Agriculture in Northern Chile’s Atacama Desert: Implications for Human Skeletal and Dental Growth of Early Pre-Hispanic Populations

Abstract

This project tests the theoretical model predicting human health deterioration with the development and intensification of agriculture in northern Chile (Cohen and Armelagos 1984). Research from North America and Europe was used to develop the model, although recent work from South America and Asia (Benfer 1990; Halcrow 2006) does not support it. These conflicting findings indicate that region-specific environmental, cultural, and biological factors affect population susceptibility, physiological stress levels, and conclusions regarding health change. Further testing in marginalised environments is important for the general applicability of this model.

This research tested Armelagos and Cohen’s (1984) model, using measures of skeletal and dental growth quality as a proxy for health in 240 individuals, from the Pacific Coastal Valleys of northern Chile’s Atacama Desert. These valleys are an example of marginalized conditions, where maize agriculture was developed around 3,500 BP despite adverse agricultural conditions including arsenic-contaminated water and high boron levels in the soil (Arriaza 1995a; Strasser and Schlunneger 2005). Analyses of post-natal linear and cortical growth, linear and cortical asymmetry, general crown size and asymmetry, dental enamel defects, and indicators of biological adolescence show that health remained relatively stable with the development and intensification of agriculture. These findings fit with results from Peru and Mexico where health was constant with agriculture (Benfer 1984; Hodges 1987). Unique environmental conditions, genetic isolation and adaptation, and socioeconomic differences, such as semi-sedentism of the hunter-gathering populations and the maintenance of a dietary marine component by agriculturalists, are likely responsible for these unexpected findings in northern Chile.