During the early-middle Holocene (7500-4000 BP) on the west coast of South
America, the intense exploitation of a changing marine environment led to sedentism and
an increase in social complexity (e.g., Moseley 1975, 1988; Yesner 1980; Erlandson and
Jones 2002; Arnold 2004). One of the most archaeologically visible societies during this
period was Chinchorro in northern Chile and southern Peru. These people were maritime
foragers who developed a sophisticated mummification process of human cadavers, in
fact, the earliest in the world. Scholars have generally thought that the technological and
symbolic sophistication of Chinchorro mortuary patterns is strong evidence to infer a
sedentary lifeway and social complexity. However, to date, no hard empirical evidence
has ever been established to show that these people were sedentary and complex beyond
their mortuary practices.
My research primarily focused on the earlier maritime societies that once lived in
the circumscribed environments of river deltas in the arid central-north of Chile on the
Pacific coast during the early-middle Holocene. It took a paleoecological approach -
seasonal growth-ring studies of shellfish - to investigate sedentism and seasonality of
resource procurement at two Chinchorro archaeological sites, Camarones 14 and
Camarones Sur, on the north coast of the Atacama Desert. I also investigated the
seasonality of procurement of shellfish remains at the Huaca Prieta mound (north coast of
Peru), which presents a different type of social complexity from ~7,500-4,000 BP. The
methodology was centralized in the analysis of the shell growth rings of selected species.
I developed a new methodological approach to shell growth ring analysis for the study of
seasonality and possibly sedentism. Although this research was more methodological
than theoretical in focus, several conceptual and interpretative issues were investigated,
that is, whether similar environmental conditions as well as social and technological ones,
influence cultural complexity in the way it was developed by the Chinchorro society and
by Peruvian peoples at Huaca Prieta.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-03222015-141458 |
| Date | 10 April 2015 |
| Creators | Franco, Teresa Cristina de Borges |
| Contributors | Tom D. Dillehay, Tiffiny Tung, John Janusek, Maria Luisa Jorge |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-03222015-141458/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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