干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Food has different meanings that go way beyond its nourishing, nutritional and metabolic properties. Behind this concept, there is a rich source of supplies for the construction of social ties and distinctions, along with different cultural identities. Hunter-gatherers of the arreic coast of Atacama Desert based most of their diet on the consumption of marine resources, however, towards the Formative period they integrated new culinary methods that included foreign foods, techniques, recipes and habits. Residue and morphometric studies, use wear traces and technological prints of a set of ceramic fragments recovered from 3 tumuli cemeteries alongside the coastline of Mejillones (Northern Chile) of the Formative Period (2500 - 1000 Cal AP) will allow an approximation towards the significance of this foreign on the coast and its role in social relationships between groups.