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Terminal Archaic Settlement Pattern And Land Cover Change In The Rio Ilave, Southwestern Lake Titicaca Basin, Perú, Nathan M. Craig, Mark Aldenderfer, Paul Baker, Catherine Rigsby

Nathan M Craig

Researchers have argued the modern Altiplano land cover—one of bunch grasses and few indigenous tree species—is an anthropogenic artifact of land use practices initiated after the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century a.d. Recent paleoenvironmental studies of the Lake Titicaca Basin challenge this assertion. Archaeological survey and excavation data from the Rio Ilave drainage indicate that settlement aggregation and reduced residen¬tial mobility began in the Late Archaic Period about 3000 cal b.c. Terminal Archaic occupational intensity increased after 2000 cal b.c. and continued up until about 1300 cal b.c., which marks the beginning of the Formative in the basin. …