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Diversity of Pre-colonial Earthworks in the Brazilian State of Acre, Southwestern Amazonia
Abstract
Amazonian earthworks, which are an important testimony to ancient anthropogenic landscape modifications, have a significant variety of structures and sizes, and are found in different geographical and ecological locations that indicate separate time periods, distinct cultural affiliations, and diverse purposes. We introduce data from diverse archaeological earthwork sites, geoglyphs, mound sites, and walled enclosures situated in the interfluves of the Purus River in the Brazilian state of Acre and propose a type definition for these sites. The abundant anthropogenic landscape features and their associated material culture indicate considerable human-induced environmental alterations and diverse earthworking traditions that are characteristic of the region of eastern Acre from at least ca. 2000 b.p. onwards.
... Archaeological excavations indicate that numerous structures likely served as ceremonial centers, with the main population living in scattered areas with less clear archaeological evidence Virtanen and Saunaluoma 2017;Ranzi and Pärssinen 2021). Another type of patterned earthwork in the region is mound villages with separate mounds surrounding a central plaza (Saunaluoma et al. 2018;Iriarte et al. 2021). ...
... A previous study mentioned that roundish earthworks are generally predominant in southern Acre (Pärssinen et al. 2009), but no formal and comprehensive classification of earthwork shapes has been proposed. Saunaluoma et al. (2018) used a combination of temporal, structural, and functional criteria to divide earthworks into three types -geoglyphs, circular walled enclosures, and mound sites -but even this classification allows for a more detailed approach. ...
... We focused on three general attributes, three elements of configuration, fourteen shape types in three shape groups, two descriptors of roundness, and four functional types ( Table 1). Most of them were mechanistically descriptive, while the interpretation of functional types was rule-based and grounded in earlier scientific literature (Saunaluoma et al. 2018;Iriarte et al. 2020;. The only modification here was the differentiation of embankments into two types based on their proximity to geoglyphs: associated embankments occurred in combination with nearby geoglyphs, often resembling an "atrium", whereas solitary embankments clearly were separate entities. ...
Geometric earthworks are evidence of ancient human activity in western Brazilian Amazonia. We used a review of existing and new data to map earthworks across 27,569 km² of deforested areas in southwestern Amazonia using satellite imagery. We developed a conceptual basis for the classification of earthworks based on their structural characteristics using fuzzy sets. We recorded 1,279 structures with a distinctive core density zone. Most of the structures displayed geometric shapes, but they varied in construction accuracy. Geoglyphs accounted for 80% of all objects, with geographically variable shapes and enclosure areas. Other earthwork types included associated embankments, solitary embankments and mound sites. The abundance of earthworks provided evidence of strong pre-European human influence on the study area. A 10-km buffer around each earthwork included 75% of recent deforestation areas and 25.7% of standing forest, suggesting a significant potential for the presence of further earthworks in this ancient anthropogenic landscape and its possible far-reaching ecological legacy. The available radiocarbon data confirm a long-term anthropogenic impact in the study area, with ceremonial geoglyphs indicating activities over a thousand years old and other structures revealing more recent cultural transformations.
KEYWORDS:
Acre; anthropogenic landscape; archaeology; geoglyph; mound village; radiocarbon dating
... These enclosure complexes, spanning the time period of approximately 3000-1000 BP, are formed by ditches of different geometric shapes and varying sizes and have been interpreted predominantly as ceremonial spaces without clear evidence of residential use (e.g., Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012). However, our recent archaeological studies in Acre have revealed yet another type of earthwork site comprising small artificial earthen mounds arranged around ellipse-shaped central plazas, with several straight road structures emanating from the sites (Neves et al. 2016;Saunaluoma et al. 2018). In this article, we present new evidence on a late precolonial road network connecting these mound sites, or plaza villages, occupied from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. ...
... Because approximately 50% of the lowland rainforest in eastern Acre has been logged, and many earthwork sites are located on deforested areas currently covered by pasture, it is possible to apply diverse remote-sensing techniques to discover archaeological sites and model anthropogenic terrain. Our previous fieldwork in the study area included the excavation of some plaza villages or mound sites (Neves et al. 2016;Saunaluoma et al. 2018); however, our recent, remotely sensed survey (see also Saunaluoma et al. 2019) brought to light new evidence of the regional scale and connectivity of these settlements. We used satellite imagery for the initial spatial localization of sites and then pedestrian surveys for conclusive site identifications. ...
... Interestingly, some of these geometric enclosures are located adjacent to the mound sites, such as the square-shaped ditches at the Fonte Boa and Fazenda Iquiri II sites, which raises a question about the connection between these two different types of earthworks. Investigations at the Fazenda Iquiri II site demonstrated that the geometric ditched enclosure's archaeological deposits are older than those found in the mounds (Saunaluoma et al. 2018), and this seems to be a regular chronological pattern in the area. Even though the two different types of earthworks are located in the same place, their chronological and functional differences are well defined: whereas the geometric enclosures normally contain scattered cultural remains, such as caches of shattered pottery and sparse evidence of activity areas, the mound sites were clearly occupational units featuring domestic deposits-albeit the emergence and duration of these occupations are not yet clear. ...
