Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the international team of Winifred Creamer, Alvaro Ruiz and Jonathan Haas are investigating the beginning stages in the evolution of complex societies in South America. Early stages of development of one of the first civilizations to arise anywhere in the Americas, is to be found in a small cluster of valleys on the Pacific coast of Peru, known at the Norte Chico. Previous NSF-supported work helped to confirm the presence of more than 30 major ceremonial centers in the Norte Chico, all occupied between 3100 and 1800 B.C. The intellectual merit of the project will be to test current theories about the role of economic organization in the origins of complex societies by focusing on two aspects of this ancient occupation in the Norte Chico: diet and social status. One of the major questions concerning the beginnings of complex, centralized society on the coast of Peru is the relative importance of marine resources (fish and shellfish) vs. domesticated plants (corn, beans, squash and fruits) in the diet of the 3rd millennium B.C. To recover the remains of past diet, excavations will be made in domestic housing at two sites in the Norte Chico. In this desert landscape refuse is well-preserved and these ancient houses will yield a wide range of materials that can be analyzed to reconstruct diet. These include remains of plants and animals, as well as less obvious evidence such as pollen, phytoliths (mineralized plant remains), starch grains, and coprolites (feces). Together these remains will provide a scientific foundation for reconstructing the diet of the people and revealing the relative importance of domesticated plants and marine resources. The second focus of the project will be to gain knowledge about the nature of social organization in these centers. Surface indications at the two target sites point to the possible presence of three different social ranks: an elite group with formal complexes of large rooms constructed of carefully masoned and plastered stone walls; a middle rank of houses with smaller rooms constructed of stone, mud and cane; and a lower rank of temporary rooms constructed of cane matting. A sample of each type of housing will be excavated at each site and the architectural and artifactual results will be analyzed to examine possible differences in activities and consumption between the three types of housing. A broad range of questions will be answered through this work: Are different kinds of tools associated with one type of house and not the others? Do some families eat better or eat distinct foods? Do some people live at the sites year-round while others come in seasonally? The research in the Norte Chico has a broader impact extending beyond the history of the region. The ultimate goal is to provide insight into how and why human societies came to be socially stratified and politically centralized. The excavations will directly examine the respective roles of agricultural production and marine exploitation in an emerging complex economy and show how societies come to be socially ranked with distinct groups of leaders and followers.
