Late Chiribaya agriculture and risk management along the arid Andean coast of southern Perú, A.D. 1200–1400

Abstract

Recent investigations at the coastal spring site of Wawakiki in southern Perú have identified an intensive, late pre-Hispanic agricultural production strategy along a sea cliff some 30 km north of the Ilo River. Excavations identified buried stone-faced agricultural terraces underlying Spanish colonial and post-colonial furrows, and long irrigation canals that transported water along steep hill slopes from inland springs. Depositional patterns, cultural debris, and calibrated radiocarbon age ranges suggest the site was farmed most intensively between A.D. 1200 and 1400, a period characterized by prolonged highland drought and recurrent El Niño-induced floods in southern Perú. Farmers transformed this arid coastal promontory into a productive agricultural landscape by exploiting multiple spring sources, steep canals, and stone-faced terraces in an area where water is a very limited commodity and steep barren hills are highly prone to erosion. Furthermore, high-relief terrain left much of the agricultural infrastructure well protected from periodic floods.

Landscape and Environment: Insights from the Prehispanic Central Andes

“…Although El Niño events require adaptive responses, at the same time they open new niches for exploitation; in the Casma case, flooded land became amenable to raised-field cultivation (Moore 1988(Moore , 1991. Similar emphasis on reconfiguration rather than collapse characterizes other recent ENSO-related work (Chapdelaine 2000;Williams 2002;Zaro and Umire Á lvarez 2005).…”

“…Recent work in the central Andes addresses precisely these issues (e.g., Contreras 2007;Hayashida 2006;Hesse 2008;Rigsby et al 2003;Zaro and Umire Á lvarez 2005). The long history of research focused on environment and landscape in the central Andes provides a firm grounding, and these recent research programs suggest ways that reciprocal human-environment interactions may be addressed archaeologically.…”

“…A growing array of projects has recently attempted to examine changing central Andean polities in their dynamic environmental contexts (e.g., Huckleberry and Billman 2003;Manners et al 2007;Nordt et al 2004;Reycraft 2000;Rigsby et al 2003;Wells and Noller 1999;Zaro and Umire Á lvarez 2005). These studies build intertwined chronologies of sociopolitical and environmental change, using highresolution chronologies and detailed catalogs of landscape and architectural/ settlement change to approach the processes linking cultural and environmental trajectories.…”

Residential mobility and resource use in the Chiribaya polity of southern Peru: strontium isotope analysis of archaeological tooth enamel and bone

“…During the Late Intermediate Period (c. 1000-1300), the Chiribaya were a powerful and populous polity in the Ilo and Moquegua Valleys of southern Peru, which are also referred to as the Osmore Drainage (Bawden, 1989;Jessup, 1990;Mujica Barreda, 1990;Rice, 1993;Satterlee, 1993;Buikstra, 1995;Wallert & Boytner, 1996;Owen, 1998;Burgess, 1999;Cartmell et al, 1999;Reycraft, 2000Reycraft, , 2005Umire Alvarez & Miranda, 2001;Lozada Cerna & Buikstra, 2002Martinson et al, 2002;Zaro & Umire Alvarez, 2005). The Ilo Valley sites of Chiribaya Alta, Chiribaya Baja and San Geró nimo, as well as the Moquegua Valley site of El Yaral, all contain material culture in Chiribaya styles and extensive residential and mortuary sectors (Figure 1) (Jessup, 1990;Buikstra, 1995;.…”

The role of geoarchaeology in extending our perspective

“…These studies can reveal additions to soils (e.g. Bintliff et al 2006;Guttmann et al 2006Guttmann et al , 2008Simpson et al 2006), or other techniques such as terracing (Krahtopoulou & Frederick 2008) or runoff irrigation (Sandor et al 2007), which create or improve arable land, or otherwise allowed communities to manage risk (Zaro & Alvarez 2005). Human land-use practices can have unintended consequences, however, which can be either positive or negative.…”