Kurt Rademaker

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• Ph.D. Quaternary Archaeology
• Professor (Associate) at Texas A&M University

Human-environment interactions are a focus of interdisciplinary research in the high Andes, recently invigorated by sediment-core data from Lake Junín (Chinchaycocha). On the basis of these records, recent articles have argued that humans arrived in the Junín basin 13 thousand calibrated years ago (kya), set large-scale fires, and hunted Pleistocen...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

During the Middle Horizon (AD 600–1000), obsidian was transported in greater quantities and distances than ever before identified in the Andes, in part by the expansionary Wari state. Two of the three major obsidian sources used in the south-central Andes are located in the modern department of Arequipa, Peru. Arequipa was a region of intense Wari...

In 2013 archaeological radiocarbon databases covering 13,000–7000 14C BP for nine countries in South America, including Peru, were published in a special issue of Quaternary International. The past decade has seen new field research and radiocarbon ages contributed to the Peruvian archaeological record, two updates to the southern hemisphere calibr...

Study of human adaptation to extreme environments is important for understanding our cultural and genetic capacity for survival. The Pucuncho Basin in the southern Peruvian Andes contains the highest-altitude Pleistocene archaeological sites yet identified in the world, about 900 meters above confidently dated contemporary sites. The Pucuncho works...

As one likely route by which people initially spread from NE Asia into the Americas, the West coast of North and South America warrants archaeological focus. Here, we review the earliest known lithic technological complexes of the Pacific Coast and adjacent margins from Alaska to Chile and consider their relevance for understanding the initial occu...

The Andagua Valley in the Department of Arequipa of southern Peru has only recently seen systematic archaeological investigations, revealing ancient agricultural communities that, despite apparent geographic isolation, were integrated economically with the wider Andean world. Portable x-ray fluorescence analysis of 137 obsidian artifacts recovered...

Review of combustion evidence in early Andean archeological sites >2500 m elevation. Experimental evaluation of combustion fuels in the Dry Puna ecoregion. Geoarchaeological analysis of Terminal Pleistocene combustion evidence at Cuncaicha rockshelter, the highest Pleistocene site in the Americas.

Supplementary materials for Bromley et al., 2023

The accelerating flux of glacial meltwater to the oceans due to global warming is a potential trigger for future climate disturbance. Past disruption of Atlantic Ocean circulation, driven by melting of land‐based ice, is linked in models to reduced ocean‐atmosphere heat transfer and abrupt cooling during stadial events. The most recent stadial, the...

The use of portable-XRF has allowed for greater ease of obsidian characterization worldwide, as the technique is relatively fast, inexpensive, and non-destructive. This has proven ideal for the analysis of obsidian artifacts within museum collections and archaeological field materials. Comprehensive analyses of large obsidian assemblages, including...

The Hipwater Locale is a small Parkhill Phase Middle Paleoindian (ca. 12,200–11,600 cal yr BP) assemblage from south central lower Michigan, recovered by the property owners and the lead author. Interdisciplinary analysis reveals that the locale is likely a short term but intensive discard location with an assemblage composed of unfinished and brok...

Researchers at Arroyo del Vizcaíno (AdV), Uruguay, have argued that human occupation dates prior to the Last Glacial Maximum (33,000–31,000 cal BP) based on the presence of purported stone tools and cutmarks on bones. We provide a summary of their research and critically evaluate these claims. We conclude that the claims of a pre-LGM occupation at...

Oxygen isotopes are commonly applied to study archaeological human and animal mobility among the vertical ecological zones of the Central Andes in South America. Such research assumes that oxygen and hydrogen isotopes in meteoric waters demonstrate an inverse relationship with elevation. However, because the primary source of precipitation in the C...

This article reports the identification of the Sayrosa Source, a minor geologic source of volcanic glass referred to Rare Type-3 obsidian in the 1977 pilot study by Burger and Asaro. Located only 25 km northeast of the major Alca-1 deposit, this source was exploited in prehispanic times despite the relatively small size of its nodules. Occasional f...

This book draws attention to recent obsidian studies in the Americas and acts as a reference for archaeologists and scholars interested in material culture and exchange. Moreover, it provides a wide range of case studies in obsidian characterization, material application, and theoretical interpretations in the Americas. The limited geographic occur...

The Alca obsidian source in southern Peru is one of the largest and most geochemically complex sources of volcanic glass in South America. Hunter-gatherers first discovered and used Alca obsidian for stone tools at the end of the Pleistocene. Alca later became one of the three most economically important and widely distributed sources of obsidian i...

We report results from geoarchaeological investigations at Cuncaicha rock shelter (4480 m above sea level) in the high Andes of southern Peru. Using field observations, geomorphological, micromorphological, micro-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Bayesian modeling of radiocarbon ages, and archaeological data, we analyzed the entire stratigra...

