The Nanchoc tradition: The beginnings of

Andean civilization
Dillehay, Tom D; Rossen, Jack; Netherly, Patricia J . American Scientist ; Research Triangle Park
 Tomo 85, N.º 1,  (Jan/Feb 1997): 46-55.

Enlace de documentos de ProQuest

RESUMEN (ABSTRACT)
 
Seven thousand years ago, in northern Peru, the processing of lime, most likely for use with coca, launched a
community toward social complexity. Excavations at residential sites in the Nanchoc Valley in Peru revitalize the
debate over the origins of Andean civilization. The Nanchoc Valley seems to fit a model where public activity and
the development of a ritually sanctioned extraction technology was an instrument for consolidating social and
cultural identity.

TEXTO COMPLETO
 
Headnote
Seven thousand years ago, in northern Peru, the processing of lime, most likely for use with coca, launched a
community toward social complexity
One of the cherished goals-some would call it the fatal Cleopatraof anthropology is to explain the emergence of
civilization in early human communities. Anthropologists interested in this question take as their laboratory five
areas of the world where civilizations are thought to have developed autonomously rather than by diffusion:
Mesopotamia, China, the Indus Valley, Mesoamerica (Mexico) and the central Andes. Of these "pristine"
civilizations, the Andean case seems the most exceptional; the Inca, for example, never developed writing,
considered a defining characteristic of Mesopotamian civilization. Yet it is the least studied and least understood.
One of the intriguing problems of Peruvian archaeology is the apparent absence of antecedents for the earliest
conspicuous civilizations. Between 3000 and 2000 B.C., during what is called the Late Preceramic period, there
was an explosion of pyramid building on the northern and central coasts of Peru and in the central highland
basins. These salient material markers of civilization were associated with complex societies characterized by
sedentism, the production of food, pastoralism and large villages. The monumental buildings appear rather
abruptly on the coast, however, and earlier forms also have not been found in the highlands.
The archaeological record for the period preceding monument building, called the Middle Preceramic, is scant and
fragmentary. Moreover, a bias toward the investigation of large, elaborate ceremonial centers has made it difficult
to consider antecedent, small-scale public spaces or architectural forms. These are both harder to detect
archaeologically and, given the tendency to assume that the accumulation of wealth and the attempt to gain social
power are the bases for socioeconomic complexity, harder to accept paradigmatically.
The record is also distorted by a geographical bias. Most research on the origins of Andean civilization has been
done in the major coastal valleys and the highland basins of Peru, where the remains of the later Moche, Chimu,
Inca and Tiahuanaco civilizations were found. On the coast, anthropologists have studied shell middens and
exploitation of the rich marine resources off the coast of Peru. In the highlands, they have excavated caves and
studied the initial domestication of tuberous plants, such as potatoes and oca, and of the camelids, such as the

