Gran Pajatén y su contexto en el paisaje prehispánico Pataz-Abiseo

Abstract

For more than one hundred years, archaeologists have attributed impressive monumental settlement complexes in the tropical montane forests of Chachapoyas to late pre-Hispanic population intrusions from neighboring regions, or to colonization by highland states and empires. The longevity and tenacity of these migrationist explanations is remarkable given the virtual obsolescence of verticality and population pressure models still invoked to support them. Archaeological data from Gran Pajatén and other sites in the Río Abiseo National Park in the southern part of Chachapoyas support a contrary interpretation, attesting to the autochthonous development of autonomous societies. In order to demonstrate the defects of the most widely-accepted migration and colonization hypotheses, we carried out a reconnaissance in the highlands of Pataz District adjacent to the montane cloud forest where Gran Pajaten (2850 m) is located, in order to locate and document archaeological evidence of dense, centralized populations allegedly capable of launching and subsidizing “colonies” of such monumentality and unique character. However, the reconnaissance only registered a predominance of small and dispersed settlements in the highlands, a result that contradicts the expectations of migration models. An additional goal of our reconnaissance was to begin placing sites of the Pataz-Abiseo area within a broader context of local demographic development. The abundance in the highlands of small sites related to transport and communication infrastructure along the road networks supports the argument that a dynamic flow of travelers and intense interregional interaction spurred processes of population nucleation and the construction of permanent settlements within the forest. Contacts maintained with such a diversity of regions would have driven local innovations culminating in unique aesthetic achievements such as Gran Pajatén and other monumental sites in the montane forests of the Rio Abiseo National Park, designated World Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 1991.