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Some Notes on Rock Shelter Sites near Huancayo, Peru

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Harry Tschopik Jr.
Harry Tschopik Jr.*
Affiliation:
Institute of Social Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution, Lima, Peru
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Extract

The purpose of the present paper is to call attention to certain rock shelter sites in the vicinity of Huancayo, Peru, which—since they have yielded thus far several types of chipped stone artifacts and bone implements, but no pottery—appear at the present writing to be unique in Peru. The two sites described in the following pages are situated on old terraces of the Chupaca River, a tributary of the Mantaro, in Junín Department in the central Peruvian highlands. They were brought to the writer's notice by Mr. Paul G. Ledig, Observer-in- Charge of the Carnegie Institution Magnetic Observatory near Huancayo, who has in the past made small excavations at both sites.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , October 1946 , pp. 73 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1946

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References

1 The data set out here were collected during the interval between the months of June and December, 1945, while I was engaged in making ethnological studies in the nearby community of Sicaya on behalf of the Institute of Social Anthropology of the Smithsonian Institution. I wish to take this occasion to express my most sincere thanks to Mr. Paul G. Ledig, Observer-in-Charge of the Huancayo Magnetic Observatory of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Mr. Ledig not only supplied most of the material described in the following pages, but assisted my investigations in every possible way; in addition, he extended his hospitality to myself and family during the period of the studies at Sicaya.

This paper has had the benefit of many helpful suggestions from Drs. William Duncan Strong and Gordon R. Willey.

2 Although a lithic culture, presumably nonceramic, has been reported by Barrington Brown from northern Peru, Dr. William Duncan Strong informs me that this complex appears to bear little relationship to that described in the present paper. C. Barrington Brown, “On Stone Implements from North-West Peru,” Man, Vol. XXVI, No. 64 (London, 1926), pp. 97–101. Unfortunately, this reference is not available to me at the present writing.

3 Antonio Vásquez de Espinosa, Compendium and Description of the West Indies. Translated by Charles Upson Clark. Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, Vol. 102, 1942. Book IV, Chap. XXXVI, 1339, p. 476.

4 Miss Barbara Lawrence, Associate and Acting Curator of Mammals of the Museum of Comparative Zoology of Harvard University, has kindly written me the following in regard to the above-mentioned animal bones: “ I have checked the Peruvian bones briefly; such ones as are readily identifiable are all llama.“

5 The identifications of the materials were kindly made by Dr. Warren F. Walker, Chief Geologist of the Cerro de Pasco Copper Corporation.

6 The word “point” is employed here merely in a descriptive sense and without the intention of implying the use of these artifacts by those who made them.

7 Junius B. Bird, Excavations in Northern Chile, American Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Papers, Vol. 38, Pt. 4, New York, 1943. The points illustrated in his Fig. 32, c, p. 270, seem to resemble the crude, doublefaced points from the Huancayo site No. 1, while that illustrated in the same figure, b (extreme right), and those in Fig. 18, p, q, p. 239, from Quiani in the Arica area appear to be similar to the finely chipped points from Huancayo site No. 2. In addition, the Chilean middens yielded both side scrapers and end scrapers.