The Field Museum Research and Collections

Previous Research in the Norte Chico

    The Norte Chico region on the Peruvian coast includes the valleys (S to N) of Huaura, Supe, Pativilca, and Fortaleza. This is an area that received only passing attention - with certain exceptions - by archaeologists. Informal and limited surveys in the area (Williams and Merino 1979; Vega Centeno, et al. 1998) have shown that settlement in the area was both long and dense. The Norte Chico is at a biological, geographical and cultural crossroads in between the north and south coastal regions (Dillon 1999; Billman 2001; Haas and Dillon 2003). Biologically, the southernmost remnants of equatorial biotic communities extend into this area, as do the northernmost remnants of drier desert communities. This part of the coast has valleys that are midway between the large valleys of the north and the smaller valleys of the south. The area also witnesses El Niño events more frequently than the south coast and less frequently than the north coast. The four valley system is geographically integrated by physical proximity and topographic features. The three northern valleys, Fortaleza, Pativilca and Supe, all exit into the Pacific over a stretch of only 22 km. There are, in turn, inland passes linking up the upper reaches of all the valleys with the middle reaches of Huaura being only 15 km from Supe when following either of two open passes. The total distance between Huaura and Fortaleza is only 50 km on the coast. Culturally, at least in late prehistoric times, the Norte Chico was a frontier zone between the northern sphere of the Chimu and the southern sphere of Chancay. Although there has been some work done in the region over the past 100 years, the archaeological record of the Norte Chico is comparatively unknown.

    Max Uhle (1925) was the first professional archaeologist to record sites and conduct any substantive excavations in the Norte Chico region. Uhle was specifically after ceramic vessels that could be used to help develop a broad ceramic chronology for the Peruvian Coast. He excavated primarily at sites around the mouth of the Supe Valley, including Chimu Capac (Middle Horizon), San Nicolas (Middle Horizon, Late Intermediate and Late Horizon), and around Aspero (Initial Period/Early Horizon) and others. The ceramics recovered by Uhle were published by Kroeber (1925). Subsequent to Uhle, Kosok and Schaedel (Kosok 1965) visited the region in the 1940s and used aerial photographs to locate and record a number of sites in all 4 valleys. They did some nonsystematic collecting while in the area, but other than a few photographs, none of this material has been published. Kosok also published the first accounts of a large complex of sites that were seen at the time as somewhat "enigmatic" due to the lack of surface ceramics. At the largest of these sites, Chupa Cigarro Grande (now known as Caral), Kosok noted: "The virtual absence of potsherds at this site made any accurate calculations as to its relative age impossible" (1965: 223, emphasis in original).

    The first scientific excavations in the region were conducted by Willey and Corbett (1954) in the 1940s at several small villages on the coast at the mouth of the Supe Valley. One of these is the large community of Aspero, where excavations were undertaken in a preceramic midden and a somewhat later, ceramic-bearing cemetery. At the time, the site was recognized as an early maritime settlement, but absolute dates were not available. Willey revisited Aspero in the 1970s with Moseley (Moseley and Willey 1973; Moseley 1975), when they recognized that a series of mounds at the site (identified as "hillocks" in Willey and Corbett's earlier publication) were in fact constructed platform mounds. It was also recognized that the paucity of ceramics at the site was due to the fact the site dated to a preceramic period Further work was conducted at Aspero in the 1970s by Feldman (1980, 1983, 1987, 1992), who obtained radiocarbon dates ranging from 4900±160 B.P. to 3950±150 B.P. While the earliest of these dates was rejected at the time as too old, the earliest occupation of Aspero still needs to be defined. Feldman also tested a second nearby preceramic site, As8, yielding a single radiocarbon date of 6914±190 B.P. Salvage excavations at the small maritime/coastal community of Bandurria at the mouth of the Huaura Valley have provided radiocarbon dates ranging from 4530±80 B.P to 4300±!90 B.P. (Fung 1988). Additional work was done in the 1970s at other preceramic sites in the Norte Chico (Fung 1988) but no dates have been reported. Some excavation was also undertaken at the Initial Period site of Bermejo in the Fortaleza Valley by Silva (1975, 1978), but again no dates have been published. A Middle Horizon site in the Huaura Valley was tested by Shady and Ruiz (1979) in 1978.

    A survey of large sites with standing architecture was undertaken of sites in Supe, Pativilca and Fortaleza valleys, though a report is only available for the results of the work in the Supe Valley (Williams Leon and Merino 1979). Approximately 100 sites were reported in the Supe Valley and a similar number were apparently visited in Fortaleza and Pativilca (Moseley 2001). These sites run a full temporal spectrum from Cotton Preceramic up through Late Horizon Incan sites. Shady (personal communication 1999) resurveyed the Supe Valley sites in the 1990s, in an effort to distinguish early preceramic occupations from later Initial Period and Early Horizon occupations. A large-scale, systematic survey of the valley bottom was conducted in the lower portion of the Fortaleza Valley in conjunction with a power line construction project (Vega-Centeno, et al. 1996).

    Zechenter (1988) tested a number of sites in the Supe Valley in the 1980s in an effort to reconstruct the subsistence strategies during the Preceramic and Initial periods. In addition to extensive biological data, she reports individual radiocarbon dates from 9 sites yielding dates from 7330±110 B.P. to 3110±80 B.P. Also in the Supe Valley, Shady initiated extensive excavations at the site of Caral (formerly Chupacigarro Grande) in the middle reaches of the Supe Valley in the mid-1990s (Shady Solis 1997, 2000a, 2000b). This work has focused on the description of architectural features of the site and retrieving ethnobotanical and ethnozoological specimens for analysis. Shady's research is giving the first detailed account of a major inland Preceramic urban center in the Andes. Recent publication of radiocarbon dates from Caral range from 4090±90 B.P to 3640±50 B.P. (Shady Solis, et al. 2001).