PDF GENERADO POR SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 1 of 10

llama and alpaca. Compared to the coast and the highlands, the Amazonian rain forest on the eastern slopes of
the Andes has been neglected, as have the western mountain slopes, which were thought of as arid.
In 1978 the authors discovered a rich Preceramic complex in the Nanchoc Valley on the western slopes of the
Andes in northern Peru. One location, the Cementerio de Nanchoc (named after a modern cemetery), turned out to
be a specialized nonresidential site associated with the production of lime from travertine and calcite deposited in
springs at the headwaters of local creeks. The processed lime may have served as a mineral supplement to the
diet or, more likely, as an extractive agent taken with coca. Excavations at residential sites across the valley from
the Cementerio de Nanchoc suggest that the lime was processed by a small community of specialized hunter-
gatherers who were heavily dependent on plant resources and just beginning to practice horticulture.
The Nanchoc Valley excavation revitalizes the debate over the origins of Andean civilization. The earliest cultural
developments in this area do not seem to fit any of the standard explanations for the appearance of social
complexity There is no evidence, for example, that population pressure and growth or climatic change played a role
in the forging of a communal identity. Instead the Nanchoc Valley seems to fit a different model, where public
activity and the development of a ritually sanctioned extraction technology was an instrument for consolidating
social and cultural identity.
Surprises in the Peruvian Record Most Andeanists agree that the first great culture in the Central Andes was
Chavin, named after Chavin de Huantar, an archaeological site in the northern highlands of Peru. The Chavin
civilization, which developed about 1000 B.C., was characterized by a dominant art style and architecture that
influenced other, later cultures. This led Peruvian archaeologist Julio C. Tello to propose in the 1930s that Chavin
is the oldest of Peru's civilizations and the foundation on which all the later ones are built.
The chronological framework for the archaeology of Peru, which was suggested by Max Uhle of the University of
California, Berkeley, and refined by John H. Rowe of Berkeley in 1962, uses the diffusion of Chavin style, called the
Early Horizon, as one chronological marker. The period before the Early Horizon, called the Initial Period, begins
with the introduction of pottery into Peru. (Horizons refer to times where a wave of stylistic influence swept across
regional boundaries and periods refer to times characterized by regional styles.) The interval before the Initial
Period, called the Preceramic, is divided into Late, Middle and Early periods. The Late Preceramic begins with the
appearance of cotton in the archaeological record of the Peruvian coast at about 3000 B.C.
It is typical of the surprises the Peruvian record holds that monumental architecture predates not just the Chavin
civilization but even the appearance of pottery and primary dependence on agriculture for food. In 1941 Gordon
Willey and John Corbett, archaeologists who were excavating a large platform mound at the Aspero site on the
coast of Peru, were disconcerted to find no ceramics. In the following decades, additional coastal sites were
discovered that lacked pottery but featured major mound constructions. In 1960, a team from the University of
Tokyo found large public buildings at Kotosh, a highland site, in stratigraphic layers below the remains of the
earliest ceramic cultures, and other examples of highland Preceramic public architecture were soon found.
Monumental architecture in Peru, then, dates to the Late Preceramic and Early Initial periods, not to the Early
Horizon as Tello had thought. But as Michael Moseley of the University of Florida and Peter Kaulicke of the
Universidad Catolica de Peru have recently noted, the preconditions for monument building must be sought within
the earlier Middle Preceramic period, between 6000 and 3000 B.C. It is within the hunter-gatherer societies of this
period that the initial moves toward the domestication of plant and animal species, sedentism, technological
innovation, occupational specialization and the construction of public architecture took place. The archaeological
problem, of course, is that the first tentative steps toward a complex society left much subtler traces than the later
monument-building civilizations.
At first glance Peru is an unlikely spot for a pristine civilization. It is composed of three contrasting biogeographic
zones-the arid Pacific coast, the high, steep and rugged Andes Mountains and the lush Amazonian lowlands-all of
which are habitable but none of which is notably hospitable. Indeed, acre for acre, Peru has one of the lowest
carrying capacities found in the Western Hemisphere.
The coast of Peru is a strip of desert intersected by small rivers and intermittent streams that arise to the east in

