Author(s)

Juan Yataco Capcha¹, Hugo G. Nami²

¹Archaeological and Anthropological of San Marcos University Museum, Lima, Peru.
²Department of Geological Sciences, Laboratory of Geophysics “Daniel A. Valencio”, CONICET-IGEBA, FCEN, UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Between 1966 and 1972, Richard MacNeish led the “Ayacucho Archaeological-Botanical Project” in the Ayacucho Basin, south-central Peru. Over the last decade, we reappraised the lithics recovered in this endeavor. As part of this research, we carried out a detailed review of the lithic remains from the lowest strata of Pikimachay Cave. We concluded that the lithics from layers tentatively dated at about 14,000 uncalibrated yr BP are human-made artifacts, while those from the underlying levels are not. Because of the anthropic nature of the flaked artifacts, their stratigraphic position, chronology, and similarities with other likely coeval lithic assemblages, the Pikimachay record seems to be a good candidate for witnessing possible Paleoamerican foragers living in Ayacucho during the Late Pleistocene.

Paleoamerican, Stone Tool Analyses, Late Pleistocene, Ayacucho Basin, Andean Region, South America

Yataco Capcha, J. and Nami, H. (2022) A New View on the Late Pleistocene Lithic Remains from Pikimachay Cave, South Central Peru. Archaeological Discovery, 10, 282-334. doi: 10.4236/ad.2022.104010.