Our recent data, collected using remotely sensed imagery and unmanned aerial vehicle surveys, reveal the extremely well-defined patterning of archaeological plaza villages in the Brazilian Acre state in terms of size, layout, chronology, and material culture. The villages comprise various earthen mounds arranged around central plazas and roads that radiate outward from, or converge on, the sites. The roads connected the villages situated 2–10 km from each other in eastern Acre. Our study attests to the existence of large, sedentary, interfluvial populations sharing the same sociocultural identities, as well as structured patterns of movement and spatial planning in relation to operative road networks during the late precolonial period. The plaza villages of Acre show similarity with the well-documented communities organized by road networks in the regions of the Upper Xingu and Llanos de Mojos. Taking into consideration ethnohistorical and ethnographic evidence, as well as the presence of comparable archaeological sites and earthwork features along the southern margin of Amazonia, we suggest that the plaza villages of Acre were linked by an interregional road network to other neighboring territories situated along the southern Amazonian rim and that movement along roads was the primary mode of human transport in Amazonian interfluves.
... Although largely cleared, southeastern Acre is still a patchwork of recently created pastures and forests preventing a clear landscape-scale picture of how these societies organised and interacted with their environment. Much work has been done on Geoglyph settlement patterns (e.g., Schaan 2012), yet, until now, most archaeological research related to the Mound Villages has mainly focused on the excavation of single mounds within sites with little concern for regional settlement patterns (Neves et al. 2016;Schaan 2012;Schaan et al. 2012;Saunaluoma, Pärssinen & Schaan 2018). To overcome these challenges, in the context of the ERC PAST (Pre-Columbian Amazon-Scale Transformations) project, we conducted Lidar survey in selected areas of this region (Figure 2). ...
... Notably, among the recent discoveries are the so-called Mound Village sites. Currently, three major distinct types of earthworks have been described for SE Acre: i) geometric ditched enclosures, known as 'Geoglyphs', ii) Circular walled enclosures, and iii) Mound villages (Saunaluoma, Pärssinen & Schaan 2018). Below is a brief description of the three main types of earthworks present in the region. ...
... 1.5-8 km from navigable river courses. The low ceramic density, presence of votive deposits inside ditches, and the lack of Anthropogenic Dark Earth (ADE) or other signs of permanent occupation associated with the enclosures have led to their interpretation as public spaces for cyclical gatherings and communal feasting (Schaan 2012;Schaan et al. 2012;Saunaluoma, Pärssinen & Schaan 2018;. Circular walled enclosures are far less well known. ...
Recent research has shown that the entire southern rim of Amazonia was inhabited by earth-building societies involving landscape engineering, landscape domestication and likely low-density urbanism during the Late Holocene. However, the scale, timing, and intensity of human settlement in this region remain unknown due to the dearth of archaeological work and the logistical difficulties associated with research in tropical forest environments. A case in point are the newly discovered Mound Villages (AD ~1000–1650) in the SE portion of Acre State, Brazil. Much of recent pioneering work on this new archaeological tradition has mainly focused on the excavation of single mounds within sites with little concern for the architectural layout and regional settlement patterns, thus preventing us from understanding how these societies were organised at the regional level. To address these shortcomings, we carried out the first Lidar survey with a RIEGL VUX-1 UAV Lidar sensor integrated into an MD 500 helicopter. Our novel results documented distinctive architectural features of Circular Mound Villages such as the presence of ranked, paired, cardinally oriented, sunken roads interconnecting villages, the occurrence of a diversity of mound shapes within sites, as well as the exposure the superimposition of villages. Site size distribution analysis showed no apparent signs of settlement hierarchy. At the same time, it revealed that some small groups of villages positioned along streams exhibit regular distances of 2.5–3 km and 5–6 km between sites. Our data show that after the cessation of Geoglyph construction (~AD 950), this region of SW Amazonia was not abandoned, but occupied by a flourishing regional system of Mound Villages. The results continue to call into question traditional views that portray interfluvial areas and the western sector of Amazonia as sparsely inhabited. A brief discussion of our findings in the context with pre-Columbian settlement patterns across other regions of Amazonia is conducted.
... Our study region is situated in southwestern Amazonia, in the Brazilian state of Acre which borders Bolivia to the southeast and Peru to the southwest (Figure 1). Archaeologists have used oblique aerial photographs and satellite imagery to discover hundreds of diverse earthwork complexes dispersed on the interfluvial plateaus of the Purus and Madeira River tributaries (Ranzi, Feres, & Brown, 2007;Saunaluoma, Pärssinen, & Schaan, 2018;Schaan, Ranzi, & Barbosa, 2010). Most of these archaeological earthworks have been identified by remotely sensed imagery in deforested areas. ...
... Eastern Acre also features little-known earthwork site types consisting of small artificial earthen mounds arranged around an ellipse-shaped central plaza with several straight road structures radiating outwards from the site. Previous fieldwork carried out at some mound sites indicated that these plaza villages date to ca AD 1300-1600 (Saunaluoma et al., 2018). ...
... This study demonstrates the applicability and precision of UAV- An additional advantage of our UAV survey, besides acquired detailed information of the earthworks, is the speed of acquisition and unbiased sampling, compared to conventional mapping. For example, in 2012 it took 12 h to map the Coqueiral mound site using a total station giving 679 measures for the 2.2 ha site (Saunaluoma et al., 2018), whereas at Fonte Boa we captured over 4.8 million points from a 15-min flight with little or no spatial bias (just fewer points below trees) from an area of 8 ha. Furthermore, the eastern side of the Coqueiral site was located on plantations, so the survey was seriously affected because of access restrictions. ...