PDF GENERADO POR SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 2 of 10

the Andes mountains. The coastal climate derives from the Humboldt Current, which makes a broad sweep from
Antarctica up the coast of South America. Because the prevailing winds that blow from the southwest during the
Southern Hemisphere winter are cooled by an upwelling of cold waters at the coastal edge of the current, almost
no rain falls on the coastal plain. The early coastal communities were sustained by the resources of the ocean,
which are acknowledged to be among the richest in the world, and, later, by irrigated farming.
Traditionally the western slopes of the Andean cordillera below an elevation of 2,400 meters above sea level have
also been considered to be arid, an assertion based on observations made in the central coast. Unlike the valleys
in central Peru, however, those along the north coast contain a variety of microclimates. When we first visited our
study site, the Zana Valley, in 1972 and 1975 we were struck by its ecological richness.
The Zana River rises in two branches-the Rio Zana River and the Rio Nanchoc. The Upper Zana Valley (the area
north of the Zana River) is covered by remnants of a tropical montane forest complete with parrots, deer, black
bears and boa constrictors. The forest is sustained by montane rainfall characteristic of the highlands during the
summer, but it also generates a self-perpetuating microclimate with dense fog from condensation and light rainfall
at night. Downslope from the forest, which lies between the elevations of 1,300 and 2,400 meters, there is an
ecotone, or area of overlapping ecological zones, in which the tropical montane forest grades into a subtropical
forest, a drier thorn forest and a thorn steppe.
Beryl Simpson of the University of Texas at Austin has established that an extensive belt of montane forest
covered the western slopes of the Andes during terminal Pleistocene times. The forest survives today as an
archipelago in widely separated relict patches. The patch at the head of the Zana Valley is one of the largest of
these.
We were first led to the Zana Valley by research we had done on late preInca and Inca societies on the western
slopes of the Andes and at an ethnohistorically described Inca center in the tropical forest of the upper Zana
Valley. We carried out a preliminary survey of the Upper Zana region in 1978 that located some 100 archaeological
sites. In 1981 test excavations were undertaken to determine the nature and intensity of human occupation in the
different ecological zones within the study area. We found significant occupation during the later Preceramic
period and generally intense occupations during all the subsequent ceramic periods, ending with the Inca
occupation.
Cementerio de Nanchoc
The Preceramic occupations were all located off the floors of the main valleys on alluvial fans at the mouths of
quebradas (dry side canyons) or else some distance up the quebradas themselves. The most important of these
sites is Cementerio de Nanchoc, which was located in 1978, and defined and excavated in 1981 and 1985. This
nonresidential site lies on a small alluvial fan at the mouth of a narrow lateral quebrada on the north side of the
Nanchoc Valley. Fiftyone residential sites were also discovered along streams and adjacent to springs in three
quebradas that lie directly across the valley from Cementerio de Nanchoc. The Cementerio de Nanchoc site, which
covers about 2 hectares (5 acres), lies on both banks of a small arroyo that cuts through the alluvial fan. The first
of two areas we excavated (zone A), on the east side of the stream, contains two low, three-tiered, roughly
triangular mounds made of a meter of earth placed on a slight rise in the quebrada alluvium. The second
excavated area (zone B) is an open-air workshop on the west side of the stream that was in use at the same time
as the mounds.
When we first mapped the site in 1978, we identified only the western mound. At the time, its outer perimeter and
the tiers were defined by aligned stones. Most of the stones were unworked basalt boulders or limestone slabs, but
a few had been deliberately split and thinned.
Two entrances on the south face were marked by larger boulders that formed stone steps onto the lowest tier.
When we returned to the site in 1981 we realized that there were two mounds and an associated work area. The
second, eastern mound falls within the cemetery for the modern village of Nanchoc and has been nearly destroyed.
Between 1978 and 1981 many of the stones delineating the mounds were removed and incorporated in a wall that
was built around the cemetery and mounds.

