Foraging and Farming in the Cloud Forest: Human Occupation of the Peruvian Eastern Andes, 5,400–1,000 cal BP

This article presents the results of survey and excavation in the Chachapoyas region of the Peruvian eastern Andes attesting to human occupation of the mid-altitude cloud forest from at least the Middle Holocene. While the Peruvian eastern Andes have long been identified as an important region in the exchange of domesticated plants and animals between the Pacific coast, Andean highlands, and the Amazon rainforest, little direct evidence dating to before 1000 BP has been reported. In fact, the record of early groups in this tropical montane cloud forest environment is so scarce that some experts have suggested that this landscape was too marginal to support substantial pre- and proto-agricultural populations. Evidence from this study, including radiocarbon dating and faunal and botanical analyses, contradicts such models, showing that foragers were living in this environment from at least 5500 cal BP. Some domesticated species were present by the terminal Preceramic (ca 3600 cal BP), and mixed forager-producer subsistence persists in the Middle Horizon or Late Intermediate Period (1400–500 cal BP).