Archaeologists working in Mexico recently claimed evidence for pre-Last Glacial Maximum human occupation in the Americas, based on lithic items excavated from Chiquihuite Cave, Zacatecas. Although they provide extensive array of ancillary studies of the cave’s chronostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental record, the data they present do not support t...

Archaeologists working in Mexico recently claimed evidence for pre-Last Glacial Maximum human occupation in the Americas, based on lithic items excavated from Chiquihuite Cave, Zacatecas. Although they provide extensive array of ancillary studies of the cave's chronostratigraphic and paleoenvironmental record, the data they present do not support t...

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) has been infecting humans for millennia and remains a global health problem, but its past diversity and dispersal routes are largely unknown. We generated HBV genomic data from 137 Eurasians and Native Americans dated between ~10,500 and ~400 years ago. We date the most recent common ancestor of all HBV lineages to between ~...

Objectives Cuncaicha, a rockshelter site in the southern Peruvian Andes, has yielded archaeological evidence for human occupation at high elevation (4,480 masl) during the Terminal Pleistocene (12,500–11,200 cal BP), Early Holocene (9,500–9,000 cal BP), and later periods. One of the excavated human burials (Feature 15‐06), corresponding to a middle...

There are many unanswered questions about the population history of the Central and South Central Andes, particularly regarding the impact of large-scale societies, such as the Moche, Wari, Tiwanaku, and Inca. We assembled genome-wide data on 89 individuals dating from ∼9,000-500 years ago (BP), with a particular focus on the period of the rise and...

El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar la variación craneométrica en una muestra de individuos del Holoceno temprano/medio al tardío de Perú. Para esto, se registraron 8 medidas lineales en el esqueleto facial y bóveda craneana de 301 individuos procedentes de 19 sitios arqueológicos, los cuales se encuentran ubicados en 4 biomas. Se exploró...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the craniometric affinities of the only Cuncaicha cranial specimen with other early, middle, and late Holocene South American samples. To do so, the skull was first reconstructed by using computer-aided techniques applied to several μ-CT-scanned fragments. Linear measurements were calculated in the facial skelet...

Constraining the age of young lavas, which generally fall outside the effective range of traditional geochronology methods, remains a key challenge in volcanology, limiting the development of high-resolution eruption chronologies. We present an in situ cosmogenic ³He and ³⁶Cl surface-exposure chronology, alongside new minimum-limiting ¹⁴C ages, doc...

Ice sheets are both a clear physical representation of climate – fluctuating in response to temperature and precipitation – and a key contributor to climate variability, via feedbacks including albedo and meltwater input. Deciphering the scales of these respective roles from the geologic record of glaciation, however, requires glacial chronologies...

We report new accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) ages on faunal and human remains recovered from Cuncaicha shelter (4480 m elevation) in the high southern Peruvian Andes. Using a large number of precise radiometric ages available for the Cuncaicha sequence, we employ Bayesian modeling to determine how human burials relate to discrete episodes of s...

The settlement of the Peruvian high Andes proved to be extremely challenging for Pleistocene hunter-gatherers due to geographical isolation and the harsh environmental conditions of the region. In this chapter, we present a report of the human skeletal material recovered from the Cuncaicha rockshelter, a Peruvian high-altitude site. The excavation...

Table S2. Affinity of Early South Americans to North Americans, Related to Table S4 Representative f4-statistics on 1240K dataset of the form f4(Mbuti, Anzick-1; Early South American, Brazil_LapaDoSanto_9600BP or Late Central Andes) or f4(Mbuti, Canada_Lucier_4800BP-500BP; Brazil_LapaDoSanto_9600BP or Brazil_Laranjal_6700BP, Late or Modern Peruvia...

Table S3. Data Description, Ancient DNA Workflow, mtDNA, Radiocarbon Dates, Related to Figure 1

Table S4. f4- and f3-Statistics, Related to Figures 1, 4, 5, S5D–S5F, and S6A–S6D and Table S2

Table S1. Relatedness of Ancient to Present-Day People, Related to Figures 2, S1, and S2 f4-statistics on the Illumina dataset of the form f4(Mbuti, Test; South American 1, South American 2) where “Test” is a newly reported ancient group, “South American 1” is the population with highest affinity to Test in outgroup f3-statistics (excluding Chorot...

We report genome-wide ancient DNA from 49 individuals forming four parallel time transects in Belize, Brazil, the Central Andes, and the Southern Cone, each dating to at least ∼9,000 years ago. The common ancestral population radiated rapidly from just one of the two early branches that contributed to Native Americans today. We document two previou...

An objective of terrestrial in situ cosmogenic nuclide research is to obtain precise and accurate production-rate estimates on the basis of geological calibration sites from a diverse range of latitudes and altitudes. However, a challenge has been to establish production rates on the basis of landforms for which independent ages have been determine...