PDF GENERADO POR SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 3 of 10

Excavation of the western mound uncovered two distinct floors, each of which was lightly strewn with flakes of
local volcanic stones and a few conicalshaped chunks of worked lime, called cal. An electrical resistivity survey of
the mound and test pits revealed two parallel lines of postholes and a litter of small stones and flakes at the level
of the lower floor, suggesting that debris had accumulated along the side walls of an architectural structure.
A radiocarbon assay of charcoal from the lower floor yielded a date of 5770 B.C. 100 years. At this time, the site
was probably a ritual area marked only by a low hummock or aligned stones. A piece of wood from the upper floor
was dated to 3700 + 60 B.C. The layered habitational floors and the radiocarbon dates suggest that the mound
was used intermittently and lightly but over a long period. Use of the west mound ended sometime between 4000
and 3000 B.C., when it was capped with stone slabs.
Excavation of zone B disclosed an occupational floor, a light scatter of stone artifacts and many hearths, which
contained ash, unworked travertine and calcite, burned rock, heat-shattered metates, or milling stones, and manos
(the handstone used as the upper millstone), and small fragments of burned and partially burned lime. No
domestic refuse was found.
Radiocarbon dates for the hearths and floor range from 5300 to 4800 B.C., that is, over roughly the same period as
the mounds. Identical stone artifacts from the lowest hearth and the lower level of the western mound, together
with analysis of the natural and cultural stratigraphy, confirm that the work area and mounds are associated.
Given the scant domestic refuse, such as floor stains and midden debris, the narrow range and low density of the
artifacts and the presence of the mounds, a reasonable supposition is that Cementerio de Nanchoc is a site where
specialized nondomestic production took place, probably the manufacture of lime. Ethnographic analogy suggests
that this material might have been used either as a mineral supplement with either tuber or grain meals or as an
extractive agent with coca. Chewed with a pinch of lime, or cal, the leaf of the coca bush (Erythroxylum coca)
releases a mild dose of cocaine alkaloid, numbing sensory nerves and dulling hunger. It has been central to
religious rituals and the daily life of Peruvians for centuries.
There is little direct evidence of coca use at the Nanchoc Valley sites. Three leaves were found underneath fallen
architectural stone buried in the floor of a dwelling at one of the excavated residential sites, but their radiocarbon
dates are inconsistent with those of human bone remains found with them, which date around 4000-3500 B.C.
(The dates given here are accelerator mass spectrometry, or AMS, radiocarbon dates, which can be thrown off if an
artifact is contaminated by organic residues from the soil matrix.) No leaves were found at Cementerio de
Nanchoc. But as anyone who has observed coca chewing knows, little remains, and that little might not be
identifiable archaeologically. The use of coca is suggested both by the heavy investment in the production of lime
and, perhaps, by the presence of exotic goods that could have been received in exchange for coca. Moreover, the
montane forest of the Nanchoc Valley was probably a prime coca-growing region in the past, just as it is today.
Among the Aymara of modern Bolivia and the Quechua of modern Peru, cal is prepared by burning calciumbearing
rocks and grinding the residue into powder. The powder is mixed with water and salt and condensed into small,
cake-like concretions. The presence of burned, unburned, flaked and unflaked travertine and calcite, prepared lime
concretions, and stone scrapers and grinding stones whose edges still bore particles of burned and unburned lime
suggest that production and use of lime of Cementerio de Nanchoc might have been similar.
We interpret the mounds, then, as small-scale public structures that probably served as a focus for communal
activities, including the production of lime but possibly also feasting and decision making. The technological
activity of extracting cal was probably sanctioned by communal rituals. No direct evidence of ritual activity
survives, but it is suggested by the tiered mound architecture, by the isolation of the mounds and work area from
the domestic sites across the valley, and by the archaeology of the domestic sites.
Early Occupation: Las Pircas What people used the Cementerio de Nanchoc site, and how did they live?
In the three quedabras across the valley we found evidence of two phases of occupation, which we named the Las
Pircas phase (65004500 B.C.) and the Tierra Blanca phase (4500-3000 B.C.), after the quedabras where the primary
settlements were located.
Excavation of these sites suggested that household autonomy may have declined as communal activity at the