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are increasingly used for many scientific applications, including archaeological surveys. We test the suitability and practicability of UAV surveying in the tropical lowlands of Brazil and techniques for visualizing the resulting digital elevation models, specifically the Red Relief Image Map (RRIM). We present the results of UAV surveys conducted at four diverse archaeological earthwork sites situated in interfluvial southwestern Amazonia, in the state of Acre. The elevation models produced from UAV derived point clouds display clear patterns in the site layouts and reveal subtle intra‐site earthwork features that are not easily discernible on the ground. Our study demonstrates that UAVs are cost efficient and give highly detailed results for topographic mapping and visualization of archaeological features when vegetation cover is sufficiently low and sparse. The rapid data capture and lack of spatial sampling bias of the UAV data collection is a significant advantage compared to conventional mapping methods. Furthermore, UAV surveying and UAV derived data processing do not require expensive technologies or specialized user expertise, since open‐source software and easy‐to‐use toolkits are readily available.
... On the one hand, the excavations directed by Saunaluoma in 2012-2014 demonstrated that mound settlements and circular walled enclosures are later than ditched geoglyphs (Saunaluoma et al. 2018;. This conclusion is currently confirmed (Iriarte et al. 2020). ...
... The first geoglyphs were built more than 2500 years ago and, in general, most ditched geometric earthworks in the Purus River Basin seem to have been built between c. 250 BC and 950 AD (Pärssinen 2021b). There is evidence that they were ceremonial sites Saunaluoma 2013;Virtanen & Saunaluoma 2017;Saunaluoma et al. 2018). These earthwork-building societies have also challenged the existing theories of human-environment interactions and pre-Colonial crop domestication (Clement et al. 2010;Watling et al. 2015;Levis et al. 2017;Virtanen & Saunaluoma 2017;Pärssinen et al. 2021). ...
... Thus far, hundreds of geometric earthworks structures, geoglyphs, typically 100-200 m in diameter, have been discovered in deforested areas of southwestern Brazilian Amazonia as well as in Bolivian Amazonia (Pärssinen et al., 2009(Pärssinen et al., , 2020Saunaluoma & Schaan, 2012;Virtanen & Saunaluoma, 2017;Saunaluoma et al., 2018). The building of geoglyphs declined hundreds of years before Europeans arrived (Pärssinen et al., 2003(Pärssinen et al., , 2009Saunaluoma et al., 2018), and moundbuilding societies continued in the area until colonization began (Saunaluoma et al., 2019). ...
... Thus far, hundreds of geometric earthworks structures, geoglyphs, typically 100-200 m in diameter, have been discovered in deforested areas of southwestern Brazilian Amazonia as well as in Bolivian Amazonia (Pärssinen et al., 2009(Pärssinen et al., , 2020Saunaluoma & Schaan, 2012;Virtanen & Saunaluoma, 2017;Saunaluoma et al., 2018). The building of geoglyphs declined hundreds of years before Europeans arrived (Pärssinen et al., 2003(Pärssinen et al., , 2009Saunaluoma et al., 2018), and moundbuilding societies continued in the area until colonization began (Saunaluoma et al., 2019). The construction of a geoglyph was a massive collective effort that must have been a significant undertaking involving a great deal of logistic planning and skilled engineering abilities to move considerable amounts of earth. ...
We examine the Indigenous uses, oral histories, and knowledge of native Guadua bamboo species in southwestern Amazonia. Two Guadua species form dense stands in which individual plants die en masse at regular intervals of about 28 years. Scholars suggested that pre-colonial earth builders took advantage of these die-off events as a natural aid in removing the forest to construct geometric earthworks. Our results show that Guadua species have a significant position in Indigenous socio-cosmologies, land use, and as a protector of diverse resources. Indigenous ontological understandings cannot be separated from discussions of the abundance and geographical distribution of Guadua as a critical controlling factor in the vegetation structure and function of southwestern Amazonian rain forests. Furthermore, oral histories point to the connection between land management and bamboo, as well as bamboo and the use of fire, conforming to the suggestion of opening ceremonial spaces in bamboo patches in pre-colonial earthwork societies.
... The nutrient-concentration function of RFs may be particularly important in lowfertility soils, and this could help explain patterns in the distribution of RFs across environments. In farming systems on poor soils without external inputs of fertilizers, and where the parent material does not enable rapid renewal of nutrients lost to harvest and erosion, organic matter from vegetation and litter is the key resource for soil fertility (Ruthenberg 1971). Trees have much greater ability than tropical grasses to remobilize nutrients (e.g., via upward transport from deeper soil layers) and to accumulate organic matter (Ruthenberg 1971), so that in forests, the amount of nutrients present in plant biomass and litter on a plot is usually sufficient to support a crop on the plot, once nutrients are released in plant-available form. ...
... In farming systems on poor soils without external inputs of fertilizers, and where the parent material does not enable rapid renewal of nutrients lost to harvest and erosion, organic matter from vegetation and litter is the key resource for soil fertility (Ruthenberg 1971). Trees have much greater ability than tropical grasses to remobilize nutrients (e.g., via upward transport from deeper soil layers) and to accumulate organic matter (Ruthenberg 1971), so that in forests, the amount of nutrients present in plant biomass and litter on a plot is usually sufficient to support a crop on the plot, once nutrients are released in plant-available form. In grasslands, however, plant biomass is much lower and the amount of nutrients present in the vegetation on a plot is often insufficient to support crop growth on that plot. ...
