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Tulán-52: a Late Archaic ceremonial centre at the dawn of the Neolithisation process in the Atacama Desert

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2018

Lautaro Núñez  and
Catherine Perlès
Lautaro Núñez
Affiliation:
Instituto de Arqueología—Antropología y Museo, Universidad Católica del Norte, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile
Catherine Perlès*
Affiliation:
Université Paris Nanterre, UMR 7055, Préhistoire et Technologie, MAE, 21 Allée de l’Université, 92023 Nanterre Cedex, France
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: catherine.perles@mae.u-paris10.fr)
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Abstract

Excavations at the Late Archaic site of Tulán-52 (3450–2250 BC) in the Atacama Desert of Chile revealed what was initially considered to be a very early semi-sedentary settlement. New investigations into these earlier excavations, however, show evidence for structural and organisational characteristics that overlap with those found at the nearby ceremonial site of Tulán-54, dated to around two millennia later. The reinterpretation of Tulán-52 suggests that early monumentalism in the Puna de Atacama may reflect the emergence of social complexity among late hunter-gatherers—a development that led to, rather than resulted from, the process of Neolithisation.

Keywords

ChileLate ArchaicNeolithisationmonumentalismhunter-gatherers
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 92 , Issue 365 , October 2018 , pp. 1231 - 1246
Copyright
© Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2018 

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