From Foraging to Farming in the Andes: New Perspectives on Food Production and Social Organization [Hardcover]

This book proposes a new and more complex model for understanding the transition from hunting and gathering to cultivation.The beginnings of Andean civilization from ca. 13,000 to 6,000 years ago are known for the appearance of the first humans and later domesticated plants and animals, social differentiation, and a sedentary lifestyle, but beyond these developments, the spread of crop production and other technologies, kinship-based labor projects, mound-building, and population aggregation formed ever-changing conditions across the Andes. This book proposes a new and more complex model for understanding the transition from hunting and gathering to cultivation. It argues that such developments evolved regionally, were fluid and uneven, and were subject to reversal.The beginnings of Andean civilization from ca. 13,000 to 6,000 years ago are known for the appearance of the first humans and later domesticated plants and animals, social differentiation, and a sedentary lifestyle, but beyond these developments, the spread of crop production and other technologies, kinship-based labor projects, mound-building, and population aggregation formed ever-changing conditions across the Andes. This book proposes a new and more complex model for understanding the transition from hunting and gathering to cultivation. It argues that such developments evolved regionally, were fluid and uneven, and were subject to reversal.Archeologists have always considered the beginnings of Andean civilization from ca. 13,000 to 6,000 years ago to be important in terms of the appearance of domesticated plants and animals, social differentiation, and a sedentary lifestyle, but there is more to this period than just these developments. During this period, the spread of crop production and other technologies, kinship-based labor projects, mound-building, and population aggregation formed ever-changing conditions across the Andes. From Foraging to Farming in the Andes proposes a new and more complex mlÓ$