The British Isles contain a rich glacial-geologic record of cryospheric behaviour in the NE North Atlantic basin, with enormous potential for establishing the timing, causes, and mechanisms of key climate events. We present a cosmogenic 10Be surface-exposure chronology from northern Scotland that, together with glacial-geomorphic mapping, reconstru...

Results from the recent excavations at the Cuncaicha rock shelter (4480mabove sea level) suggest a successful colonization of the Andean highlands by groups of foragers during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene. The discovery of Early and Late Holocene human remains buried in the site brings new opportunities to assess mobility and occupat...

Deciphering the pattern of climate behaviour during the last glacial–interglacial transition is key to understanding the mechanisms responsible for terminations. This is particularly true for the tropics, which, as the primary source of both heat and water vapour, exert a profound influence on global climate. We present a glacier record from the SE...

The Younger Dryas Stadial (YDS; ∼12,900–11,600 y ago) in the Northern Hemisphere is classically defined by abrupt cooling and renewed glaciation during the last glacial–interglacial transition. Although this event involved a global reorganization of atmo-spheric and oceanic circulation [Denton GH, Alley RB, Comer GC, Broecker WS (2005) Quat Sci Rev...

Significance Resolving the full manifestation of past abrupt climate change is key to understanding the processes driving and propagating these events. As a principal component of global heat transport, the North Atlantic Ocean also is susceptible to rapid disruptions of meridional overturning circulation and thus widely invoked as a cause of abrup...

A synthetic understanding of the timing and migration routes involved in the initial human settlement of the Americas remains elusive. Although site-level investigations have provided a wealth of information on adaptations to specific ecological zones, fundamental information is lacking on landscape-scale patterns of mobility, settlement, and inter...

We synthesize the available radiocarbon data from Peruvian archaeological sites for the Terminal Pleistocene through Middle Holocene. Compilation and calibration of this dataset provide a new opportunity to examine trends in archaeological site distributions and occupation intensity. We compare the spatial and temporal patterning of radiocarbon dat...

We report results from comprehensive mapping and multi-technique geochemical characterization of obsidian from the Alca source in the Peruvian Andes (15.3°S, 72.7°W), aimed at understanding patterns of extraction and trade in one of the world’s centers of complex civilization. Alca obsidian was among the most economically important and widely distr...

This interdisciplinary thesis presents results from field and laboratory investigations of archaeological sites in a ~150-km coast-highland corridor in southern Peru, aimed at better understanding the Terminal Pleistocene biogeographic expansion of humans into the high-altitude Andes and possible early coast-highland links. I integrated a number of...

En este artículo revisamos lo que se sabe en la actualidad acerca de la ocupación temprana de la costa y sierra del sur peruano. Enfocamos nuestro estudio en los sitios del Pleistoceno Final de Quebrada Jaguay y Quebrada Tacahuay, ubicados en la costa, y Pucuncho, situado en la sierra, y los comparamos con los pocos otros yacimientos conocidos de e...

Deposits preserved on peaks in the southern Peruvian Andes are evidence for past glacial fluctuations and, therefore, serve as a record of both the timing and magnitude of past climate change. Moraines corresponding to the last major expansion of ice on Nevado Coropuna date to 20-25 ka, during the last glacial maximum. We reconstructed the snowline...

The occurrence of pronounced climate reversals during the last glacial termination has long been recognised in palaeoclimate records from both hemispheres and from high to low latitudes. Accurate constraint of both the timing and magnitude of events, such as the Younger Dryas and Antarctic Cold Reversal, is vital in order to test different hypothes...

Los Morteros (8 degrees 39'54 '' S, 78 degrees 42'00 '' W) is located in coastal, northern Peru, one of the six original centers of world civilization. The site consists of a large, sand-covered, isolated prominence situated on a Mid-Holocene shoreline, similar to 5 km from the present coast. Preceramic archaeological deposits (4040 +/- 75 to 4656...

Whether or not tropical climate fluctuated in synchrony with global events during the Late Pleistocene is a key problem in climate research. However, the timing of past climate changes in the tropics remains controversial, with a number of recent studies reporting that tropical ice age climate is out of phase with global events. Here, we present ge...

Chili peppers (Capsicum spp.) are widely cultivated food plants that arose in the Americas and are now incorporated into cuisines worldwide. Here, we report a genus-specific starch morphotype that provides a means to identify chili peppers from archaeological contexts and trace both their domestication and dispersal. These starch microfossils have...

Over the past decade, increasing attention to the recovery and identification of plant microfossil remains from archaeological sites located in lowland South America has significantly increased knowledge of pre-Columbian plant domestication and crop plant dispersals in tropical forests and other regions. Along the Andean mountain chain, however, th...

This M.S. thesis presents results from field and laboratory investigations of the Alca highland obsidian (volcanic glass) source and Wayñuna, a Preceramic highland archaeological site previously identified close to a geological deposit of Alca obsidian in southern Peru's Cotahuasi Valley. Obsidian artifacts found within Terminal Pleistocene (13,000...