Jane Wheeler

This book is, in the author's own words, a compendium of data "gathered with the express intent of testing a model of sedentary, year-round hunter-gatherer occupation of the puna zone" (p. 9); a thesis which has attracted considerable interest and comment both within the archaeological community and beyond. Exposition of this hypothesis and the research data which support it are divided into three parts: (1) construction of "an explicit model of resource potential and human nutritional requirements . . . [to] allow clear predictions of the utilization of different [puna] resources by huntergatherers" (p. 18); (2) testing of the model through site survey and excavations at Pachamachay Cave and Pampacancha Rockshelter; and (3) evaluation of the results and discussion of their implications vis-a-vis the validity of the predictive model in particular, and Andean prehistory in general. By far the largest section of the book is devoted to the archaeological data, including detailed descriptions of the survey and excavations, analysis of the stone, bone, mineral and ceramic artifacts and the determination ofutilization patterns ofstone tool raw material sources, as well as chapters by Deborah M. Pearsall on the ethnobotanical remains, H. E. Wright, Jr. on the environmental history of the zone, and Richard L. Burger on trace element analysis of the obsidian artifacts. In comparison, both the development and specific evaluation of the model are given rather perfunctory treatment. Inasmuch as other reviewers have already critiqued the archaeological side of this work (T. F. Lynch, 1980, Science 209:488-489; R. S. MacNeish, 1980, American Scientist Nov.-Dec.:705; D. L. Browman, 1981, Human Ecology 9:257-260; T. C. Patterson, 1981, American Anthropologist 83:665666), I will comment on the ecological and zooarchaeological aspects of the study, since in this case, both the model and the implications drawn from it are only as valid as the biological data upon which they are built. In brief, Rick's model depicts the puna as a cold, but climatically stable and highly predictable habitat, where the lack of seasonal change fosters year-round plant productivity which in turn supports (or would have supported) large nonmigratory vicuna populations, subdivided into family groups occupying permanent, defended territories. Other animal and plant resources are deemed to have been of little importance in relation to the "sedentary," abundant and easily procured vicuna, and it is expected that preceramic hunters would likewise have adopted a sedentary lifestyle, occupying permanent base camps and utilizing temporary resource procurement camps located within surrounding vicuna hunting territories of predictable size and dependable productivity. Despite the initial attractiveness of this proposition, model implications have been inadequately researched and the argument contains some serious flaws. Few ecologists, for example, would agree with Rick's description of the puna as an optimal, benevolent environment; to the contrary, it is a harsh, unpredictable habitat, characterized by marked wet and dry seasons, occasional prolonged droughts, and a fluctuating carrying capacity. Although vicuna are undeniably the predominant species of this zone, the huemul and guanaco have been arbitrarily eliminated from consideration in the model. On the basis of comparison with the food habits of North American deer of a different genus and Patagonian guanacos, Rick concludes that both are browsers and therefore either of marginal importance in, or absent from, the treeless puna. In fact, the huemul is a grazer whose prime habitat is the puna, and spatulate, rooted guanaco incisors are present in the predomestication levels (> 4800 B.C.) of all early Junin sites including Pachamachay, so some question must be raised about the correctness of building a model based only on present-day vicuna social behavior patterns and statistics as Rick has done. His attempt to quantify and predict the parameters of the early hunter/vicuna (predator/prey) relationship (pp. 25-28) is replete with problems, including the assumption of a potential annual vicuna harvest rate of 20%, the use of non-Andean data to estimate meat production and caloric values despite the ready availability of such information on the South American camelids, the assumption that vicuna territories were contiguous and evenly distributed across the puna, and failure to consider the cyclical nature of predator-prey relationships. The resultant calculation is that a 250 km (actually 254.5 km) hunting territory, bounded by a 56.6 km circumference with a 9 km radius presumably extending from the base camp, could have supported a human group of 25 people indefinitely, so " . . . a sedentary, hunting-oriented society can be predicted for the puna" (p. 28). No alternative strategy is considered.

... heart weight as a percentage of body weight is higher in the vicuña (0.7–0.9%) than in the other camelids (Monge and Leon-Velarde, 1991 ... during the last Pleistocene glacial advance in the area between 18° and 22°S, 14,000–12,000 years ago (Ammann et al., 2001 ; Kull et al ...

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... The origin of this degene-ration almost certainly lies in the spanish conquest, but a breakdown in controlled breeding Page 7. A MEASURE OF LOSS: PREHISPANIC LLAMA AND ALPACA BREEDS Archivos de Zootecnia, vol. 41, núm. 154 (extra), p. 473 ...

