A stratified site in the coastal Chillon Valley of central Peru, which has produced a lithic flake industry dating to as early as the Late Pleistocene. Radiocarbon dates of c8500 be, taken from wood fragments, have helped to define Chivateros I as the period c9500 to 8000 be. By crosscomparison of artefacts with a nearby workshop (designated the Oquendo complex) a date of pre-10,500 be has been convincingly postulated for the underlying Red Zone. The whole industry is characterized by burins and bifaces with the upper level (Chivateros II) containing long, keeled, leaf-shaped projectile points which resemble points from both Lauricocha ii and El Jobo. Dating has also been aided by the deposition of both loess and salt crust layers which seem to suggest alternating periods of dryness and humidity, and which furthermore can be synchronized with glacial activity in the northern hemisphere. (Note, however, that our knowledge of the glacial stages in the southern hemisphere is still highly speculative: see also Ayacucho.) Although these assemblages are clearly hunting-oriented, no bone survives at Chivateros and it is supposed that the population lived away from this workshop site.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied