The forested eastern slopes of the Central Andes have been characterized alternately as the impenetrable eastern frontier of Andean Civilization, as an empty migratory corridor, a sparsely populated buffer zone separating Andean and Amazonian populations, and as a remote ecological zone servicing highland political economies. This dissertation presents a new cultural sequence excavated from the stratified site of Manachaqui Cave at the upper edge of Peru's northeastern Andean montane forest. Analyses of the archaeological materials including ceramic, lithic, faunal and botanical remains are featured. These data undermine popular population movement and colonization hypotheses, instead providing evidence for autochthonous montane forest cultural development dating from the Preceramic Period (prior to 2000 B.C.). Manachaqui Cave's location beside a pre-Hispanic road, coupled with ethnographic analogies and ethnohistorical and archaeological evidence indicate that the rockshelter functioned primarily as a wayside camp for persons engaged in long-distance travel and exchange between the Central Andean, Amazonian and Northern Andean regions. The interpretation of Manachaqui Cave as a wayside station allows a unique perspective on the development of interregional interaction before, during and after the emergence of Central Andean civilization. Evidence from Manachaqui Cave and from other localities on the eastern slopes suggests that, rather than a remote frontier, the montane forest was the locus of intense boundary interaction. The mediation of long-distance exchange by autonomous montane forest populations strategically situated along the Andean slopes was vital to the development and maintenance of political economies and exchange networks in adjacent highland and lowland regions throughout prehistory.