Vicuñas and guanacos are two species of wild South American camelids that are key ruminants in the ecosystems where they occur. Although closely related, these species feature differing ecologies and life history characters, which are expected to influence both their genetic diversity and population differentiation at different spatial scales. Here, using mitochondrial and microsatellite genetic markers, we show that vicuña display lower genetic diversity within populations than guanaco but exhibit more structure across their Peruvian range, which may reflect a combination of natural genetic differentiation linked to geographic isolation and recent anthropogenic population declines. Coalescent based demographic analyses indicate that both species have passed through a strong bottleneck, reducing their effective population sizes from over 20,000 to less than 1,000 individuals. For vicuña this bottleneck is inferred to have taken place ~3,300 years ago, but to have occurred more recently for guanaco at ~2,000 years ago. These inferred dates are considerably later than the onset of domestication (when the alpaca was domesticated from the vicuña while the llama was domesticated from the guanaco), coinciding instead with a major human population expansion following the mid-Holocene cold period. As importantly, they imply earlier declines than the well-documented Spanish conquest, where major mass mortality events were recorded for Andean human and camelid populations. We argue that underlying species’ differences and recent demographic perturbations have influenced genetic diversity in modern vicuña and guanaco populations, and these processes should be carefully evaluated in the development and implementation of management strategies for these important genetic resources

South American Camelids (SAC) were of great economic and cultural importance for pre-Hispanic societies in the Andes and still are important for rural Andean communities. However, understanding their specific role and function over time is hampered by the lack of reliable taxonomic identification of their archaeological remains. Although this problem has been acknowledged since the 1970s, the identification of SAC from archaeological contexts still mostly relies on the first phalanx multivariate morphometrics developed by Kent in 1982. The goal of this study is to further explore the taxonomic potential of this method using a machine learning approach including new measurements of phalanges from modern Peruvian, Bolivian and Argentine SAC with additional measurements taken from the literature. Results have shown that fore phalanges reliably distinguish the wild guanaco and vicuña, but the distinction between the domestic forms and their wild relatives still remains tentative despite the new statistics. This is largely due to limited domestic SAC comparative material, especially for the alpaca, but also underlines the presence of an intermediate size morphogroup among the domestic SAC. Morphometric variations recorded for the pre-Hispanic SAC are greater than those of current SAC, preventing reliable identification of the archaeological specimens. These results emphasize the need to improve the current SAC measurments data base and develop new multiproxy approaches in the study of pre-Hispanic camelid diversity directly from the archaeological material.

Las concentraciones de inmunoglobulinas (Igs) calostrales en la mayoría de especies productivas determinan los niveles de Igs en sus crías, y las fallas en la transferencia pasiva ocasionan susceptibilidades a infecciones en el recién nacido. El presente estudio evaluó dos pruebas de campo (grado de viscosidad visual y uso de refractómetro) para determinar la calidad del calostro de la alpaca en 77 muestras. Asimismo, se determinó la concentración de Igs mediante una prueba de inmunodifusión radial en 26 muestras de calostro y en 77 muestras de suero sanguíneo de crías obtenidas entre las 36 a 48 horas del nacimiento. Las muestras de calostro se analizaron visualmente para determinar grados de viscosidad (1 a 5), y con el refractómetro de azúcar Brix para determinar sólidos totales. El 60% de las muestras calostrales presentó grados de 2-5 de viscosidad y lecturas promedio de 37.3% por el refractómetro de Brix, encontrándose una correlación altamente significativa entre viscosidad y...

Se reporta el desarrollo y optimizaciones de técnicas moleculares (PCR simple, múltiple y semi-anidada) para determinar el sexo de camélidos sudamericanos (CSA) amplificando la secuencia del gen Zinc Finger Protein (ZF). La técnica utilizó ADN obtenido de 28 muestras de sangre de alpacas, llamas y vicuñas, 20 muestras de heces de vicuñas y guanacos conservadas en etanol al 96%, y 22 embriones de alpaca colectados entre 72 y 96 horas postmonta y preservados en etanol. Las muestras de ADN de sangre y heces fueron extraídas usando kits comerciales, y las de embriones aplicando tres métodos (ebullición, proteinasa K y fenol-cloroformo). Una vez optimizada la PCR simple para la detección de los genes ZFY y ZFX, se implementó la PCR múltiple para ADN de sangre y heces y la PCR semi-anidada para ADN de embriones. La técnica de PCR múltiple determinó el sexo correctamente en el 100% de las muestras de ADN sanguíneo, en el 87.5% de muestras de ADN de heces colectadas en 2008 y en el 50% de l...

... JANE C. WHEELER1 AND DOMINGO HOCES R.2 ... Managementstrategien haben sich in diesem Zeitraum stark geiindert: von zentraler Verwaltung mit Einsatz von bewaffneten Wichtern und Entrechtung der Campesino-Gemeinden hin zu Ubertragung der rechtlichen ...

