Architecture, Settlement, and Formative Developments in the Equatorial Andes: New Discoveries in the Department of Tumbes, Peru

Abstract

AbstractThe cultural transformations associated with the Formative period are pivotal for understanding the prehistory of the Americas. Over the last five decades, investigations in southwestern Ecuador have provided an early and robust set of archaeological data relating to Archaic-to-Formative transformations as exemplified by the Las Vegas, Valdivia, Machalilla, and Chorrera archaeological traditions. However, recent archaeological research in adjacent zones of the equatorial Andes indicates that the transformations in southwestern Ecuador were paralleled by coeval but distinct developments. Recent (2006–2007) excavations in the Department of Tumbes, Peru, have documented previously unknown Formative transformations, including the development of substantial domestic architecture during the Archaic (ca. 4700–4330 B.C.E.) and early Formative (ca. 3500–3100 B.C.E.), the shift from elliptical pole-and-thatch dwellings to rectangular wattle-and-daub structures at ca. 900–500 B.C.E., and the construction of public architecture and the establishment of a two-tiered settlement system by ca. 1000–800 B.C.E. These recently discovered archaeological patterns from Tumbes and additional data from southern Ecuador provide the basis for revised comparative perspectives in which southwestern Ecuador is a significant—but no longer the only—vantage point for understanding the evolution of Formative societies in the equatorial Andes.