Excavation in the Huanangue Valley:Pt 1-Campo Libre

Excavation is a technique used by archaeologists to find out is beneath the surface of a site.  Though the concept behind excavation sounds simple (basically we dig big wholes), in practice it is actually quite complex.  As such, I will be dedicating a whole lab note to the practice of excavation a little later on and here we will focus on what we found at Campo Libre and Saltire.

 

                         Sometimes excavating means you have to contort yourself into weird positions...

Campo Libre

Based on radiocarbon dates from Campo Libre, we know that the site was occupied for about 1500 years, though it is not yet clear if that occupation was continuous.  Life at the site seems to have been fairly simple, but good.  People seemed to have eaten a lot of maize and beans, but also had access to protein sources - camelid and cuy (guinea pig) bones were fairly common.  There is also evidence that people made projectile points out of quartz at the site.  However, what we found most interesting is that we found shellfish remains in the majority of contexts that we excavated.  This was surprising because the coast is about 70 km away from the site of Campo Libre.  Furthermore, when we compared the amount of shellfish that we found from early occupation at the site and compared it to the amount of shellfish from the Late Intermediate Period (LIP) occupation at the site, we found that contexts associated with the LIP contained twice the amount of shellfish as did the early contexts.  Furthermore, soil sample analysis of sediments taken from storage structures at the site found microscopic pieces of sea sponge.  Take together, these two pieces of evidence suggest that, while trade between the chaupiyunginos and coastal people had been going on for at least 1500 years, this trade became much more intense during the LIP.  As I will discuss in my next lab note, this uptick in maritime trade corresponds to the time period when the Chancay moved in to the valley.

                                                          Shellfish from Campo Libre

 

                                                Quartz points in various stages of manufacture

 

 

   Excavation profile drawing and picture from Campo Libre: Profiles are made from the side wall of an excavation unit and show the different layers that we excavated.  These drawings help us understand how use of the site changes over time