Abstract

The introduction of domesticated plants into ancient hunting and gathering economic systems expanded and transformed human societies worldwide during the Holocene, including the oases and hyperarid environments of the Atacama Desert along the Pacific coast. Human groups inhabiting this desert incorporated in their settlement patterns, adjacent habitat in the semi-tropical valleys through transitory of logistic camps like Morro Negro 1 (MN-1), in the Lluta valley (Arica, Chile), ~12 km from the littoral. During the earliest epoch of occupation (Late Archaic period, ca. 5140 - 4270 cal yrs BP) people collected and consumed wild plants, although there were crops such as Lagenaria. After a gap of more than 2000 years, people came back to the site and introduced more domesticated plants (Gossypium, Zea mays, Capsicum), which displaced wild rhizomes of Schoenoplectus, a main staple during the first occupation. This change in food consumption was linked to the transformations that took place during the Archaic-Formative transition, but did not entirely shift the ways of life of these coastal marine hunter-gatherers.