PDF GENERADO POR SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 4 of 10

lime-processing site assumed greater importance. The Las Pircas phase can be viewed as a florescence,
characterized by the production of a variety of high-quality stone tools, household rituals (garden magic may have
been practiced), regular access to exotic goods and elaborate treatment of the dead. In contrast, although there is
evidence of greater horticultural skill (though still relying primarily on wild plants) during the Tierra Blanca phase,
fewer exotic items were found, stone tools became cruder and treatment of the dead more haphazard.
The Las Pircas and Tierra Blanca occupations consist of a network of households scattered high on the alluvial
fans in the quedabras. The sites are typically found on slightly elevated ground next to tracts of naturally terraced
soil in the middle and lower courses of streams.
There are no signs of contemporaneous occupation on the floodplain below. This pattern is so characteristic of the
Preceramic sites that it suggests the habitat of the high fans in lateral canyons must have been particularly
favorable. Perhaps stream flooding, which might have been regular but not deep or prolonged, was advantageous
for peoples just beginning to practice horticulture along with hunting and the gathering of wild plants.
The Las Pircas quedabra has the largest alluvial fan in the Nanchoc area. The fan is dotted with small (30 to 100
meters across) Preceramic residential and activity sites, several of which have been excavated. Radiocarbon dates
range from about 6500 to 5000 B.c., with the earliest sites higher on the fan. Features at the sites appear to be
interrelated and are never superimposed, suggesting a single, continuous occupation.
Although domestic refuse was found at all of the excavation sites, the foundations of houses and food refuse were
found primarily at one site (CA-09-27), possible garden plots at this and one other site (CA-09-52) and human bone
mainly at a third site (CA-09-28). Excavation of the first site revealed the foundations of a small (2.3 meters by 2
meters) elliptical hut. The foundations of the hut were adobe and stone and the sidewalls were made of quincha
cane and daub (numerous daub fragments with cane impressions were found at Las Pircas). Small bedrock
outcrops incorporated into the foundation of the house defined a northeast-facing entrance.
At the second and third sites, undulating areas without features suggest ancient garden furrows. These sites are
situated on alluvial terraces in the upper quebradas near springs, where ditch-irrigated gardening would have been
facilitated by the grade and shallow cut of the stream and associated rich alluvial soils. The garden plots each
covered about an eighth of a hectare.
A series of secondary burials and one primary burial were excavated at the fthird site. The human remains were
most often cut longbones of adult males that had been carefully placed in piles or shallow pits. Stone anvils
apparently used in treating the dead lay nearby. Analysis of some of these bones by John Verano of Tulane
University recently revealed evidence of possible cannibalism. The primary burial was flexed and covered with a
rock pavement.
The Las Pircas artifact collections are dominated by an exclusively unifacial lithic industry characterized by formal
consistency and relatively fine workmanship. We termed this industry, which can be distinguished by its
workmanship from other northern Peruvian unifacial industries identified by James Richardson of the University of
Pittsburgh, the Nanchoc Lithic Tradition.
All of the quedabras have occasional deposits of easily worked volcanic stones, principally basalts and andesites.
The tools were generally made by striking a flake from a blocky stone core and then shaping the tool by chipping
the flake with a harder stone. The edge might then be sharpened by retouching, much as one sharpens a knife. The
stone tools made in this way include flake and slab choppers, crude blades, side-scrapers, gravers and a few
endscrapers.
The Nanchoc Lithic Tradition appears to have been heavily oriented toward plant processing and woodworking. Of
the approximately 50,000 lithics collected from all cultural periods in the upper Zana Valley, only two are bifacial
and they are obviously imports. The absence of locally produced bifadally flaked stone tools, such as spear points,
suggests that hunting may not have been of prime importance, although a small faunal assemblage indicative of a
tropical forest environment was found. (In addition to abundant land snails, it included the remains of jaguarundi, a
boa-like snake, and tinamou, a bird.) Bright plant polish and fibers found on the edges of some tools also suggest
reliance on a vegetarian diet, as does heavy wear on human teeth and the presence of hundreds of metates and

