Human Adaptation. Food Production. amd Cultural Interaction during the Formative Period in Highland Ecuador
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on plant food production, human adaptation, and cultural interaction in the highlands of Ecuador during the Formative Period. I conducted starch granule analysis of ceramic charred cooking and stone tool residues from some of the earliest Formative Period sites in the highlands, and one site from the eastern Andean slopes, to develop a regional synthesis of the timing and nature of highland plant food production. The main hypothesis tested is whether the stimulus to a Formative lifeway in the highlands diffused from coastal Ecuador. Sites investigated include La Chimba, Tajamar, Cerro Narrío, Chaullabamba, La Vega, Trapichillo, and Santa Ana-La Florida (SALF). I also integrate data from previous botanical analyses at other sites, especially Cotocollao. The analyses show that Andean domesticated crops, such as oca, potato, lupines (chocho/tarwi) and quinoa, as well as maize and beans, are associated with the highland sites located at, and to the north of, Chaullabamba (La Chimba, Tajamar, and Cerro Narrío). By employing site catchment analysis, I contend that a highland, “vertical compact”, agricultural system was being practiced at these sites by at least the terminal Early Formative period, and perhaps much earlier based on proxy (pollen) evidence and aspects of the plants’ nutritional profiles, which suggest long-standing familiarity with the crops. By integrating the latest information available on the crops’ origins, I argue that cultural interaction was perhaps principally occurring through the Inter-Andean corridor along a north-south axis with other highland groups. In contrast, the far southern highland sites (La Vega and Trapichillo), as well as SALF, show crops suited to a lowland tropical agricultural system, including manioc, sweet potato, Dioscorea (yam), as well as maize and beans and, possibly, cacao. The results from SALF date to almost the beginning of the Early Formative Period, showing that Coastal Ecuador was not the only “hotspot” for Early Formative Period societies. Cultural interaction in the far southern highlands shows an east-west axis of orientation. Groups in the highlands, eastern lowlands, and coast were involved in multiple interaction spheres. Highland agriculture and socio-political complexity developed in-situ, and not from unidirectional diffusion from coastal Ecuador.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".