Cultural Responses to Environmental Catastrophes: Post-El Niño Subsistence on the Prehistoric North Coast of Peru

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Abstract
Recent debate about the development of complex societies on the north coast of Peru has turned on the relative importance of marine vs. terrestrial resources and the extent to which different resource zones are upset by El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. While ENSO events are cited frequently as having important consequences for Prehispanic Andean societies, in fact there are few archaeological data about the nature of cultural responses to a specific ENSO event. Archaeological data from two Chimu settlements in the Casma Valley, Peru—Quebrada Sta. Cristina and Manchan—document the occurrence of a fourteenth-century A.D. ENSO event and some of the cultural responses to that prehistoric El Niño.