PDF GENERADO POR SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 5 of 10

manos.
A small collection of plant remains was recovered through water flotation from the floors inside the structures. The
collection of wild and semi-cultivated plants included squash, peanuts, Chenopodium (the plant that produces
quinoa, a grain still eaten in Peru), fleshy solanaceous species with fruits resembling tomatillos, and cactus fruits.
The collection is problematic because radiocarbon analysis has yielded inconsistent dates. Yet the plants have
ancient forms, the stratigraphic context in which they were found is impeccable, and their presence is consistent
with other evidence, such as the types of tools that were found and the wear patterns on the tools.
Exotic items recovered in the excavation of the Las Pircas alluvial fan included modest amounts of burned and
broken shells, which must have come from the coast 80 kilometers to the west. The shellfish were probably a food
item, but other, rarer exotic items may have had a less mundane purpose. These items, which include quartz
crystals, stingray spines, colorful marine shells, fossils, beads and amulets made of green malachite, and a broken
projectile point made of bright-red jaspar in the Paijan style, come from widely scattered sites in the modern
Cajamarca department immediately to the east of the Zana Valley and the Lambayeque department immediately to
the north.
Novel objects such as these may have been the earliest nonfood resources to be procured and "managed" by the
people in this area. Michael Harner of Columbia University has shown that the modern Jivaro in eastern Peru plant
exotic stones and other items in their gardens to protect their crops from evil forces. Ritualization, perhaps
connected to exotic items, would be expected of a group that was experimenting with horticulture and perhaps
also with related changes in settlement patterns and social structure. Some of these items, especially the quartz
crystals, may have been used in garden magic, or at least in a general intensification of household ritual
associated with exploratory manipulation of plants.
The Las Pircas phase, in summary, appears to have been characterized by a permanent settlement of the sort that
Bennett Bronson of the Field Museum in Chicago has termed "pseudo-dense." The clustering of homes, in other
words, appears to reflect the presence of key natural resources such as the springs, alluvial soils and deposits of
easily worked stone, rather than population density or pressure.
Together the archaeological evidence suggests that major economic and social changes were under way in the
orbit of the Nanchoc area and that the local people were in the early stages of forging a corporate identity. No coca
leaves were found at Las Pircas, but a few fragments of burned lime were found at the garden sites. The fragments
were small and amorphous, suggesting that the extraction and processing of lime-bearing rocks during this phase
was in its initial or early stages.
The Tierra Blanca Occupants
Along a stretch of the Tierra Blanca alluvial fan, we located a number of small domestic sites, five of which have
been partially excavated. The dates obtained by radiocarbon analysis of human bone and charcoal recovered from
hearths inside buildings range from 4000 to 3000 B.C.; this was a later occupation than the one found at Las
Pircas. The cultural levels within the stratigraphy of these sites are not thick, and there are clear lenses of
habitational debris, suggesting that, unlike Las Pircas, this site was periodically abandoned.
The Tierra Blanca occupation supertidaily resembled the Las Pircas one, but it turned out to be different in many
subtle ways. At one site (CA-09-77) we found a rectangular house with rounded corners, rock dividing walls and
two, small basinshaped hearths. Within the house were a variety of stone tools, shattered and sometimes burned
animal and human bone, plant remains, burned and unburned malachite and conical pieces of lime. The tools
found at this and at other Tierra Blanca sites included end-scrapers, polishing stones, and grinding stones and
slabs. The plant remains included fragments of cotton, squash, Chenopodium and three leaves of wild coca.
Donald Ugent of Southern Illinois University identified the species of the coca leaves.
The range of stone tools found at Tierra Blanca was smaller than that at Las Pircas, and the tools were
comparatively crude and poorly worked. We associate this decline in the lithic industry with the scarcity of novel
artifacts and the less systematic treatment of the dead. A few exotic lithics and marine shells were found, but
these were generally of poorer quality that those recovered from the Las Pircas sites. (A greater variety and

