Abstract ID: 3.10525 | Accepted as Talk | Talk | TBA | TBA

During the last part of the Middle Holocene (ca. 7,000 – 3,500 years BP), hunter-gatherer societies in the highlands of the Atacama Desert underwent significant social and economic changes, manifested in a growing social complexity that laid the foundations for the emergence of agricultural and pastoralist societies of the Early Formative period (ca. 3,500 – 2,000 BP). Indicators of this process of social complexity include greater sedentarization, economic intensification, increasing production of luxury goods and the development of a process of camelid domestication. In addition, during this period there was an increase of interactions with coastal areas, distant at least 160 km from the highland settlements. In this paper we want to account for the particularities and evolution of this process of interaction between the highlands and the coast throughout the Middle Holocene, taking as a starting point the records of coastal objects and remains found in several archaeological sites that we have been investigating during the last years in the middle and upper basin of the Loa River (Northern Chile, South-Central Andes), at more than 2,500 masl. Our results point to a process of increasing intensification and diversification of these interactions, which initially (ca. 7,000 BP) were limited to the trade of beads made from marine mollusk shells. Subsequently, from 5,500 – 5,000 BP onward, coastal goods moved to the highlands increased and diversified significantly, including shells of various types of mollusks, beads and pendants made from the latter, as well as various species of fish, the latter undoubtedly transported dried for consumption in inland settlements. Our proposal is that the trade of marine goods and meals to the highlands was not primarily driven by dietary needs, even in the case of fish. Instead, we suggest that this trade has a primary role in the emergence and consolidation of new politic relations, where certain emerging leaders seek legitimacy through their access, management and distribution of these goods and products from distant origins.