Archaeology, anthropology
Studying Domestication in the Andes
Introduction
Several thousand years ago, Indigenous people living in the Andes and the Amazon domesticated a series plants and animals, including potatoes, tomatoes, llamas and alpacas, that continue to be vital sources of sustenance today – including for many people living outside South America! While some archaeological research has shed light on the timing and mechanisms of plant domestication in the Andes, there has been little data available to address the processes through which the wild ancestors of llamas and alpacas were domesticated – until now.
A recent project in the Padua region of Southern Ecuador is now providing us with ample survey and excavation data to address this intriguing problem. Your task in this short assignment is to interpret the data contained in the series of tables and maps below, redacting your analysis in an essay of 6-7 typewritten pages (double-spaced, 12 pt. font).
The Ecology of the Padua Region Nestled between the jungles of the Ecuadorian Oriente and the high peaks of the Andes between 2000 and 5000 meters of elevation, Ecuador’s Padua region contains a diverse series of ecologies. Desert-like areas are found at lower elevations, more shrubby or grassy areas at mid-altitude, with snowcaps and icy wastelands at 5000 meters.
Looking at an altitude profile (Figure 1b) we can identify 5 different zones:
1. Alluvial Floodplain.This is a low-lying area around the Padua River, which floods briefly during the wet season, from November through April. It is a region of rich soils, but the dry season parches it brown, leaving only a trickle of water in the river channel.
2. Piedmont. This is a zone of low shrubs that lies in the rain-shadow of the Andes and never receives very much moisture. Due to its dryness, it hosts only a few tender plants – and occasional, highly dispersed wild game. The piedmont consists of slopes ascending above the alluvial floodplain.
3. Valley Slopes. Located between 2500 to 4000 meters above sea level, steeply sloping sides of the valley, rising to meet the high grassy plain above. Cloud masses from the eastern jungle keep this zone moist during most of the year — somewhat more so during the wet season, in June, July and August. Stunted shrubs form a low thorn forest, which support a low but regular density of game during part of the year. Game tend to be more densely concentrated here during the months that correspond to the dry season in the alluvial plain.
4. High grassy plains (puna). Lying at 4000 meters of altitude, the puna consists of rich, well-watered grasslands that never completely dry out at any point during the year.
5. Snowcaps and high mountain slopes. To the west, rising above the puna are snowcaps and high mountain slopes that constitute a rocky wasteland covered with snow and ice for much of the year.
While many types of game are found in these zones, two large animals whose remains frequently appear in archaeological assemblages in the Padua region are deer and camelids. Deer are relatively solitary animals, which often range at lower altitudes, where they subsist by browsing on shrubs and other leafy vegetation. Camelids include both wild vicuñas and domesticated llamas and alpacas, which tend to live at relativelyhigh elevations in their wild state. In order to find enough food to eat, deer migrate between ecological zones on a seasonal basis, following the availability of green vegetation.
Unlike camelids, know that deer were never domesticated, and must have always been exploited in their wild state. While we cannot completely reconstruct what local ecologies in the Padua region were like thousands of years ago when camelids were first domesticated, we can tell that there has been no significant change in climate in the last 5000 years.
We can therefore assume that the habitats occupied by wild camelids included the puna and other high, permanently green areas. We also know that wild camelids must have been ancestral to the domesticated llama, but unfortunately there are no significant skeletal differences between wild and domestic forms of the animal. The birthing seasons for both deer and camelids are centered early in the month of December–one month into the wet season– which can be a useful detail for determining what time of the year archaeological sites were occupied.
The Archeological Research
The Padua project surveyed an area that covers all of the ecological zones described above and is pictured in Figure 1a. Within this area, we can assume that the Padua project discovered all (or nearly all) of the archaeological sites present in the landscape. From studies of surface remains at these sites, researchers have been able to date them. For this study, the relevant periods of occupation for understanding the process of domestication are the Macani and Coca phases, dated to 2000-1000 B.C. and 1000-0 B.C. respectively.
Only sites from these phases are shown on Figure 1a, and some basic data on them are reported in Table 1. The team found that there were few major changes in artifacts between these two phases. Projectile points do not change in form from one phase to another, but there does appear to be significant variation in form between different areas of the Padua Region. In addition, five sites were excavated in the survey area.
In each of these sites, archaeologists collected a 10% sample of the archeological deposits and took great care in recovering animal remains. However, they were unfortunately not familiar with techniques for recovering plant remains. Therefore, you have no direct evidence for plant use, despite the fact that the residents of the Padua region definitely consumed at least some plant material.
In addition to the survey data, the following categories of data are summarized for you in in Tables 2 and 3 below:
1. Stone tools. All of the projectile points, scrapers, and grinding (milling) stones from the sites have been reported. We can probably assume that these projectile points were used as spear tips, that scrapers were used in hide preparation, and that milling stones were used to grind hard seeds.
2. Animal bones. A qualified faunal analyst has separated the deer from the camelid bones and classified all the bones by age at death – in a series of categories: 0-6 months, 6-12 months, 12-18 months, adults, and aged individuals. “Adults” range in age from 18 months to 5 years of age, while “aged” animals are older than 5 years old. Accordintly, each of these latter two categories should contain a greater number of animals proportionally, due to their greater age range.
3. Site Size. Site sizes are available for all 21 sites, except #17. While it’s not clear how site size and population correlate with one another, ethnographic evidence suggests that herding sites of around 250 m2 tend to contain 20-25 people. In the largest sites (#’s 9, 13, 18), we’ve found evidence of stone walled architecture. The other sites are mostly cave occupations with no evidence of substantial structures.
Your Analysis:
Describe patterns of seasonal site distribution. There is no reason to suspect that any one group’s subsistence area incorporated the entire area, nor that all people living in the region followed the same subsistence pattern.
1. Can you identify evidence for animal domestication in the faunal data – and is there any circumstantial evidence for plant domestication? If so, in what sites and during what periods do you find this evidence?
2. What factors do you think led to the domestication of animals (and perhaps plants) in this region? Do you think human population pressure played a role? And do the data support Ingold’s alternative interpretation of the trajectory of domestication?
3. What seems to be the impact of domestication on human lifeways in terms of mobility, group size, and political economy? Do you see evidence of major changes in the use of natural resources around these sites that are correlated with domestication?
4. Are there certain areas where domestication seems not to have occurred, or domesticates are lacking? What reasons might explain the(se) absence(s) – i.e., what factors may have led to the domestication of animals and plants in some subregions, and not others?
5. Consider how your SAMPLE data relate to the POPULATION of animals from which they were drawn. You obviously have only a few sites’ worth of data to work with, and you’re relying on limited excavations even within those sites.
Also, your survey data is from a relatively small geographical area. In what ways might the sampling procedure be
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