The Andes encompass deserts, tropical forests, and high elevation environments. An equally diverse array of crops is present, many with origins in regions as distant as west Mexico and Brazil (Figure 7.1). The story of agriculture, and the plant domestication underwriting it, begins in the Early Holocene, in the economies of early hunter-gatherers. It culminates in the late pre-Hispanic period when populations throughout the area had agricultural economies that supported large populations, many of which were organized as highly complex societies. In this chapter I review the crops that underlie Andean agriculture, summarize our understanding of their areas of origin, and review the archaeological record of plant domestication and agriculture. I focus only on major domesticated plants that occur in the Andean archaeological record. The key sources include Hernández Bermejo and León (1994), Piperno and Pearsall (1998), Sauer (1993), and Smartt and Simmonds (1995).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Aldenderfer, Mark, 1999, The Pleistocene/Holocene transition in Peru and its effects upon human use of the landscape. Quaternary International 53/54: 11–19.
Babot, María de Pilar, 2004, Tecnología y Utilización de Artefactos de Molienda en el Noroeste Prehispánico. Tesis Doctoral. Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Argentina.
Bonzani, Renee M., 1998, Learning from the present. Constraints of plant seasonality on foragers and collectors. In Recent Advances in the Archaeology of the Northern Andes, edited by Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo and J. Scott Raymond, pp. 20–35. Institute of Archaeology, UCLA.
Bruno, Maria C. and William T. Whitehead, 2003, Chenopodium cultivation and Formative Period agriculture at Chiripa, Bolivia. Latin American Antiquity 14: 339–355.
Denevan, William M., 2001, Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Dillehay, Tom D. and Jack Rossen, 2002, Plant food and its implications for the peopling of the New World: a view from South America. Memoirs of the California Academy of Science 27: 237–253.
Elias, Marianne, Gilda Santos Mühllen, Doyle McKey, Ana Carolina Roa, and Joe Tohme, 2004, Genetic diversity of traditional South American landraces of cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz): an analysis using microsatellites. Economic Botany 58: 242–256.
Emshwiller, Eve, 2002, Biogeography of the Oxalis tuberosa alliance. The Botanical Review 68: 128–152.
Erickson, Clark L., 1987, The dating of raised-field agriculture in the Lake Titicaca basin, Peru. In Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Fields in the Andean Region, edited by William M. Denevan, Kent Mathewson, and Gregory Knapp, pp. 373–384. BAR International Series, 359.
Hastorf, Christine A., 1993, Agriculture and the Onset of Political Inequality before the Inka. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Hawkes, J. G., 1990, The Potato. Evolution, Biodiversity, and Genetic Resources. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
Hernández Bermejo, J. E. and J. León (eds.), 1994, Neglected Crops. 1492 from a Different Perspective. FAO, Rome.
Janusek, John W. and Alan L. Kolata, 2004, Top-down or bottom-up: rural settlement and raised field agriculture in the Lake Titicaca basin, Bolivia. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 23: 404–430.
Kaplan, Lawrence and Thomas F. Lynch, 1999, Phaseolus (Fabaceae) in archaeology: AMS radiocarbon dates and their significance for pre-Columbian agriculture. Economic Botany 53: 261–272.
Marchant, Robert, Hermann Behling, Juan Carlos Berrio, Henry Hooghiemstra, Bas van Geel, Thomas van der Hammen, Luisa Herrera, Bert Melief, Guido van Reenen, and Michael Wille, 2004, Vegetation disturbance and human population in Colombia—a regional reconstruction. Antiquity 78: 828–838.
Moore, Katherine M., 1989, Hunting and the Origins of Herding in Peru. Ph.D. dissertation. Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan.
Morris, Arthur, 1999, The agricultural base of the pre-Incan Andean civilizations. The Geographical Journal 165: 286–295.
Olsen, Kenneth M. and Barbara A. Schaal, 1999, Evidence on the origin of cassava: phylogeography of Manihot esculenta. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 96: 5586–5591.
Pearsall, Deborah M., 1987, Evidence for prehistoric maize cultivation on raised fields at Pe#x00F1;on del Río, Guayas, Ecuador. In Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Fields in the Andean Region, edited by William M. Denevan, Kent Mathewson, and Gregory Knapp, pp. 279–295. BAR International Series, 359.
Pearsall, Deborah M., 1992, The origins of plant cultivation in South America. In The Origins of Agriculture. An International Perspective, edited by C. Wesley Cowan and Patty Jo Watson, pp. 173–205. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
Pearsall, Deborah M., 2003, Plant food resources of the Ecuadorian Formative: an overview and comparison to the Central Andes. In Archaeology of Formative Ecuador. J. Scott Raymond and Richard L. Burger, pp. 213–257. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C.
Pearsall, Deborah M., 2004, Plants and People in Ancient Ecuador: The Ethnobotany of the Jama River Valley. Wadsworth/Thomson, Belmont, CA.
Pearsall, Deborah M., Karol Chandler-Ezell, and James A. Zeidler, 2004, Maize in ancient Ecuador: results of residue analysis of stone tools from the Real Alto site. Journal of Archaeological Science 31: 423–442.
Perry, Linda, 2002, Starch granule size and the domestication of manioc (Manihot esculenta) and sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas). Economic Botany 56: 335–349.
Perry, Linda, Daniel H. Sandweiss, Dolores R. Piperno, Kurt Rademaker, Michael A. Malpass, Adán Umire, and Pablo de la Vera, 2006, Early maize agriculture and interzonal interaction in Southern Peru. Nature 440: 76–79.
Piperno, Dolores R. and Deborah M. Pearsall, 1998, The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics. Academic Press, San Diego.
Plowman, Timothy, 1984, The origin, evolution, and diffusion of coca, Erythroxylum spp., in South and Central America. In Pre-Columbian Plant Migration, edited by Doris Stone, pp. 125–163. Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.
Rindos, David, 1984, The Origins of Agriculture. An Evolutionary Perspective. Academic Press, Orlando.
Rossen, Jack, Tom D. Dillehay, and Donald Ugent, 1996, Ancient cultigens or modern intrusions? Evaluating plant remains in an Andean case study. Journal of Archaeological Science 23: 391–407.
Sarmiento, Fausto O., 2002, Anthropogenic change in the landscapes of highland Ecuador. Geographical Review 92: 213–235.
Sauer, Jonathan D., 1993, Historical Geography of Crop Plants. A Select Roster. CRC, Boca Raton.
Smartt, J. and N. W. Simmonds (eds.), 1995, Evolution of Crop Plants. Longman, UK.
Van den Berg, R. G., N. Groendijk-Wilders, and J. P. Kardolus, 1996, The wild ancestors of cultivated potato: the brevicaule-complex. Acta Botanica Neerlandia 45: 157–171.
Wheeler, Jane C., 1995, Evolution and present situation of the South American Camelidae. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 54: 271–295.
Zeidler, James A. and Deborah M. Pearsall (eds.), 1994, Regional Archaeology in Northern Manabí, Ecuador, Volume 1. University of Pittsburgh Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology. Pittsburgh.
Zimmerer, K. S., 1995, The origins of Andean irrigation. Nature 378: 481–483.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Pearsall, D.M. (2008). Plant Domestication and the Shift to Agriculture in the Andes. In: Silverman, H., Isbell, W.H. (eds) The Handbook of South American Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-74907-5_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-74907-5_7
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-74906-8
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-74907-5
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)