Despite an attempt at intercontinental synthesis by Denevan and Turner (1974) almost 50 years ago, studies of agricultural raised fields (RF) in the Neotropics and in Africa and New Guinea are separate research traditions, with almost no communication between them. Neotropical studies refer to “raised-field agriculture” and almost exclusively concern archaeological systems in wetlands. Studies in Africa and New Guinea refer to “mound” or “ridge” cultivation and concern mostly present-day systems (in Africa) or both present-day and archaeological systems (in New Guinea) in both uplands and wetlands. Ethnographic studies of present-day systems provide insights into questions about past systems that are inaccessible using archaeological methods alone. Our review suggests that the Neotropical focus on RF agriculture as an exclusively wetland adaptation is misleading. We argue that the most widespread purpose of building RF, in both wetland and upland environments, is to concentrate topsoil and organic matter, enabling creation of fertile patches in infertile and low-biomass grassland environments. Avoiding flooding is an important function of RF built in wetlands and wetland margins. We further show that Old World RF are often not perennial, but are short-lived structures that rotate over the landscape, being torn down and rebuilt nearby in successive cycles. Short fallow periods are allowed (or even favored) by methods of managing fertility. Finally, we argue that the restriction—on all continents—of archaeological raised fields to wetland and wetland-margin environments is, in part, a result of their better preservation from erosion in wetland than in upland environments.
... It is likely that the occupation of the region started in the Late Holocene, and that these indigenous cultures were once part of a large multicultural interaction sphere that spanned the Madeira and Purus rivers. The upper Purus has been occupied since at least 2500 BP by people who built earthworks, managed bamboo forests (native to the region) and created rich palm orchards in their occupation areas (Saunaluoma e Schaan, 2012; Watling et al., 2015;Saunaluoma et al., 2018). Around CE 1000, circular villages with mounds and walled enclosures began to be built and, hypothetically, mark a period of cultural transformations in the region Saunaluoma et al., 2018). ...
... The upper Purus has been occupied since at least 2500 BP by people who built earthworks, managed bamboo forests (native to the region) and created rich palm orchards in their occupation areas (Saunaluoma e Schaan, 2012; Watling et al., 2015;Saunaluoma et al., 2018). Around CE 1000, circular villages with mounds and walled enclosures began to be built and, hypothetically, mark a period of cultural transformations in the region Saunaluoma et al., 2018). Although the relationships between this type of site and specific ethnic groups are unclear, the circular villages remained occupied until the 18th century and may have been described by the first European travelers who crossed the region mentioning the presence of Arawá, Arawak and Pano peoples (Chandless, 1866;Labre, 1872;Fawcett, 1953). ...
Inhabiting the middle Purus river basin, a branch of the Amazon river, Arawá-speaking groups have maintained permanent contact with non-indigenous society only in the last century. Here we provide an account of two Arawá subgroups, the Jamamadi and Hi-Merimã, in order to untangle apparent contradictions between their ways of living, respectively based on the predominance of cultivated plants in gardens and of forest plants. This approach is inspired by three / tree scenarios: the Hi-Merimã’s isolation from indigenous and non-indigenous people undertaken in the 1960′s, the report of a “false contact” that they would have began in 2016 and the Jamamadi’s recent and perhaps temporary decision to move into the forest after knowledge of the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides the apparent distance between gardener and gatherer ways of life, we highlight the proximity and fluidity that both share in terms of entanglements with plants, focusing on forms of sociality between groups, gardens and forests. Inspired by recent discussions regarding archaeological perspectives on plant use, ethnographic formulations of other-than-human relations, and historical ecology, we propose that both are cultural and not necessarily static choices. One is contained within and announces the other, and both are entangled in an oscillating movement of fusion and fission.
... Estancita, Santa Maria, and San Francisco forest islands all have circular earthworks, although these features are not visible on air photos and satellite imagery (Walker, 2008b). Ring ditches place this location within a pan-Amazonian pattern of circular ditches (De Souza et al., 2018;Saunaluoma et al., 2018), and suggest that many forest islands conceal earthworks, as demonstrated by recent LiDAR surveys (Prümers et al., 2022). Forest island habitation is not coterminous with the boundaries of the forest islands and includes distinctions between within-and outside-ring ditch habitation. ...
Environmental archeology of the Amazon has conventionally focused on terrestrial spaces, investigating crop domestication and production, agroforestry and anthropogenic soils. Aquatic environments, however, have been given less attention by archeologists and paleoenvironmental scientists alike. The Llanos de Mojos, a 135,000 km 2 basin of the Amazon and mosaic landscape of savannas, wetlands and forests, has long been recognized for its archeological record. A variety of anthropogenic earthworks across the region show significant landscape modifications from Pre-Columbian times used for transportation, resource production and control of floodwaters. Here, we investigate the use and management of wetlands, and their interaction in the wider Mojos mosaic landscape, by integrating extensive archeological, paleoenvironmental and GIS datasets. We demonstrate that past human modifications of the landscape enabled the creation of complex wetland-terrestrial system of resource production, in which wetlands were managed, complementary to terrestrial crop production and agroforestry. Across short distances (40 km), land use strategies were heterogeneous despite being connected in time and space. Additionally, mixed wetland-terrestrial resource production was relatively stable during periods of lower rainfall from 1200-1500 CE, implying that this strategy provided flexibility under conditions of variable climate. The wetlands of the Llanos de Mojos are the result of millennia of human intervention and recognition of this deep heritage is required to make informed management and conservation decisions to ensure the future of this culturally and biologically diverse region.