PDF GENERADO POR SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 6 of 10

quantity of marine shells were found, however, suggesting that imported shellfish had become a more important
component of the diet.) Instead of being carefully cut and placed, human bone was roughly broken, shattered and
trampled on the floors of some sites.
Excavation of another site (CA-09-50), a low residential mound located not on an alluvial fan but lower down, at the
edge of the Nanchoc River's floodplain suggests, however, that the Tierra Blanca population may have been more
accomplished horticulturists than their predecessors. The mound was in use from the Middle to the Late
Preceramic period, and the more recent layers were associated with fragments of peanuts and Chenopodium.
Garden furrows and small irrigation canals that appear to be Preceramic were found near the site and at the
conjunction of the Terra Blanca fan and the main valley floor. A reasonable supposition is that this site reflects
increased exploitation of forest-fringe and floodplain resources.
How can these differences between the two Nanchoc Valley occupations be understood? The later Tierra Blanca
site suggests that a degradation, or devolution, of technologies and practices, including household ritual practices,
accompanied the full-scale development of a lime- and food-producing economy. Whereas the Las Pircas sites
contained only small, irregularly shaped chunks of lime, the Tierra Blanca sites yielded regular cones, suggesting a
more standardized and formal system of lime production. The differences between the sites suggest that
household autonomy decreased as ritually sponsored communal activity was established.
Ritual, Technology and Civilization To grasp the significance of the Cementerio de Nanchoc site, one must
distinguish the technology of lime extraction from the complex communal support for this technology. The
technology involved procurement of the local raw materials and knowledge of the process by which lime could be
extracted from them. The multiple hearths and processing areas in the open-air workshop at Cementerio de
Nanchoc indicate that lime processing was done communally. Communal support for lime processing must have
entailed some kind of economic arrangement, but the evidence also suggests it involved social regulation by
means of public ceremony.
Use of the Cementerio de Nanchoc mounds may actually have preceded the establishment of permanent domestic
settlements. The mound deposits are thicker and include distinct floors, only a few unifacial lithic types are
present, and debitage, the refuse of stone flaking, is absent. The deposits at the residential sites, on the other
hand, are usually thin and contain many more artifacts. This difference suggests that the mounds saw long-term,
but comparatively light, specialized use.
The Las Pircas people were just beginning to develop the skills needed to organize persistent production of lime
for local consumption or exchange and to meet the social obligations of communal ritual. They were territorial-
valued resources were not freely available to everyone-and they had developed rituals involving death and fertility,
perhaps in response to the influx of new resources, such as coca, lime, possibly other plants, and exotic items.
We would argue that communal ritual developed together with a specialized lime-extractive technology during the
later, Tierra Blanca phase. The refashioning of the mounds during the Tierra Blanca phase may have been directed
by a specialized corporate body that was responsible both for conducting local affairs and overseeing exchanges
with distant groups. The pooling of resources and the organization of labor were probably regulated by local
ceremonies that may have attracted people from distant settlements.
The Preceramic population in the upper Zana Valley experienced some of the most fundamental transitions in
human history. These include the transition from a nomadic to a sedentary life-style, identification with a group
larger than the family, the capacity to develop rather than simply claim resources, and the establishment of public
ceremonial places. Although these transitions may seem primitive, they are the basis of urban society. In a sense,
the developments that followed were merely a scaling up of what had already occurred.
Earlier this century the archaeologist V Gordon Childe argued that a great urban revolution had taken place in the
Near East about 3000 B.c. Childe defined the Urban Revolution as the development of densely populated
settlements whose farmers supported a small army of craftspeople, priests and traders by producing massive food
supplies. This model was thought to be general and was widely quoted in world histories and other popular works
about the past, and although it has been discarded, its ghost still lingers in the popular imagination.

