A New View on the Late Pleistocene Lithic Remains from Pikimachay Cave, South Central Peru

Abstract

Between 1966 and 1972, Richard MacNeish led the "Ayacucho Archaeological-Botanical Project" in the Ayacucho Basin, south-central Peru. Over the last decade, we reappraised the lithics recovered in this endeavor. As part of this research, we carried out a detailed review of the lithic remains from the lowest strata of Pikimachay Cave. We concluded that the lithics from layers tentatively dated at about 14,000 uncalibrated yr BP are human-made artifacts, while those from the underlying levels are not. Because of the anthropic nature of the flaked artifacts, their stratigraphic position, chronology, and similarities with other likely coeval lithic assemblages, the Pikimachay record seems to be a good candidate for witnessing possible Paleoamerican foragers living in Ayacucho during the Late Pleistocene.

New taphonomic approach applied to the Late Pleistocene bone remains from Pikimachay Cave, Ayacucho Basin, Peru: possible implications for the debate on human colonisation of western South America

“…On the other hand, the stones from the layers beneath are simple chunks and "naturefacts" or geofacts. Therefore, they do not represent enough evidence to support a discussion on earlier human occupation (Yataco Capcha and Nami, 2022).…”

“…Finally, layer k over the bedrock is brownish-grey with a maximum thickness of 30 cm. The surface area is 10 m long × 4 m wide, of which 27.71 m 2 has been excavated (Yataco Capcha and Nami, 2022).…”

“…Hard layers of this sort seem to be present in other sites, such as the Puente rock shelter (MacNeish, 1981;MacNeish et al, 1983;Yataco Capcha et al, 2021), where chisels were also used during excavations (MacNeish, 1969:37). These highly compacted strata may have acted as a matrix, sealing in the embedded artefacts (Yataco Capcha and Nami, 2022).…”

“…Hassan et al, 1977;Zazzo and Saliège, 2011;Politis, et al 2019; among many others). Despite this, the dates still provided an exploratory chronological framework for the stratigraphy containing the sample investigated, until new data became available (Yataco Capcha and Nami, 2022), as was the case recently for other South American sites (Carlini et al, 2022). It is worth mentioning that Carlini and colleagues (2022) reported a similar problem when trying to obtain updated dates for glyptodontids collected from Muaco and Taima-Taima, two Late Pleistocene sites in north-western Venezuela.…”

“…One of the main difficulties regarding the hypothetical palaeo-American evidence was that, in the final reports, the finds were not described with precision, and the stone remains as well as the raw material identifications were not clearly defined and described (Dillehay, 1985). In order to elucidate the questions and doubts over the possible evidence of Late Pleistocene occupations at Pikimachay (Lynch, 1974(Lynch, , 1990(Lynch, , 1992, we re-investigated the collections of finds from the aforementioned layers, mainly focusing our attention on analyses of the lithic materials (Yataco Capcha and Nami, 2022). Based on careful examination of the stone remains from Pikimachay, we concluded that the lithic artefacts from h-h1 are human-made and showed morpho-technological homogeneity.…”