Subsistence Strategies in Supe Valley of Peruvian Central Coast During the Complex Preceramic and Initial Periods: a Reexamination of the Maritime Hypothesis

Zechenter, Elizabeth M.

Subsistence Strategies in Supe Valley of Peruvian Central Coast During the Complex Preceramic and Initial Periods: a Reexamination of the Maritime Hypothesis

Abstract

The Cotton Preceramic Period in the Central Coast of Peru has long been described in terms of a maritime subsistence economy. This paper reexamines the maritime hypothesis by means of a formal subsistence modeling and concludes that the maritime hypothesis cannot be supported even with the most favorable quantitative estimates of resource availability in the model. According to the analysis, maritime resources were never the exclusive basis for human subsistence and were exploited primarily in the absence of adequate terrestrial foods. The coastal location of sites, beneficial during the earliest period of human habitation, proved to be comparatively disadvantageous when early cultigens were introduced, and the societies grew more complex. Second, this paper demonstrates that the existence of a lean season had a profound influence on the inhabitants of coastal valleys and points to several other factors, such as seasonality and risk avoidance, which played a role in the subsistence of the early coastal societies. Third, in suggesting a new view of the evolutionary sequence in coastal Peru, the paper seeks to lend a sharper focus to the debate over the foundations of Andean civilization in particular and the growth of social complexity in general. Finally, the paper introduces a new methodology known as integer programming (IP) to analyze human subsistence economies and shows that IP modeling allows for far greater generality in analyzing resource use than the existing methods.

Keywords

evolution of social complexity early complex societies in Americas Peruvian Preceramic period economic foundations of social complexity Proyecto PARAISO Supe–Pativilca valleys Peru

Citation

Zechnter, E. M. (2024). Subsistence Strategies in Supe Valley of Peruvian Central Coast During the Complex Preceramic and Initial Periods: a Reexamination of the Maritime Hypothesis. Contributions in New World Archaeology 17: 55-91