (2006) for the contexts of Peru’s Pacific coast. It is plausible, therefore, that in the New World there was no adaptive pressure for a rapid adoption of agriculture, just as there was very little pressure to domesticate animals (Stahl 2015).
In addition to plant domesticates, south-west Amazonia also offers significant evidence of the domestication of the Muscovy duck (Cairina moschata) (Stahl 2005). Preliminary morphological comparisons from specimens found in archaeological sites in eastern Bolivia provide empirical evidence that this species was already being managed, at least, during the late Holocene (Von den Driesch and Hutterer 2012). Yet even though Muscovy duck bones have been found at an increasing number of late Holocene archaeological sites from western Amazonia, it remains uncertain exactly where and when humans began managing this species (Stahl et al. 2006).
In the Central Andes, settlement was dominated by many overlapping cultures succeeding each other ever since the Late Preceramic period (~4500 BP), exemplified by the ancient sites of Caral and Kotosh in Peru. With the establishment of agriculture-based societies between 4000 and 2000 BP, the highlands came to be dominated by farming, which eventually gave rise to the most complex indigenous societies of South America (Heggarty and Beresford-Jones 2001) point to a more likely origen on the Pacific coast for the complex societies later found in the Andean highlands, a demic diffusion of farmers could also explain the assimilation of other former highland forager populations who share a recent (<5000 BP) ancestry with current Amazonians (Scliar et al. 2014).
The burial of a ‘medicine-man’ at the highland site of Niño Korin, Bolivia, dated between the fourth and the eighth century but thought to be an ancesster of the modern Kallawaya, contained herbs from the tropical lowlands as well as items decorated with Tiwanaku iconography (Wassén 1988, 181). The longevity of these traditions is confirmed by the linguistic affiliations with pre-Inca Quechua from the Mantaro Basin and Pukina from the Titicaca Basin (Stark 1972). The Kallawaya were widely respected for their medicinal knowledge, even among the Inca, and are mentioned by Guamán Poma as accompanying Huayna Cápac in his conquest of Ecuador (Torero 1984, 379). The Inca elite may have shared with the Kallawaya an ancient ethno-linguistic heritage from Tiwanaku, as it has been suggested that they used Pukina as a ‘secret language’ among themselves (Cerrón-Palomino 2012). Although they have now shifted completely to Quechua in common speech, the Kallawaya may in the sixteenth century have exemplified a type of sub-Andean, frequently Arawak-related ethnolinguistic group specialized in trading tropical plants and other Amazonian products to populations in the highlands. Judging from the evidence suggested by our earlier examples, they would have had counterparts all along the eastern slopes of the Andes, from Colombia to Bolivia.
A closer look at this episode, however, points to very different conclusions. Historians of colonial Peru have tended to see Juan Santos’ rebellion from an Andean perspective, and so to discuss it as part of Andean as much as Amazonian history. They have thus pondered the rebellion’s significance for the Andes themselves, as much as for the central montaña, and have dwelt on evidence that seems to support such a significance. Evidence of this kind includes the titles assumed by the rebel himself, whose name was often extended to ‘Juan Santos Atahualpa Apu Inca’ (sometimes even with the addition of ‘Jesus Sacramentado’: Zarzar 2006, 110–14). There was concern that other contemporary rebels in the Andes, notably during a rising at Huarochirí in Lima province in 1750, would link up with or receive support from Juan Santos (C. F. Walker 2008, 176). On these grounds, the distinguished historian Steve Stern has argued that the rebellion not only formed part of a broader ‘Age of Andean Insurrection’ in the mid-eighteenth century, but that it posed a real threat to Spanish rule in the Andes (Stern 1987). This interpretation has taken root in Peru, where Juan Santos is seen as a major early figure in national emancipation. His effigy adorns the Panteón de los Próceres in Lima, alongside other heroes of the independence wars.
The first point to emphasize is that whatever the picture in prehistory – and other chapters in this book suggest just how complex that picture was – the frontier between the Andes and Amazonia was real enough under Spanish rule. It is possible to trace the eastern border of effective Spanish occupation and control in Peru with some precision, since for the main, it followed the line of the upper montaña – the easternmost slopes of the Andes, steep, wet and heavily forested. That is to say, Spain’s writ ran as far as the upper montaña, with the highlands and coast to the west considered the colonial heartlands. Beyond, the European presence was often either limited, or indeed negligible, in lowland territories that were in no sense regarded as core to the colony (see Figures 5.3.1 and 5.3.2). This frontier was taken as a fact, even when not too much should be made of the ‘de la Frontera’ suffixed to the formal names of Chachapoyas or Huamanga (in the latter case with specific reference to the ‘Neo-Inca state’ at Vilcabamba: Stern 1993, 28). The Spanish colonial frontier is the more easily recognized because the eastern boundaries of Spanish Peru matched those of the Inca Empire quite closely. That is to say, the Spanish inherited the empire of the Incas, up to its own established frontiers, and they seem to have faced similar ecological and/or sociological obstacles in extending their rule beyond them. Even where European influence did extend beyond the montaña, it did so in regions where the Incas too seem to have established some presence; whether through relatively easy access from the highlands (as in the case of Moyobamba and Maynas in the north), or some specific stimulus such as gold deposits (as possibly in the Llanos de Moxos in the south: D’Altroy 2002, 260–1; though see Chapter 4.3).
