TYPE SITE: topanga (tank, site ) LAn-i
DATING . CROSS DATING ,EST. MORE THAN 7000 BP. PEOPLE ' " PALEO - INDIAN "
VILLAGES, hilltops 4 possible coast settlements HOUSES' unknown
<ZZ2>
MANOS
METATE5
GRINDING TOOLS
(4 fragments)
BONE TOOLS
Z/i NAT. SIZE
(unknown)
PIPES
REBU Ri &L UNDER. ME TATE
ZZZzzZZ)
SCRAPERS
STONE DISCS
STONE COGS
SPECIAL
y QUARTZ CRYSTAL
Fig. 14 6 The Topanga, an early California complex. (Meighan 1959: Fig. 1 [drawing after Treganza 1950].)
So far in this section we have not discussed Archaic cultures of South America. This is not because such cultures did not exist; it is primarily because such cultures have not been intensively studied by archaeologists. There was a coastal fishing shellfish-gathering culture in Tierra del Fuego—the Beagle Channel sequence. Extensive shell mounds— sambaquis —are known from the southeast coast of Brazil. In the Carribbean there was a somewhat similar littoral economy practiced by peoples termed Meso-lndians. In the case of the Greater Antilles—Cuba, and Hispaniola—some of these peoples survived into the historic period and are known as the Ciboney Indians. Another Archaic economy practiced in South America is known from the Lomas —the foothills region of western Peru. Here the economy was made possible by the presence of winter fogs in an otherwise moistureless desert. The resultant fog vegetation supported a limited fauna which included land snails. The local cultures practiced a hunting and gathering mobile economy in many ways similar to that of the North American Desert Culture. With the drying up of the Lomas, about 5000 years ago, these people moved to the seacoast and changed their economy to fishing and incipient plant cultivation. Some of our best evidence for the early history of plant domestication in South America comes from a dry shell midden on the desert coast of Peru called Huaca Prieta. With at least 45 feet of stratified deposits, the site contained a wealth of perishable remains including gourds, squash, lima beans, canavalia beans, chiles, and cotton. The earliest domesticates appear about 2500 B.C., with corn not being in evidence until about 1500 B.C. So far we do not have as detailed a knowledge of the development of plant cultivation in South America as we do for Mesoamerica. We do know there were separate plants grown in the Andean highlands and another complex grown on the coast (Table 14-1).
The development of agriculture as a primary subsistence economy in the New World is linked especially to one plant: corn. Although numerous other domesticates were developed—and we shall review those later—it was corn that became the New World staple. Because of the importance of corn prehistorically, it assumes equal importance to archaeologists in their search for cultural origins. In a sense, primitive corn became the Holy Grail pursued by archaeologists Herbert Dick, Richard MacNeish, Douglas Byers, Kent Flannery, and Robert Lister, and botanists Paul Mangelsdorf, Walton Galinat, and Hugh Cutler. The search for the origins of corn was not easy for aboriginally corn was grown from the Dakotas south to central Chile. Somewhere within this vast heartland of the New World lay the point of origin of corn, but its location required more than 20 years of research. A primary problem was that
ph*se n
TYPE SITE ' COEU5&,C05UMNES,At AtAEDA.MARIN PROVINCES
DATING ! 1000-18S0A0
PEOPLE MEDIUM TO ROUND-HEADS
VILLAGES! on coast 4 interior streams
HOUSES CIRCULAR SEMISU8TERRANEAN BRUSH HOUSES (drawings AFTER. BEAROSLEY, 1948 4 1954)
A
QOOQ
HALIOTIS
SHINGLED OLIVELLA BEADS
o R LAMENTS
bead necklaces
(.Bone < shell)
SPECIAL OBJECTS
Fig. 14-7 Late California complexes. (Meighan 1959:Figs. 2 and 4.)
