Isotopic Investigations of Dietary Dichotomies: the Importance of Maize and Marine Foods to Initial Period/Early Horizon Subsistence in Highland and Coastal Peru


The relationship between food production and the development of complex societies has been an important focus of anthropological research in Peru, where maize traditionally was assumed to have been an important staple crop for Chavín civilization (ca. 850-200 BC) along the coast and in the highlands. Recent macrobotanical and chemical investigations have raised doubts about this hypothesis.

In this study the relative contributions of maize and marine resources to pre-Hispanic Peruvian diet was determined through stable isotope analysis of human bone collagen and apatite from Pacopampa in highland northern Peru, and Cardal and Tablada de Lurin in the Lurin Valley on the central coast. Measurement of ¹³C in apatite, which reflects the whole diet, is now recognized as an essential complement to ¹³C and ¹⁵N determinations for collagen, which represent only dietary protein, especially when both maize and marine foods may have been consumed. Hair segments from Mina Perdida, near the coast, are being analyzed to assess short-term or seasonal variations in diet.

The Pacopampa results are consistent with data from Chavín de Huantar and Huaricoto indicating that maize was of secondary importance in highland subsistence systems during the Initial Period and Early Horizon. Near the coast in Lurin, marine foods were dietary staples, while maize consumption increased during the first millenium B.C. These dietary reconstructions are important for understanding the development of intensive agricultural systems in coastal and highland Peru, and the complex relationship between the subsistence economy and the emergence of early civilizations.