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The Supe
Valley
(fig.1), 200 miles north of Lima on the Peruvian Pacific coast, was
first
surveyed a century ago by the German archaeologist Max Uhle (1925).
After
being only sporadically studied for decades, in recent years this
region
has yielded the most extensive known evidence of an early complex
society
in the Americas. This is apparently a primary or pristine civilization,
which
arose in near-coastal Peruvian river valleys during the Late Archaic
pe riod
(ca.
3000-1800 BC). It flourished before the advent of ceramics, but with a
subsistence based on irrigation agriculture and aquatic food resources,
and
central ceremonial areas including large platform mounds.
The Supe
Valley
contains a number of such Preceramic mound sites. The most intensively
studied
site has been Caral (fig.2), located 23 km inland, investigated between
1994
and 2005 by the Peruvian archaeologist Ruth Shady Solis of the
University
of San Marcos. Caral contains six large tiered mounds and circular
platforms,
remains of ceremonial and dwelling areas, and evidence of irrigation
works
and agriculture as early as the third millennium BC (Shady 2001). Fig.1: Supe Valley, and
northern survey
region (after Shady Solis et al 2001 and Haas et al
2004).
At the
mouth of
the Supe River on the coast, the Preceramic site of Aspero (first
identified
by Uhle in 1905) hasalso, since the 1970s, revealed early evidence of
agriculture dating back to 3000 BC (Feldman 1980). Within a site area
of
13 hectares (ha), Aspero has at least seventeen artificial mounds up to
4
m high. Other large Preceramic sites in Peru, including Huaca Prieta
and
Los Gavillanes on the coast and La Galgada in the uplands, all had
early
plant domestication and platform mounds. The early dates for Aspero
have
led Moseley (2001) and others (Feldman 1980; Sandweiss and Moseley
2001)
to propose a coastal origin for the earliest Peruvian civilization, due
to
the ready abundance of marine food resources.
An
alternative
viewpoint put forward by Ruth Shady Solis and other researchers sees
the
origins of social complexity arising from inland agriculture at sites
like
Caral (Shady Solis and Leyva 2003). Compared to Aspero, the inland site of
Caral is larger (65 ha) and has more platform mounds, numbering at least
twenty-five, of which six are 10 to 18 m high (labeled B,C,G,H, and I
in
fig.2). It is also surrounded by other sites within the Supe Valley,
and
neighboring valleys that contain artificial mounds larger than those at
Aspero.
In 2001, eighteen C-14 samples from Caral dating to 4090 to 3640 BP
(calibrated
to  2627-1977 BC) were published by Shady Solis and the North American
archaeologists Jonathan Haas of the Chicago Field Museum, and Winifred
Creamer
of Northern Illinois University (Shady, Haas, and Creamer 2001). Fig.2:
The center of Caral (after Shady et al 2001).
More
recently,
a December 2004 article by Haas, Creamer, and Alvaro Ruiz reported an
additional
ninety-five radiocarbon dates from thirteen Late Archaic sites along
the
neighboring Pativilca and Fortaleza river valleys (fig.1; Haas, Creamer, and
Ruiz
2004). A total of twenty sites with large platform mounds found in this
survey
vary from 10-100 ha in area, and have stratified housefloors, sunken
circular
plazas, and irrigation works. Approximately seventy radiocarbon results
from eleven of the sites (six in the Fortaleza Valley and five in the
Pativilca)
support a date range of about 3000 to 1800 BC for these Preceramic
sites
with monumental architecture. Like Caral, they had a mixed economy of
irrigation-based agriculture and marine foods from the nearby coast.
Trade
between the coast and the interior mound sites has been seen by Shady
Solis
and Leyva (2003), and Haas, Creamer, and Ruiz (2004) as a mechanism for
the
evolution of complex society involving specialization of labor. These
findings,
plus some early dates of about 3000 BC for a few of the inland sites
with
monumental platforms, tend to support views asserting that the origins
of
complex society in Peru are linked with agricultural sites and plant
domestication.
The
recently published
information provides substantial new time depth and geographical range
to
the early Peruvian civilization first defined at Caral by Shady Solis.
The
multitude of sites in the Supe and adjacent river valleys, most of
which
show extraordinary preservation of organic materials, including food
remains
and textiles, should continue to provoke controversy and to
revolutionize
theories about the beginnings of complex human societies.
References: Feldman R. 1980. Aspero, Peru. PhD
dissertation,
Harvard Univ.; Haas J., W. Creamer, and A. Ruiz, 2004. "Dating the Late
Archaic
occupation of the Norte Chico region in Peru," Nature 432:1021-1023;
Haas
J. and W. Creamer, 2001. "Response to Sandweiss and Moseley." Science
294:1652;
Moseley M. 2001. The Incas and their Ancestors. London, Thames and
Hudson;
Sandweiss, D. and M. Moseley. 2001. "Amplifying Importance of New
Research
in Peru." Science 294:1651-53; Shady R. et al 2001. "Dating Caral, a
Preceramic
Site in the Supe Valley on the Central Coast of Peru." Science
292:723-726;
Shady R. and C. Leyva (eds). 2003. La Ciudad Sagrada de Caral-Supe.
Inst.Nat.
de Cultura, Lima]
This article appears on page 9 in Vol.4 No.2 of Athena
Review.
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