Soro Mik'aya Patjxa is a high-altitude archaeological site located in the Ilave Basin in Peru, about west of the current shoreline of

Lake Titicaca Lake Titicaca (; ; ) is a large freshwater lake in the Andes mountains on the border of Bolivia and Peru. It is often called the highest navigable lake in the world. Titicaca is the largest lake in South America, both in terms of the volume of ...

. Soro Mik'aya Patjxa was a seasonal residential site that was reused consistently by hunter-gatherers over a period of over a thousand years.

Description

Situated on a

fluvial terrace Fluvial terraces are elongated Terrace (geology), terraces that flank the sides of floodplains and fluvial valleys all over the world. They consist of a relatively level strip of land, called a "tread", separated from either an adjacent floodplai ...

, the site was first identified by

Mark Aldenderfer Mark S. Aldenderfer (born 1950) is an American anthropologist and archaeologist. He is the MacArthur Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Merced where he was previously the Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Humanities, a ...

in 1995. The excavated portion of Soro Mik'aya Patjxa consists of one

cultural layer Cultural layer is a key concept in archaeology, particularly culture-historical archaeology especially in archaeological digs or excavations. A cultural layer helps determine an archaeological culture: the remnants of human settlement that can b ...

of interest. 13 pits were excavated at the site. The site was occupied at least 1,500 years before the advent of low-level agriculture in the region at around 5,000 BP.

Artefacts

Over 80,000 artefacts were recovered at the site. The artefact assemblage at Soro Mik'aya Patjxa consists primarily of flaked lithics, and also includes bones,

ground stone In archaeology, ground stone is a category of stone tool formed by the grinding of a coarse-grained tool stone, either purposely or incidentally. Ground stone tools are usually made of basalt, rhyolite, granite, or other cryptocrystalline and ...

s, charred plant remains, pigment stones ( red ocher) and ceramic

sherd This page is a glossary of archaeology, the study of the human past from material remains. A B C D E F ...

s. As the ceramic sherds were found to stylistically post-date 1,000 AD, the sherds are considered to be intrusive.

Human remains

The remains of 16 individuals were recovered from pit burials at the site. Five of the crania from the site exhibit signs of intentional cranial modification. Isotopic analysis, estimates of travel distance to nearby lower elevation areas, demographic profiling, and the evidence for the high use of local lithic materials suggest that the individuals at Soro Mik'aya Patjxa were permanent inhabitants of a high-altitude environment.

Diet

The people at Soro Mik'aya Patjxa likely relied heavily on hunting large, terrestrial mammals and intensive processing and consumption of plants.

Projectile point In archaeological terminology, a projectile point is an object that was hafted to a weapon that was capable of being thrown or projected, such as a javelin, dart, or arrow. They are thus different from weapons presumed to have been kept in the ...

s dominate the flaked lithic assemblage at Soro Mik'aya Patjxa. Additionally, the faunal assemblage is dominated by large mammals, most likely coming from '' Hippocamelus antisensis'' and the

vicuña The vicuña (''Lama vicugna'') or vicuna (both , very rarely spelled ''vicugna'', Vicugna, its former genus name) is one of the two wild South American camelids, which live in the high alpine tundra, alpine areas of the Andes; the other cameli ...

. The remains of

guinea pig The guinea pig or domestic guinea pig (''Cavia porcellus''), also known as the cavy or domestic cavy ( ), is a species of rodent belonging to the genus ''Cavia'', family Caviidae. Animal fancy, Breeders tend to use the name "cavy" for the ani ...

, '' Lagidium viscacia'' and carache fish were also identified from the small faunal remains at the site. The majority of the faunal bones recovered from the site shows evidence of burning. The presence of large quantities of ground stones at the site and dental wear analysis indicate that the consumption of plants was an important part of the diet at Soro Mik'aya Patjxa. Only one of the 251 teeth recovered from the site shows evidence for

dental caries Tooth decay, also known as caries,The word 'caries' is a mass noun, and is not a plural of 'carie'.'' is the breakdown of teeth due to acids produced by bacteria. The resulting cavities may be a number of different colors, from yellow to black ...

, a low rate which is typical of hunter-gatherers. Dental wear analysis suggests a diet typical of terrestrial hunter-gatherers. Dental wear analysis also reveals evidence for lingual surface attrition of the maxillary anterior teeth (LSAMAT), a condition which has been linked with the intensive consumption of

tubers Tubers are a type of enlarged structure that plants use as storage organs for nutrients, derived from stems or roots. Tubers help plants perennate (survive winter or dry months), provide energy and nutrients, and are a means of asexual reprod ...

by hunter-gatherers.

Archaeogenetics

In 2018, researchers successfully sequenced the genome from ''SMP5'', a 50-55 male directly dated to around 6800 BP. ''SMP5'' shares a genetic component with later ancient DNA samples from the Lake Titicaca region, a component that is also found in modern Andean populations. When compared against modern populations, ''SMP5'' shows closest genetic affinity for the

Quechua people Quechua people (, ; ) , Quichua people or Kichwa people may refer to any of the Indigenous peoples of South America who speak the Quechua languages, which originated among the Indigenous people of Peru. Although most Quechua speakers are nativ ...

and the

Aymara people The Aymara or Aimara (, ) people are an Indigenous people in the Andes and Altiplano regions of South America. Approximately 2.3 million Aymara live in northwest Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. The ancestors of the Aymara lived in the reg ...

. Unlike later ancient individuals sequenced from the Lake Titicaca region, ''SMP5'', along with ''USR1'' from the Upward Sun River site, ''

Anzick-1 Anzick-1 was a young (1–2 years old) Paleoindian child whose remains were found in south central Montana, United States, in 1968. He has been dated to 12,990–12,840 years Before Present. The child was found with more than 115 tools made of s ...

'',

Kennewick man Kennewick Man or Ancient One was a Native American man who lived during the early Holocene, whose skeletal remains were found in 1996 washed out on a bank of the Columbia River near Kennewick, Washington. Radiocarbon tests show the man lived a ...

, and the individual tested from the

Saqqaq culture The Saqqaq culture was a Paleo-Eskimo culture in southern Greenland. It was named after the settlement of Saqqaq, the site of many archaeological finds. The Saqqaq were the longest-residing residents of Greenland in all of history. Timeframe T ...

, shows a genetic affinity for modern Siberian populations, especially the

Yakuts The Yakuts or Sakha (, ; , ) are a Turkic ethnic group native to North Siberia, primarily the Republic of Sakha in the Russian Federation. They also inhabit some districts of the Krasnoyarsk Krai. They speak Yakut, which belongs to the Si ...

References

Citations

Bibliography

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license. * {{Archaeological sites in Peru Andean preceramic Archaeological sites in Peru High-altitude archaeology