PDF GENERADO POR SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 7 of 10

The lesson of Peruvian archaeology in general and of the Nanchoc Valley site in particular is that it may not be
possible to define a universal suite of cultural mechanisms and processes that set the stage for civilization. Any
hypothesis with pretensions to universality must be examined in local contexts and must be flexible enough to
take into account local ecology, political economy, religious beliefs and historical conditions.
But the Nanchoc Valley record supports one general notion: the importance of communal social relations and
ritually sponsored activities in the rise of civilization. At Nanchoc a specialized, ritually sanctioned extractive
technology served as a means of promoting group identity and cohesiveness during the early phases of
civilization. In Real Alto, an early Ceramic site in southern Ecuador, similar functions seem to have been served by
a fiesta house and charnal house. Neither finding is a surprise to anthropologists. Cultural activity and a sense of
shared purpose have always bound people together and given them power as a society; in each part of the world
where preindustrial civilizations appeared, ceremonial places were the first seats of power exchange, authority and
identity. Participation in rituals enhanced the sense of group identity, coordinated the actions of individual
members of the group and prepared the group for cooperative action.
Beyond these observations, the excavated record is still too incomplete to answer other questions these sites
raise, such as whether the later public architecture was a direct outgrowth of the earlier appropriations of public
space. The final message of the Nanchoc Valley is a simple one: The foundations of Andean civilization are both
older, more widespread and more complex than had been suspected.
Bibliography
Antunez de Mayolo, S. 1981. La Nutricion en el Antiquo Peru. Lima: Banco Central de Reserva del Peru.
Burger, R. L. 1993. Chavin and the Origins of Andean Civilization. London: Thames and Hudson. Bonavia, D. 1991.
Peru: Hombre e Historia. Lima: Ediciones Edubanco.
Bronson, B. 1977. The earliest farming: Demography as cause and consequence. In Origins of Agriculture, ed. C. A.
Reed. The Hague: Mouton Press, pp. 23-48.
Brown, M. 1985. Tsewa's Gift: Magic and Meaning in an Amazonian Society. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press. Dillehay, T. D. 1992. Widening of the socio-economic foundations of Andean civilization:
Prototypes of early monumental architecture. In Andean Past 3. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, pp. 55-66.
Dillehay, T. D., and P. Netherly. 1983. Exploring the upper Zana Valley in Peru: A unique tropical setting offers
insights into the Andean past. Archaeology 36:22-28. Dillehay, T. D., P Netherly and J. Rossen. 1991. Early
Preceramic public and residential sites on the forested slopes of the western Andes. American Antiquity 54:733.
Gregg, S., ed. Between Bands and States. Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press. Kaulicke, P.1994. Historia del Peru:
Los Origenes.
Tomo I. Lima: Editorial Brasa, S.A. Lumbreras, L. 1989. Chavin de Hudntar en el Nacimiento de la Civilizacidn
Andina. Lima: Editorial Universitaria. Moseley, M. E. 1992. The Incas and their Predecessors. London: Thames and
Hudson. Price, D., and J. Bron, eds. 1985. Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers. New York: Academic Press. Quilter, J.
1991. Late Preceramic Peru. Journal of World Prehistory 5:387438.
Rossen, J., T. D. Dillehay and D. Ugent. 1996. Andent cultigens or modern intrusions?: Evaluating plant remains in
an Andean case study Journal of Archaeological Science 23:391-407.
Footnote
Acknowledgments
Funding for the archaeological research in the Zara Valley was provided by the National Science Foundation, the
University of Kentucky, Earthwatch, the State University of New York at Fredonia and the American Philosophical
Society. Permission to carry out the research in the area was granted by the Instituto Nacional de Cultura, Peru.
AuthorAffiliation
Tom D. Dillehay is professor and chair of anthropology at the University of Kentucky, where he has taught since
1980. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Texas in 1976. He has carried out research and taught in several
South American countries. Jack Rossen, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in 1991, is a
research archaeologist with the Program for Cultural Resource Assessment at the University of Kentucky. He is

PDF GENERADO POR SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 8 of 10

serving this year as a visiting professor at Ithaca College. Patricia J. Netherly is an archaeologist and the director
of the Fundacion Alexander von Humboldt, Quito, Ecuador. She has worked in Peru and Ecuador since receiving
her Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1977. Address for Dillehay: Department of Anthropology, University of
Kentucky, Lexington, KY 405060024. Internet: antll8@ukcc.uky.edu.

DETALLES

Materia: Ancient civilizations; Native Americans; Society; Archaeology; Culture

Lugar: Andes Mountains Peru

Título: The Nanchoc tradition: The beginnings of Andean civilization

Autor: Dillehay, Tom D; Rossen, Jack; Netherly, Patricia J

Título de publicación: American Scientist; Research Triangle Park

Tomo: 85

Número: 1

Páginas: 46-55

Número de páginas: 10

Año de publicación: 1997

Fecha de publicación: Jan/Feb 1997

Editorial: Sigma XI-The Scientific Research Society

Lugar de publicación: Research Triangle Park

País de publicación: United States, Research Triangle Park

Materia de publicación: Sciences: Comprehensive Works

ISSN: 00030996

CODEN: AMSCAC

Tipo de fuente: Scholarly Journals

Idioma de la publicación: English

Tipo de documento: Feature

Número de acceso: 03116603

ID del documento de 215267158

ProQuest:

PDF GENERADO POR SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 9 of 10

 URL del documento: http://login.proxy.library.vanderbilt.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docv
iew/215267158?accountid=14816

Copyright: Copyright Sigma XI-The Scientific Research Society Jan/Feb 1997

Última actualización: 2017-10-31

Base de datos: ProQuest Central

ENLACES
Check Findit@VU for Availability

Copyright de la base de datos  2019 ProQuest LLC. Reservados todos los derechos.

Términos y condiciones Contactar con ProQuest

PDF GENERADO POR SEARCH.PROQUEST.COM Page 10 of 10