A small lexicon of traditional weaving (telar de cintura), collected in Agallpampa (Otuzco, La Libertad) offers evidence against the idea of any linguistic identity being shared between the area of the now extinct Culle language, and the Cajamarca Valley. Yet, such a link is supported by the isolation of a grammatical element, traced to the Culle language in both areas: diminutive suix --ash--, as in cholasho 'young little man' and chinasha 'young little woman'. These contrasting data shed new light on a discussion begun by Torero (1989) about the existence of particular languages in the central Cajamarca area (languages Den and Cat); and continued by Adelaar with Muysken (2004), who suggest that cases of lexical community between the Culle geographical nucleus and indigenous words of Cajamarca Quechua, which cannot be traced back to Quechua idiomatic sources, suggest that a Culle substratum holds for the Cajamarca Valley. his paper argues that, in order to solve this apparent paradox, it is necessary to focus on this issue in terms of linguistic strata: i.e., different stages of idiomatic hegemony before Quechua and Spanish were established in the region. he oldest stratum would be associated with Den, and the more recent, albeit still prior to the Quechua and Spanish periods, would be Culle. Based upon archaeological research in the area and on the recent association of Cajamarca Quechua with the Huari expansion (Adelaar 2012), I suggest that the chronological distance between both strata must be deep, since Culle would have been established in the region long before the Northern Huari expansion took place. Nonetheless, the existence of Quechua-Den mixed toponyms precludes this hypothesis being applied to the whole Cajamarca territory, especially its southwest area (Contumazá). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]