Environmental change and population responses in the Sechura Desert during the late Holocene
Villa, V.; Christol, A.; Lefèvre, C.; Correa, D.; Béarez, P.; Wuscher, P.; Bermeo, N.; Vásquez, S.; Gutiérrez, B.; Goepfert, N. (2020). Environmental change and population responses in the Sechura Desert during the late Holocene, in: Tsirtsoni, Z. et al. Different times? Archaeological and environmental data from intra-site and off-site sequences: Proceedings of the XVIII UISPP World Congress (4-9 June 2018, Paris, France), Volume 4, Session II-8. pp. 77-93
In: Tsirtsoni, Z. et al. (2020). Different times? Archaeological and environmental data from intra-site and off-site sequences: Proceedings of the XVIII UISPP World Congress (4-9 June 2018, Paris, France), Volume 4, Session II-8. Archaeopress Archaeology: Oxford. e-ISBN 978-1-78969-652-3. 136 pp., more
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| Available in | Authors |
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Document type: Conference paper
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| Keywords |
Archaeology
Earth sciences > Geology > Geomorphology
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| Author keywords |
Sechura desert, Late Holocene, Las Salinas, Nunura |
| Authors | | Top |
- Villa, V.
- Christol, A.
- Lefèvre, C.
- Correa, D.
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- Béarez, P.
- Wuscher, P.
- Bermeo, N.
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- Vásquez, S.
- Gutiérrez, B.
- Goepfert, N.
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| Abstract |
The Sechura desert, on the north Peruvian coast, is a region characterized today by a hyperarid climate and regularly affected by extreme rainfall events linked to ENSO. The current hydro-climatic variability and its effects on coastal environments raise the question of ENSO’s occurrences and evolution during the Holocene. The Sechura desert is now very sparsely occupied, while many archaeological sites indicate a significant human presence from the 5th millennium BC. Our research focuses on the adaptation of these local populations to variation in climate and evolution of the coastal environment over time. A regional approach, integrating off-site data from sedimentary archives in the Las Salinas and Nunura bay regions and on-site data from the Bayovar-01 and Huaca Grande archaeological sites, highlights the variety of responses of these populations, which adapted their subsistence economies to these environmental fluctuations. Our results show that, over the past two millennia, the Sechura desert has experienced both permanent occupations that adapted to diverse resources and that varied over time, as well as short-term, opportunistic occupations that focused on specific and temporarily available resources. Thus our reconstructions testify to the strong reactivity of landscape and people to recent Holocene environmental change affecting the coastal areas of the Sechura desert. |
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