Psychoactive plants have played a significant role in Andean cultures for millennia. Whilst there is evidence of the importance of psychoactive plants in the Andean archaeological record, none of these are direct proof that these culturally significant plants were used by ancient Andean populations. This project utilised liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) to investigate the use of psychoactive plants in individuals from cemetery sites in Chile and Peru by analysing hair specimens for a variety of psychoactive compounds. Hair specimens from 46 individuals buried at cemetery sites in the Azapa Valley (northern Chile) belonging to the Cabuza culture (c AD 300 ¿ 1000) indicated around half of these people ingested coca, as evidenced by the detection of BZE in hair specimens. Two individuals from this population tested positive for bufotenine, the main alkaloid in Anadenanthera snuff. There is a specific material culture associated with snuffing. These findings confirm Anadenanthera was consumed in the Azapa Valley. The 11 individuals from Peru came from the necropolis at Puruchuco-Huaquerones in the Rímac valley near Lima. These individuals belonged to the Ichma culture, but would have been under Inca imperial control during the Late Horizon. Although only a small sample, two-thirds tested positive for BZE, suggestive that access to coca was widespread. This project presents a synthesis of the archaeological evidence for the use of various psychoactive plants in Andes. Also presented is the first report of the detection of bufotenine in ancient hair samples and additional data contributing to the understanding of the use of coca in the Andes. / Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). Andy Jagger and Francis Raymond Hudson funds at the University of Bradford

One of the unsolved problems of modern science is whether the pre-Columbian peoples of the New World developed completely independently of cultural influences from the Old World or if there was a trans-oceanic contact? A number of scientists agree that there are many – and often remarkable – similarities between the cultures of pre-Columbian America and those of the Mediterranean world. Nevertheless, there is no agreement, as yet, on how cultural diffusion can be differentiated from independent invention. Scientific analysis shows that scholarly positions are often strongly pre-formed from paradigms (scientific based assumptions), which tend to hinder consideration of solid scientific data offered by geo-biology and its trans-disciplinary examination of the subject under investigation here. An unambiguous answer to the question, what historical processes led to the emergence of the ancient American agriculture, hasn\'t been given. However, the archaeological discovery of crops with clear trans-oceanic origin, in addition to advances in molecular biology, increasingly support the hypothesis that humans from the distant past influenced each other across the oceans at a much earlier stage. The vegetation and zoo-geography indicate, by numerous examples that some species could only have spread through perhaps unintentional (passive) human transmission [1]. There are two very old crops found in the „New World‟, which contradict the paradigm of a completely independent origin for American agriculture. These are the African Bottle Gourd (Lagenaria siceraria L.) and the ancestral cotton species (Gossypium herbaceum L.) of the domesticated spin able sub-genus of tetraploid cotton. The historical spread of both types has been under discussion for decades, especially in respect of trans-oceanic human contact with the American continent. There has also been a debate in the \"Old World\" ever since the discovery of nicotine and cocaine in Egyptian mummies, centering around whether \"New World\" plants (or the ingredients) might have been transmitted in the reverse direction, back to the presumed start in centers of the Ancient World\'s oldest civilizations.

Psychoactive plants have played a significant role in Andean cultures for millennia. Whilst there is evidence of the importance of psychoactive plants in the Andean archaeological record, none of these are direct proof that these culturally significant plants were used by ancient Andean populations. This project utilised liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) to investigate the use of psychoactive plants in individuals from cemetery sites in Chile and Peru by analysing hair specimens for a variety of psychoactive compounds. Hair specimens from 46 individuals buried at cemetery sites in the Azapa Valley (northern Chile) belonging to the Cabuza culture (c AD 300 ¿ 1000) indicated around half of these people ingested coca, as evidenced by the detection of BZE in hair specimens. Two individuals from this population tested positive for bufotenine, the main alkaloid in Anadenanthera snuff. There is a specific material culture associated with snuffing. These findings confirm Anadenanthera was consumed in the Azapa Valley. The 11 individuals from Peru came from the necropolis at Puruchuco-Huaquerones in the Rímac valley near Lima. These individuals belonged to the Ichma culture, but would have been under Inca imperial control during the Late Horizon. Although only a small sample, two-thirds tested positive for BZE, suggestive that access to coca was widespread. This project presents a synthesis of the archaeological evidence for the use of various psychoactive plants in Andes. Also presented is the first report of the detection of bufotenine in ancient hair samples and additional data contributing to the understanding of the use of coca in the Andes.

No / Examination of three frozen bodies, a 13-y-old girl and a girl and boy aged 4 to 5 y, separately entombed near the Andean summit of Volcan Llullaillaco, Argentina, sheds new light on human sacrifice as a central part of the Imperial Inca capacocha rite, described by chroniclers writing after the Spanish conquest. The high-resolution diachronic data presented here, obtained directly from scalp hair, implies escalating coca and alcohol ingestion in the lead-up to death. These data, combined with archaeological and radiological evidence, deepen our understanding of the circumstances and context of final placement on the mountain top. We argue that the individuals were treated differently according to their age, status, and ritual role. Finally, we relate our findings to questions of consent, coercion, and/or compliance, and the controversial issues of ideological justification and strategies of social control and political legitimation pursued by the expansionist Inca state before European contact.

One of the unsolved problems of modern science is whether the pre-Columbian peoples of the New World developed completely independently of cultural influences from the Old World or if there was a trans-oceanic contact? A number of scientists agree that there are many – and often remarkable – similarities between the cultures of pre-Columbian America and those of the Mediterranean world. Nevertheless, there is no agreement, as yet, on how cultural diffusion can be differentiated from independent invention. Scientific analysis shows that scholarly positions are often strongly pre-formed from paradigms (scientific based assumptions), which tend to hinder consideration of solid scientific data offered by geo-biology and its trans-disciplinary examination of the subject under investigation here. An unambiguous answer to the question, what historical processes led to the emergence of the ancient American agriculture, hasn\''t been given. However, the archaeological discovery of crops with clear trans-oceanic origin, in addition to advances in molecular biology, increasingly support the hypothesis that humans from the distant past influenced each other across the oceans at a much earlier stage. The vegetation and zoo-geography indicate, by numerous examples that some species could only have spread through perhaps unintentional (passive) human transmission [1]. There are two very old crops found in the „New World‟, which contradict the paradigm of a completely independent origin for American agriculture. These are the African Bottle Gourd (Lagenaria siceraria L.) and the ancestral cotton species (Gossypium herbaceum L.) of the domesticated spin able sub-genus of tetraploid cotton. The historical spread of both types has been under discussion for decades, especially in respect of trans-oceanic human contact with the American continent. There has also been a debate in the \"Old World\" ever since the discovery of nicotine and cocaine in Egyptian mummies, centering around whether \"New World\" plants (or the ingredients) might have been transmitted in the reverse direction, back to the presumed start in centers of the Ancient World\''s oldest civilizations.