Tom D. Dillehay

Surovell et al. (2026a) presented three arguments challenging the age and cultural integrity of the Monte Verde-II (MV-II) site in south-central Chile (Figure 1A), which is dated to approximately c...

Salt is a commodity valued for nutrition; seasoning, drying, and storing food; tanning hides; and its social and economic role in exchange systems. This study reports on salt caches and manufactured disks from Middle Holocene (∼5500–4000 cal BP) archaeological sites on the north coast of Peru. During this period, salt extraction occurred at a time of rising sea levels and wetland development in the littoral of the Chicama Valley, where maritime foragers and farmers cohabited and probably exchanged salt and marine products with inland populations for exotic food crops, minerals, and other resources. The findings here add to a growing body of archaeological evidence on the environments, techniques, and uses of salt extraction by early precontact societies.

Monte Verde II in southern Chile is one of the most important, and debated, sites for understanding of the early peopling of the Americas. The authors present 43 radiocarbon measurements based on cores of sediments that overlie the archaeological deposits adjacent to the site. Statistical analysis of these dates narrows the deposition of the earliest sediments sealing the occupational layer to c. 14 550 cal BP. The consistency between the dates of the site's archaeological strata and its adjacent deposits allows not only consolidation of the site's chronology, but also illustration of how a multi-pronged approach can inform debates surrounding the peopling of new lands—in the Americas or elsewhere.

Coasts are dynamic, constantly changing ecosystems offering rich and varied foods and other resources. Compared with the monistic structure of crop production in many terrestrial parts of the world, some coastlines reflect a dualistic structure with complementary maritime and agricultural economies beginning in early prehistoric times. In particular, the Pacific coast of the Central Andes offers one of the world’s most abundant and diverse supplies of marine resources. The late Pleistocene to middle Holocene (∼14,500–4,000 BP) cultural sequences from south Ecuador to north Chile vary appreciably from one region to the next, but all reveal varying degrees of mixed diets of maritime and terrestrial foods. By at least ∼7,000 BP, a diversity of seafood and domesticated crops were mutually exchanged to form varied specialized and unspecialized economies in a few Andean areas. This study reports on interdisciplinary data from a complex of archaeological sites with mixed economies along the desert coast of the Chicama Valley in north Peru, specifically the Huaca Prieta area dating between ∼14,500 and 3,800 BP. Around 7,500–7,000 BP, intensified maritime and agriculture economies developed simultaneously with social differentiation between public ritual monuments and outlying domestic support sites in an environment of rich marine resources and fertile estuarine wetlands in the valley. This and other coastal areas played an important and persistent early role in human population growth, community formation, and the consilience of different but complementary technologies and principles of socio-economic organization to establish the foundations for later state development along the Central Andean coast.

Corrections are made to Stuart Fiedel’s (2022) recent errors and misrepresentations related to the late Pleistocene sites of Monte Verde and Huaca Prieta and to South American Fishtail projectile points.