The Amotape complex is an
archaeological culture on the northern coast of
Peru dated to between c. 9,000 and 7,100
BCE.[1] It constitutes some of the oldest evidence for human occupation of the Peruvian coast.[2] The Amotape complex was identified by the American anthropologist James Richardson III, who located a dozen small camps in the Peruvian coastal desert at the foot of the Amotape hills, near the modern city of
Talara.[when?][3] The people of the Amotope complex were
hunter–gatherers who manufactured
unifacial stone tools in
chalcedony and
quartzite to exploit a variety of local plants and animals.[4] They also collected shellfish in the mangrove swamps which covered the coastline at that time.[5]
The contemporary developments at
Huaca Prieta and Siches area (north Peru, close to Ecuador) also share similar features.[6]
^Tom Dillehay et al., "The first settlers", p. 21.
^Tom Dillehay et al., "The first settlers", p. 20.
^Danièle Lavallée, The first South Americans, p. 97.
^Tom Dillehay, The Settlement of the Americas, p. 142.
^Michael Moseley, The Incas and their ancestors, p. 93.
^Dillehay, Tom D.; Bonavia, Duccio; Goodbred, Steve L.; Pino, Mario; Vásquez, Victor; Tham, Teresa Rosales (2017). "A late pleistocene human presence at Huaca Prieta, Peru, and early Pacific Coastal adaptations". Quaternary Research. 77 (3): 418–423.
doi:
10.1016/j.yqres.2012.02.003.
ISSN0033-5894.
S2CID128629096.
References
Dillehay, Tom. The Settlement of the Americas: a new prehistory. New York: Basic Books, 2000.
Dillehay, Tom, Duccio Bonavia and Peter Kaulicke. "The first settlers". In Helaine Silverman (ed.), Andean archaeology. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 16–34.
Lavallée, Danièle. The first South Americans: the peopling of a continent from the earliest evidence to high culture. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000.
Moseley, Michael. The Incas and their ancestors: the archaeology of Peru. London: Thames and Hudson, 2004.