A persistent topic in hunter-gatherer archaeological research has been evaluating the influence of environmental changes on past economies, technologies, and social organizations. Archaeologists have frequently employed cultural ecology as a conceptual perspective, interpreting cultural patterns in terms of adaptations to external environmental stimuli, or assuming that environmental patterns reflect the optimal patterns of hunter-gatherers within functionalist cultural systems in which social variables and cultural agents are minimized (e.g., Balter 2007; Kennett and Winterhalder 2006; Richerson and Boyd 2000). To situate social factors in relations between people rather than between people and environment, individual groups must be identifiable in the archaeological record. Burials and households usually offer the most scope for this, but excavated evidence needs to be more highly resolved in space and time for burial patterns than is the case for the Preceramic records of the Zaña and Jequetepeque valleys. The household data for the 8,000 year time span under study are reasonably good for inferring some social patterns. Nevertheless, many of the phenomena (e.g., technological innovations and economic decisions) and situations (e.g., culture contact and migration) that are most identifiable in the archaeological record are those related to human and environmental interaction.

Taking this interaction into consideration, I describe in this chapter the settlement data for the project area from the perspective of environmental conditions, resource structures and changing strategies, and when applicable, social relations.