... CE in JS2 and JS4. This period corresponds to the end of the use of the geoglyph sites and the proliferation of circular mound villages in the region (Saunaluoma et al., 2018). It is possible that the abandonment of the geoglyphs meant that palm populations -previously maintained abundant by the management practices of those populations -were outcompeted by slow-growing tree species. ...
Recently, Roberts et al. (2023) defined three socioeconomic thresholds thought to have laid the foundations for the Anthropocene: the first, between 4000 and 1000 BCE, related to the beginnings of agriculture; the second, between 0 and 1500 CE, related to urbanism and the demographic consolidation of human populations; and the third, between 1500 and the present CE, associated with the advance of colonialism and capitalism. In this article, we discuss the results of paleoecological studies carried out in four Amazonian regions known to have high concentrations of archaeological sites (the geoglyphs of Acre, the raised fields of French Guiana, the dark earths of the lower Tapajós region, and the zanja sites of Iténez, Bolivia), and evaluate what they tell us about the nature of the Amazonian Anthropocene. We conclude that the largest and most destructive anthropogenic impacts occurred during the colonial period, especially in the last 50 years, associated with the arrival of capitalist economies. In contrast, Indigenous management practices, which begin to be visible from ca. 2500 BCE, and become highly transformative from ca. 0 CE, managed to maintain vital ecosystem services and increase the agrobiodiversity of the rainforest, building upon - rather than destroying - their relationships with other living beings.
... B.C. at 327 cal. AD. 54 However, the evidence leads us to believe that the paths were built after the geometric structures, as not all geoglyphs have such features, as attested by the previously analyzed data. Another important factor that corroborates such inferences to be observed is the simple fact that these structures took as much work to build as the geoglyphs. ...
This article prioritized studying the roads and paths that are interconnected to geoglyph-type sites in the Western Brazilian Amazon, not only because of their originality, but also to understand some issues that permeate the universe of geoglyphs, such as how was gave the spatial distribution of these roads in the region, what meaning they had within the sociocultural context of that society. For a more detailed analysis, the Tequinho site was used as the main object of the research, its characteristics and location being what most contributed to its choice, given that it is in the center of the region where the geoglyphs occur, and several roads and paths are linked to the site, and are noticeable in the landscape. The Tequinho site is understood as a public center for cultural and religious events, and its roads and paths are seen as central props in ritualistic ceremonies, as well as markers and boundaries in the landscape. This article also addresses the importance of the Iquiri River, which works, was part of the context of a land-fluvial network in the region of geoglyphs, in the east of the State of Acre, Brazil. During this work, ethno-historical sources were used as a theoretical framework, as well as the perspective of landscape archeology.
... As with the Bolivian Tumichucua ring-ditch, it is surprising that the 'Jaco Sa' geoglyph profile (0 km) similarly shows no phytolith evidence for open ground (i.e., high Poaceae (non-bamboo) and Heliconia percentages), despite the vegetation clearance (whether bamboo or tree removal) that must have been needed to construct this large earthwork, as marked by a charcoal peak dated to 1385-1530 cal yr BP [20]. Although there is minimal ceramic evidence for occupation of these geoglyphs, suggesting that they may have functioned as ceremonial/religious centres rather than centres of occupation [63,91,92], one might expect that the centre of this earthwork would have had more open ground than the off-site pits several kilometres away, and yet proportions of Poaceae are consistently low through all pit profiles along the transect and Heliconia is very rare. As with the series of Riberalta profiles, the phytolith data from the Acre transect do not show forest replacement by savanna under drier mid-Holocene climate conditions (i.e., toward the base of the profiles), although this is perhaps less surprising given that this transect is further away (ca. ...
Phytolith analysis is a well-established archaeobotanical tool, having provided important insights into pre-Columbian crop cultivation and domestication across Amazonia through the Holocene. Yet, its use as a palaeoecological tool is in its infancy in Amazonia and its effectiveness for reconstructing pre-Columbian land-use beyond archaeological sites (i.e., 'off-site') has so far received little critical attention. This paper examines both new and previously published soil phytolith data from SW Amazonia to assess the robustness of this proxy for reconstructing pre-Columbian land-use. We conducted the study via off-site soil pits radiating 7.5 km beyond a geoglyph in Acre state, Brazil, and 50 km beyond a ring-ditch in northern Bolivia, spanning the expected gradients in historical land-use intensity. We found that the spatio-temporal patterns in palm phytolith data across our soil-pit transects support the hypothesis that pre-Columbian peoples enriched their forests with palms over several millennia, although phytoliths are limited in their ability to capture small-scale crop cultivation and deforestation. Despite these drawbacks, we conclude that off-site soil phytolith analysis can provide novel insights into pre-Columbian land use, provided it is effectively integrated with other land-use (e.g., charcoal) and archaeological data.
... Different processes of the permanent transformation of the environment and social construction of landscapes, with different scales and intensities, have characterized the dynamics of human occupation in the South American lowlands during the second half of the Holocene [51][52][53]. During this period, the construction of different types of earthen architectures (monumental mounds, earthworks, geometric ditches enclosures, among others) reflected a series of changes that showed the consolidation of community modes of organization, social complexity, a demographic increase and the demarcation of distinct ethnic territories, in ecologically distant and culturally diverse regions [54][55][56][57][58][59][60]. A good part of these architectures manifests complex spatial organizations, recurrent orientations and patterns in their locations (e.g., [61][62][63]). ...
