Edward P. Lanning

A Pre-agricultural Occupation on the Central Coast of Peru

More than 50 campsites, quarries, and workshop sites belonging to the pre-agricultural stage have been explored at Ancon on the central coast of Peru. The sites are located in areas of extinct fog vegetation, which was exploited not only for its seeds and roots, but also for grazing animals. The sites are winter camps. Six different lithic industries have been identified and seriated in a tentative sequence which may reach back to the Pleistocene. The earliest industry almost entirely lacks projectile points and other fine stone work. The next two industries are characterized by their stemmed projectile points and distinctive scrapers, while the three latest assemblages have stemless points and lack scrapers. The pre-agricultural stage came to an end around 2500 or 2000 B.C. with the establishment of permanent villages near the shore as a result of the retreat of the fog vegetation and the enrichment of the sea. HE EXISTENCE of a pre-agricultural stage in the human occupation of Peru was until recently a hypothesis based on essentially undated finds on the Pampa de los F6siles on the North Coast and in rockshelters near Huancayo in the Central Highlands. In 1958, excavations by Rosa Fung de Lanning showed that the Huancayo lithic industry was contemporary not only with agriculture but with ceramics as well (Fung de Lanning 1959). In the same year, Augusto Cardichs excavations at Lauricocha established the existence of a pre-agricultural hunting culture in the Central Highlands and indirectly supported the supposed antiquity of the Pampa de los Fosiles workshops (Cardich 1958; Lanning and Hammel 1961: 148). Since August of 1961 the author has been engaged in an archaeological survey of the Ancon area on the central coast of Peru. The work has been sponsored by the Fulbright Commission and the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. The principal result of the survey has been the recording and exploration of over 50 campsites, quarries, and workshop sites attributable to the pre-agricultural stage. These sites have provided evidence of six different cultural complexes, all of which seem to antedate the introduction of cotton and cultivated food plants on the central coast. Most of the sites are located in areas of extinct lomas the hardy desert vegetation which extracts its water from the thick winter fogs. Today the lomas plants are found only above 300 meters altitude and usually in relatively small patches, although some large areas remain, such as Lomas Lachay north of the Chancay valley. Formerly, however, they were far more extensive and reached down to an altitude of about 75 meters above sea level, always on gentle hillslopes. These ancient lomas have left abundant evidence in the form of rootlets which do not decompose in the Peruvian desert and shells of the snails which in-

Pleistocene man in South America.

Abstract South America was occupied by or before 14,000 B.P. Five different lithic traditions can be assigned to the late Pleistocene on the basis of radiocarbon dates and stratigraphy, and two others date to the very end of the Pleistocene or the earliest Holocene. The four earliest traditions, predating 11,000 B.P., may have been brought in by different groups of migrants from North America and, ultimately, Asia. The later traditions either show clear North American affinities or else appear as local developments in South America, but probably do not hark back to Asian antecedents.