Pre-Columbian transregional captive rearing of Amazonian parrots in the Atacama Desert

Abstract

ne of the most pervasive and unambiguous material symbols of prestige, wealth, and spiritual status in the preColumbian Americas were long, slender, and brightly colored feathers often worn in elaborated headdresses (1–4). Feather use and its representation in iconography is recurrently found as a marker of leadership and association with divinity from incipiently stratified communities to consolidated empires (5, 6). In the Andes, the colorful feathers of tropical parrots were often imported from the eastern Amazonian tropical forests by littleunderstood mechanisms of exchange and trade (7–9). Although many feathers were transported and maintained in special containers, some tropical birds might have been taken and moved across the Andes alive. The archaeological finding of actual tropical macaws and amazon parrots in specific ritual and funerary contexts provides a unique opportunity to explore the origin of these birds and the management strategies related to their procurement, handling in captivity, and ceremonial interment. Here we reconstructed some of these practices by conducting a multiproxy study involving direct accelerated mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analysis, and paleogenomic sequencing of an assemblage of macaw and amazon parrot remains recovered from archaeological sites located in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. The Atacama Desert provides remarkable conditions for the preservation of organic materials such as bone, tendons, muscles, skin, and feathers (10–12). The evidence associated with the preservation and use of tropical bird feathers in this region has PNAS 2021 Vol. 118 No. 15 e2020020118