Additional file 1: Figure S1. K-mer distribution. Figure S2. Detailed sampling map of all sequenced individual. Figure S3. Treemix phylogeny and variance plot. Figure S4. Introgression segments into llama (fd). Figure S5. PSMC plot for all four SAC species. Figure S6. MSMC plots for (a) guanaco; (b) llama; (c) vicuña; (d) alpaca. Figure S7. Manhattan plot of selection signatures detected in the comparison between vicuña and alpaca (XP-EHH upper, FST bottom). Figure S8. Manhattan plot of selection signatures detected in the comparison between guanaco and llama (XP-EHH upper, FST bottom). Figure S9. Comparison between region-wide FST and SNP distribution among wild ancestors and domestic relatives for the OR5 and OR2 olfactory receptor family. Figure S10. Comparison between region-wide FST and SNP distribution among wild ancestors and domestic relatives for the HoxD gene clusters and OLA1 gene related to morphology development. Figure S11. SNP distribution among wild ancestors and dom...

Background Despite their regional economic importance and being increasingly reared globally, the origins and evolution of the llama and alpaca remain poorly understood. Here we report reference genomes for the llama, and for the guanaco and vicuña (their putative wild progenitors), compare these with the published alpaca genome, and resequence seven individuals of all four species to better understand domestication and introgression between the llama and alpaca. Results Phylogenomic analysis confirms that the llama was domesticated from the guanaco and the alpaca from the vicuña. Introgression was much higher in the alpaca genome (36%) than the llama (5%) and could be dated close to the time of the Spanish conquest, approximately 500 years ago. Introgression patterns are at their most variable on the X-chromosome of the alpaca, featuring 53 genes known to have deleterious X-linked phenotypes in humans. Strong genome-wide introgression signatures include olfactory receptor complexes...

... heart weight as a percentage of body weight is higher in the vicuña (0.7–0.9%) than in the other camelids (Monge and Leon-Velarde, 1991 ... during the last Pleistocene glacial advance in the area between 18° and 22°S, 14,000–12,000 years ago (Ammann et al., 2001 ; Kull et al ...

Abstract Selective breeding of the guanaco and vicuna indisputably led to the domestic llama and alpaca. However, the place, time and process of domestication remain poorly documented, exacerbated by increased evidence of historic and recent introgression among both domestic populations, especially those involving alpaca. Here, we report the first comprehensive assessment of patterns of microsatellite variation of 13 polymorphic microsatellites in 797 individuals representing 4 species and 2 subspecies to estimate historic and ongoing patterns of gene flow. Our results confirm that llamas were domesticated almost exclusively from the northern subspecies of guanaco (Lama guanicoe cacsilensis), but cluster analyses did not support previous findings that alpacas are solely derived from the northern subspecies of vicuna (Vicugna mensalis), with some more-recent admixture with southern populations. We also confirmed continued gene flow between llama and alpaca, and found evidence for crosses between presumably feral llamas and guanacos in northern Chile. Our results highlight the need to develop and test more-accurate markers and tools for assessing the genetic heritage of individuals, to link phenotypic variation with genetic ancestry, and to conserve historic patterns of unique variation among both the wild and domestic populations.

... de Chile, con la Descripción de sus Momias Precolombinas Angel E. Spotorno, Germán Manríquez, Andrea Fernández L., Juan Carlos Marín, Fermín ... alpacas (Vicugna pacos) por medio del análisis de ADN microsatélite Por Jorge Rodríguez B; Jane C. Wheeler; Ciara S. Dodd ...

The scientific aims of this European Union-funded project were to use molecular genetic markers (specifically microsatellites) to: (1)elucidate the recent evolutionary history of Peruvian vicuña populations; (2)evaluate the genetic diversity and its partitioning in those populations; (3)identify demographically independent management

Prehispanic Camelid Utilization Patterns In the present study evidence concerning both the origin of camelid domestication and the subsequent development of herding economies is evaluated through the analysis of camelid survivorship/mortality curves. Because the bone fusion age stages proposed by Elizabeth Wing in 1972 have been used by archaeozoologists working in the Andes, it is possible to compare data from several sites. None the less, in the present study we have corrected errors in Wing's age attribution for the fusion of certain bones and recalculated the survivorship curves published for the sites of Tulan 52, Puripica 1, Telarmachay, Kotosh, Galindo, Huacaloma and Layzon. The resultant curves reveal clear differences between hunting and herding economies, as well as distinct levels of herding efficiency or strategies, which support previous hypotheses concerning the origins of domestication.