We analyzed, from a cultural astronomy perspective, the relationship between the orien-tations of five mound sites and different astronomical events in the lowland region of Uruguay. We found significant relationships between the orientations of the mounds and the Southern Cross/Milky Way and the full Moon during the winter solstice ca. 3000 years BP. These relationships, meanings and senses to different native peoples of South America were explored from the literature of travelers' and naturalists' chronicles, alongside the ethnohistorical, ethnographic and archaeological literature. In particular, we highlighted the link among those peoples of the area of the Southern Cross/ Milky Way with a mythical Ñandú (Rhea americana). Such an interpretation has allowed us to raise the possibility that we are being faced with the integration of knowledge of the sky in the form of the social construction of inhabited space and the configuration of the landscape.
... Um exemplo da problemática de se trabalhar com estradas e caminhos na Amazônia é a dificuldade de estabelecer cronologias precisas e absolutas associadas a elas. Até o presente momento, não sabemos com exatidão se as estradas e caminhos ligados aos geoglifos foram construídas durante ou após a construção das estruturas de terra, haja vista as poucas datações que existem, referentes exclusivamente aos geoglifos, como no caso em tela, o sítio Tequinho, datado entre 46 a.C. e 204 d.C. (Saunaluoma, Pärssinen & Schaan 2018). ...
Este trabalho priorizou estudar as estradas e caminhos que estão interligados aos sítios do tipo geoglifos na Amazônia Ocidental brasileira, não só pelo fato de seu ineditismo, mas também na tentativa de entender algumas questões que permeiam o universo dos geoglifos, como por exemplo, como se dava a distribuição espacial dessas vias na região, que significado essas tinham dentro do contexto sociocultural dessa sociedade. Para uma análise mais detalhada, foi utilizado o sítio Tequinho como objeto principal para a pesquisa, sendo suas características e localização o que mais contribuiu para a sua escolha, haja vista que esse se encontra no centro da região de ocorrência dos geoglifos, e várias estradas e caminhos estão ligadas ao sítio, e são perceptíveis na paisagem. O sítio Tequinho é entendido como um centro público de eventos culturais e religiosos, e suas estradas e caminhos são vistas como adereços centrais em cerimônias ritualísticas, bem como marcadoras e delimitadoras na paisagem. Neste trabalho também é abordado a importância do rio Iquiri, que de certo, fez parte do contexto de uma malha terrestre-fluvial na região dos geoglifos, no leste do Estado do Acre, Brasil. No decorrer deste trabalho foram utilizadas fontes etno-históricas como referencial teórico, bem como a perspectiva da arqueologia da paisagem.
... An important ongoing debate in Amazonian studies is the extent to which indigenous peoples occupied and transformed their environment in prehistory. Evidence from the Brazilian Amazon -from Pre-Columbian geoglyphs, settlement sites, raised fields, and causeways -points to large complex polities in nucleated and interconnected settlements along the rivers and interfluves [1][2][3][4][5] . The discovery of extensive anthropic soils (terra preta) 6,7 , the enrichment of forests with useful and semi-domesticated species [8][9][10][11][12] , and the presence of landscape-scale fisheries infrastructure 13 together suggest enduring landscape transformations by purposeful human action over millennia [14][15][16][17][18][19] . ...
Published maps identifying archaeological sites in the Amazon basin show a paucity of sites in western Amazonia compared to the Brazilian Amazon. Whereas fewer than two dozen are identified for the Peruvian Amazon on basin-wide maps, a thorough review of unpublished archival material held by the Ministry of Culture of Peru and other sources revealed more than 400 known but unpublished sites in the Department of Loreto, challenging the notion that the region was sparsely occupied in prehistory. Our database provides the geolocation of each site and corresponding references for use by scientists seeking to better understand regional Pre-Columbian human occupation and settlement, cultural change, resource use and their landscape legacies. These data are foundational not only to the development of a richer understanding of prehistory and historical ecology of the Amazon basin but importantly for informing current land use, forest conservation and development policies as well as initiatives to support indigenous land and cultural rights in Amazonia.
... . A prática da pesca intensiva pelos povos marajoara também foi usada para explicar a formação de terra preta em sítios do rio Anajás (Schaan, Kern & Frazão 2009), mais uma vez destacando contextos não agrícolas associados a um fenômeno pan-amazônico. Sendo os primeiros ainda interpretados como centros cerimoniais e as segundas como locais de habitação (Saunaluoma et al. 2018 Ao final, sua dissertação foi defendida com êxito e recebeu a mais alta graduação por unanimidade da banca examinadora. Um dos aspectos mais importantes de seu trabalho foi estabelecer que muitos dos desenhos ou motivos decorativos ditos "geométricos" e interpretados muitas vezes como não-representativos, que teriam unicamente a função de preencher os espaços entre as representações naturalistas (fillers), realmente eram estilizações de animais ou seres míticos, representando conceitos com significado social importante. ...
Este dossiê em homenagem à Denise Pahl Schaan foi pensado como uma forma de dar continuidade ao seu legado e prestigiar sua memória ao destacar suas contribuições ao estudo das sociedades humanas do passado em múltiplas perspectivas. A Amazônica: revista de Antropologia (ARA) é um dos muitos frutos da dedicação de Denise à Arqueologia e Antropologia amazônicas. Somam-se à revista, as diversas parcerias em projetos de pesquisa no âmbito das referidas áreas de conhecimento e a formação de pesquisadores, não restrita, mas reforçada pela criação do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia (PPGA) da Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA), ao qual vincula-se a Amazônica. O PPGA se dedica à formação de pesquisadores em Antropologia com base no modelo de quatro campos (Balée 2009), com foco na região amazônica, e comemorou 10 anos de sua fundação em 2020. Entendemos que a organização deste dossiê contribui para divulgar ainda mais o excepcional patrimônio acadêmico construído por Schaan ao longo de sua trajetória profissional e que ultrapassa sua presença na UFPA.
