“…In the coast and western valleys of northern Chile, semi-sedentary maritime societies with significant social complexity persisted throughout the Holocene, and although they regularly utilized non-food inland resources, engagement with agriculture did not occur until the Late Holocene (Roberts et al, 2013;Standen et al, 2018Standen et al, , 2021McRostie et al, 2019;García et al, 2020;Ugalde et al, 2021). Starting approximately 3,100 years ago, an emergence of villages, fields and cemeteries, often composed of burial mounds in valleys such as Azapa, Chaca, and Camarones, signals the advent of fully agricultural societies (Focacci and Erices, 1973;Núñez and Santoro, 2011;Muñoz Ovalle, 2012, 2017Barba et al, 2015;Carter, 2016). During the following centuries, these sedentary communities augmented their engagement with various cultigens including maize, cotton, beans, gourds, squashes, and others.…”