The Caral Civilization: Its Social System and Management of Territory and Resources and its Transcendence in Early Andean Cultural Processes

Abstract

In this article we describe the civilization at the Caral site with reference to: a) the transverse management of land and its resources based on the complementary economies of fishing and farming, and on the establishment of networks of interaction and trade systems with distant populations in the Andean highlands and the Andean jungle; b) the social organization, the pattern of distribution of settlements in each section of the Supe Valley, the differences among those settlements in terms of their extension and constructed volume, the relevance of the capital zone, the importance of duality in the location of settlements on the two banks of the river as well as in buildings grouped into two halves, and the design and planned construction of the city of Caral; c) the evaluation of archaeological information in a theoretical framework based on inferences about social and political organization drawn from pertinent ethnohistoric and ethnographic sources; and d) finally, the impact of the Caral civilization in the area over time. Ultimately, we reflect on the cultural, climatic, and social changes that took place over time at Caral and other sites and on the hegemony of this civilization in the area.