Fiber Technology from the Caleta Vitor Archaeological Complex, northern Chile

Abstract

The marine subsistence economy of pre-Hispanic inhabitants of northern Chile's hyper-arid coast was based on the rich fishery created by the upwelling effect of the cold Humboldt Current along South America's Pacific coast. Fiber technology, including fishing nets and lines, were integral to subsistence strategies providing the majority of fish represented in middens at the Caleta Vitor archaeological complex. Recent research suggests that the prominent role fiber technology played at the Caleta Vitor complex was not a unique phenomenon, but that plant fiber cultivation and fiber processing technologies were vital to the initial establishment and later administration of the Andean Civilization.

Despite the burgeoning acknowledgment of the importance of fiber technology in both hunter-gatherer subsistence economies and the development of complex societies, fiber artifacts are frequently ignored by archaeologists. Regions with established pottery and stone tool chronologies usually lack even a basic chronology of fiber types or show any understanding of technological developments, especially in early contexts before the introduction of loom weaving. This is only partly due to the vulnerability of fiber artifacts to diagenetic processes in many archaeological contexts, leaving little direct or indirect evidence of a fiber industry to be thoroughly examined. Given the considerable impediments to the study of this essential component of hunter-gatherer subsistence economies, the fiber-rich archaeological deposits on the hyper-arid Chilean north coast present a rare opportunity to study these often-ignored artifacts.

The papers in this dissertation examine the fiber artifact assemblage excavated from the Caleta Vitor archaeological complex of far northern Chile using textile analysis, stable isotope analysis and historical documents. The work presents the first detailed chronology of fiber technologies, a model for camelid fiber procurement and new information on the presence of the Inka State in the region. The results provide a much-needed clarification of the trajectory of material types in this region. The work spans the Middle and Late Archaic Periods, Early and Late Formative Periods and the Late (Inka) Period. Show more