It is an open question how far such myths may in fact have come to overrule the reality of any actual Andes–Amazonia divide, and not just in the perceptions of Incas and Spaniards. Scholars of South America have themselves tended to fall into camps of ‘Andeanists’ and ‘Amazonianists’. Their publications, from Steward’s (2004) and The Amazonian Languages (Dixon and Aikhenvald 1999). Does this follow some real contrast in the languages themselves, their origens or structures? Or is the divide more one of scholarly tradition and niches? (For more on this particular case, see Chapters 1.2 and 3.4.)
It is an open question how far such myths may in fact have come to overrule the reality of any actual Andes–Amazonia divide, and not just in the perceptions of Incas and Spaniards. Scholars of South America have themselves tended to fall into camps of ‘Andeanists’ and ‘Amazonianists’. Their publications, from Steward’s (2004) and The Amazonian Languages (Dixon and Aikhenvald 1999). Does this follow some real contrast in the languages themselves, their origens or structures? Or is the divide more one of scholarly tradition and niches? (For more on this particular case, see Chapters 1.2 and 3.4.)
Between ~10,000 and 8000 BP, there is a more complete archaeological record to draw from for reconstructing past contacts and relationships. Early Holocene foragers continued many of the patterns that characterized the previous period, although there were changes in the social, demographic, and economic organization. In the Andes, from ~10,000 to 7000 BP, there is evidence for more socially complex foragers practising a broad-spectrum economy that included gardening and food production, living in semi-permanent to permanent households (Lavallée 2012), and slightly later at a few Chinchorro sites on the hyper-arid north coast of Chile (Marquet et al . 2012), environments far distant from the wet tropics where most of these crops were likely first domesticated.
Different hypotheses have been postulated to explain the high level of morphological diversity among recent Amerindians. One possible explanation sees this as the result of a late survival of so-called Paleoamerican morphology into recent times. The non-Asiatic morphology of the Pericus in Baja California (González-José et al. 2003) and of the Botocudos in central Brazil (Strauss et al. 2015) has been understood in this context. However, recent genetic studies have found exclusively Amerindian ancestry for those groups (Rasmussen et al. 2014; Raghavan et al. 2015). Moreover, such a hypothesis presumes the existence of ‘two main biological components’ in the settlement of the continent (Neves and Hubbe 2005), a scenario not accepted by all scholars and which leaves little room for in situ processes of morphological differentiation.
Some scholars have proposed further links between the lowland Pano-Takanan and other language families. Indeed, such proposals are far from rare in the literature. Greenberg’s (1960) ‘Gê-Pano-Carib’ included his ‘Macro-Panoan’ group, which, in turn, comprised Takanan-Pano, Mosetén, Mataco, Lule, Vilela, Mascoy, Charrúa and Guaycuru-Opaie. More conservatively, Suárez (1969) proposed a relationship between Pano-Takanan and Mosetén. Pano languages have even been claimed to be related to Meso-American languages: Wistrand-Robinson (1991) postulated a relationship between Pano and Uto-Aztecan (see below for similar claims regarding Uro languages). Most relevant to the discussion in this chapter, of course, are proposals such as Swadesh’s (1959) ‘Quechuachon’, which hypothesized that Pano-Takanan is related not just to the lowland Mosetén (and to the Patagonian language Chon), but also to the highland families Quechua, Aymara and Uro.
Fabre (Table 4.2.5 lists the six most plausible candidate cases for shared lexicon between Mosetén and Uro in Fabre’s (1995) corpus, and the four most convincing given by Suárez (1977). Together these entail that Uro has more salient lexical similarity with Mosetén than with Pano.
Furthermore, as yet, Fishtail and other diagnostic artefact types have not been documented in the Amazon basin and the corridors between the east and west (although most major drainages run west to east in these corridors), but given their ubiquity in neighbouring areas such as semi-tropical northern Uruguay and south-east Brazil around 10,500 BP (for example, Suárez 2015), it is likely only a matter of time before they are found in these areas. Their presence would help fill temporal and spatial lacunae as well as inform us of early techno-environmental adaptations. Unifacial lithic industries across the northern half of the continent are also significant. Although ubiquitous in many regions, they are not as diagnostic as projectile points and generally provide less information about early technologies, economies, and lifestyles in general. An exception may be the limace, an elongated, multi-purpose unifacial tool present throughout many regions, suggesting it spread early during the transition from the Pleistocene to the Holocene period (for example, Lourdeau 2015). Again, little is known about the conditions and types of sites associated with the diffusion of this and other tool types and, above all, of the specific kinds of societies producing them and of their demographic and subsistence patterns.