... s químicamente modificados por actividades de deposición de desechos humanos propios de la ocupación de estos espacios (Kämpf et al., 2003). Dentro de la arqueología contemporánea las Terras Pretas son un recurso común para explicar posibles alternativas para la sostenibilidad agrícola en las tierras bajas (Schmidt et al., 2014) y los interfluvios (Saunaluoma, et. al., 2018). Las Terras Pretas son un argumento, muy fuerte, dentro de la arqueología de finales del Siglo XX. Investigadores de las tierras bajas de Sudamérica utilizaron estos datos para debatir los postulados deterministas, que daban por sentado la imposibilidad de desarrollos culturales sostenibles y de larga temporalidad en la Amazonía. "Difer ...
La investigación arqueológica de las últimas décadas ha desarrollado importantes aportes para entender la emergencia de sociedades complejas en los ecosistemas de la foresta tropical amazónica, específicamente en la cuenca alta del Upano, -en la alta Amazonía del Ecuador. Una amplia extensión en los piedemontes peri-andinos modificada por la presencia de montículos artificiales, organizados en complejos patrones de asentamiento. Estos procesos constructivos, iniciados hacia el 380 a.C., dan lugar a casi un milenio de ocupación, caracterizados por la presencia de la tradición cerámica Upano. La concentración de montículos, trae consigo las interrogantes sobre los efectos de la ocupación humana en los paisajes amazónicos y la necesidad de incorporar métodos analíticos para la obtención de nueva información. Este trabajo trae el debate de los suelos antrópicos a un estudio de caso en la Amazonía Ecuatoriana, con la aplicación de análisis químicos a muestras de suelo del Basural La Lomita perteneciente al Complejo Monticular Huapula, cuenca del alto Upano, para su caracterización y análisis comparativo. Los resultados obtenidos muestran los efectos de la ocupación humana en los suelos de los asentamientos monticulares del Upano, y su potencial paraentender la prolongada modificación humana de los paisajes amazónicos en tiempos precolombinos.
... Almeida, 2013;Pessoa, 2015;Zimpel & Pugliese Jr., 2016;Zuse, 2016;Almeida & Kater, 2017;A. Costa & Gomes, 2018;Furquim, 2018;Pugliese Jr., 2018;Saunaluoma et al., 2018), além de evidências recuadas de produção de alimentos (Watling et al., 2018). ...
Resumo: O presente artigo traz uma revisão da principal literatura produzida pelo Grupo de Estudos Arqueométricos do Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares, Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear, de São Paulo (IPEN-CNEN/SP), criado em 1997, como consequência de uma iniciativa internacional para motivar o uso de técnicas nucleares para caracterização de materiais arqueológicos. Desde aquele momento, e até hoje, o grupo tem desenvolvido parcerias com pesquisadores/as de diferentes regiões do Brasil e de outros países para oferecer subsídios à compreensão interdisciplinar das cadeias operatórias de produção da cerâmica. Além disso, também vem aportando dados para o estudo multielementar e mineralógico de depósitos arqueológicos. Ao descrever brevemente os princípios das técnicas empregadas e a síntese dos resultados obtidos para cada estudo de caso, o objetivo foi demonstrar a contribuição das análises físico-químicas para questões relacionadas a aspectos culturais, como escolhas tecnológicas compartilhadas, redes de trocas e interações sociais em diferentes períodos do passado.
... No leste do estado do Acre, as pesquisas de Saunaluoma et al. (2018) mostraram que, entre as centenas de sítios, geoglifos coexistem com outras estruturas de terra mais recentes. No alto rio Iquiri, o padrão de ocupação datado entre os séculos XV e XVII é composto por 20 a 25 montículos (de 1 a 2 ha), distribuídos em torno de uma área plana, havendo estradas radiais em todas as direções entre os montículos, cujos fragmentos de vasilhas cerâmicas não decoradas concentram-se nos montículos, sugerindo uso doméstico. ...
Resumo Este artigo discute a ocupação indígena de uma aldeia circular no século XV, a partir da forma de assentamento e da análise da cerâmica identificada no sítio arqueológico Novo Engenho Velho, localizado no alto rio Madeira. Esses componentes espaciais são analisados em relação aos padrões de assentamento conhecidos na Arqueologia. A análise técnico-funcional da cerâmica aponta para uma padronização na produção das vasilhas, e a variabilidade existente é atribuída às diferentes atividades e funções dos artefatos. Esses elementos têm sido pensados como correlatos dos produtores da cerâmica Jatuarana (Tradição Polícroma) e a deposição em uma aldeia circular traz implicações para os atuais modelos arqueológicos propostos para a Amazônia.
... Souza et al., 2018). Já os geoglifos do estado vizinho do Acre não contêm terras pretas ou restos domésticos dentro da área circundada pela valeta, e possuem formas quadrangulares e circulares (Saunaluoma et al., 2018). Nos Llanos de Mojos, próximo à atual cidade de Trinidad, a construção de lomas monumentais a partir de ca. ...
