By all indications, both ceramic making and horticulture seem to have been imported to the semi-arid North as innovations from outside the region; regardless of their provenance, however, the introduction of these new technologies gave rise to the horticulturalist way of life that characterizes the El Molle culture. This culture was closely linked to developments in San Pedro de Atacama and northwest Argentina, as evidenced in the similarity of ceramic styles and horticultural crops and the importance of algarrobo pods.
Despite their similarities, however, there were some major differences that set the El Molle people apart. The most notable of these was that the adoption of horticulture did not go hand in hand with camelid herding, in contrast to the situation in most of the horticulturalist groups of the Arid North, whose way of life relied on both activities. The El Molle occupied many of the so-called “transversal valleys”—those that ran between the Andes Mountains and the sea, in the semi-arid North—establishing both small settlements such as those in Valle del Encanto, near Ovalle, and large villages such as El Torín in the Copiapó Valley.