Resumo Este artigo faz um balanço dos dados atualmente disponíveis para a arqueologia da área a jusante das cachoeiras do alto rio Madeira. Trata-se de um segmento-chave do maior afluente do rio Amazonas, que possui suas áreas de cabeceira nos Andes Centrais: ele é formado pela junção de grandes rios que vêm da Bolívia e do Peru – Mamoré, Beni e Madre de Díos. Nossa análise comparativa indica que a arqueologia da área a jusante das cachoeiras do rio Madeira possui mais semelhanças com padrões observados na Amazônia central do que com a região de seus formadores. Por outro lado, o alto Madeira também denota elementos da diversidade cultural que caracterizam o seu entorno. Sendo assim, propomos que as cachoeiras do Madeira funcionaram como uma área de fronteira persistente ao longo do Holoceno tardio, conectando regiões com padrões culturais distintos na bacia amazônica.
... O ur understanding of human occupation and landscape transformation by pre-Columbian peoples in Amazonia has advanced significantly in recent years. Archeological evidence suggests the presence of complex polities in large nucleated and interconnected settlements along Amazonian rivers and interfluves in Brazil (Heckenberger et al. 2008;Pärssinen et al. 2009;Saunaluoma et al. 2018;Watling et al. 2018;de Souza et al. 2018). Pre-Columbian peoples left a lasting imprint on the soils, forests and waterways as evident from extensive areas of anthropic terra preta (Glaser and Woods 2004;Woods et al. 2009), enriched forests with numerous useful and semi-domesticated species (Clement et al. 2015;Levis et al. 2017Levis et al. , 2018Watling et al. 2017;Maezumi et al. 2018;Franco-Moraes et al. 2019), and pre-historic infrastructure, modified waterways and landscapescale fishing structures (Erickson 2000). ...
Published evidence of prehistoric settlement from the lowlands of Amazonian Peru is sufficiently scarce to perpetuate debates over the presence and impact of early populations in western Amazonia. In this paper we review the cultural prehistory of the Lower Ucayali River, assess the presence of archeological sites and recovered artifacts, and describe a promising new site (Suni Caño) which may have been the chiefdom seat of the late prehistoric Cocama. We argue for a fuller exploration of the site and nearby terraces along the Lower Ucayali and in doing so, suggest that studies aiming to resolve debates over early environmental influence of humans in the Peruvian Amazon may not be looking in the most propitious places.
RESUMO Recentemente, Roberts et al. (2023) definiram três thresholds socioeconômicos que teriam sido a base do Antropoceno no mundo: o primeiro, entre 4.000 e 1.000 AEC, relacionado ao início da agricultura; o segundo, entre 0 e 1.500 EC, relacionado ao urbanismo e à consolidação demográfica das populações humanas; e o terceiro, entre 1.500 EC e o presente, associado ao avanço do colonialismo e do capitalismo. Neste artigo, discutimos os resultados de estudos paleoecológicos realizados em quatro regiões da Amazônia conhecidas por apresentarem altas concentrações de sítios arqueológicos (os geoglifos do Acre, os campos elevados da Guiana Francesa, as terras pretas do Baixo Tapajós, e os sítios de zanja em Iténez, Bolívia), e avaliamos o que eles nos dizem sobre a natureza desses thresholds e como eles podem nos informar sobre o Antropoceno amazônico. Concluímos que os maiores e mais destrutivos impactos antropogênicos têm acontecido no período colonial, especialmente nos últimos 50 anos, associados à incursão de economias capitalistas nestes locais. Em contraponto, as práticas de manejo indígenas, que começam a ser visíveis a partir de cerca de 2.500 AEC, e se tornam altamente transformativas a partir de cerca de 0 EC, conseguiram manter serviços ecossistêmicos vitais e aumentar a agrobiodiversidade da sua vegetação, construindo - ao invés de destruindo - relações com os outros seres vivos.
Amazonia has as least two major centers of ancient human social complexity, but the full geographic extents of these centers remain uncertain. Across the southern rim of Amazonia, over 1,000 earthwork sites comprised of fortified settlements, mound villages, and ditched enclosures with geometric designs known as geoglyphs have been discovered. Qualitatively distinct and densely located along the lower stretches of major river systems and the Atlantic coast are Amazonian Dark Earth sites (ADEs) with deep anthropogenic soils enriched by long-term human habitation. Models predicting the geographic extents of earthworks and ADEs can assist in their discovery and preservation and help answer questions about the full degree of indigenous landscape modifications across Amazonia. We classify earthworks versus ADEs versus other non-earthwork/non-ADE archaeological sites with multi-class machine learning algorithms using soils, climate, and distances to rivers of different types and sizes as geospatial predictors. Model testing is done with spatial cross-validation, and the best model at the optimal spatial scale of 1 km has an Area Under the Curve of 0.91. Our predictive model has led to the discovery of 13 new geoglyphs, and it pinpoints specific areas with high probabilities of undiscovered archaeological sites that are currently hidden by rainforests. The limited, albeit impressive, predicted extents of earthworks and ADEs means that other non-ADE/non-earthwork sites are expected to predominate most of Western and Northern Amazonia.
This Report provides a comprehensive, objective, open, transparent, systematic, and rigorous scientific assessment of the state of the Amazon’s ecosystems, current trends, and their implications for the long-term well-being of the region, as well as opportunities and policy relevant options for conservation and sustainable development.
Archaeologists have increasingly broadened considerations of what is “monumental” and what relations with art, architecture, and landscapes constitute monumentality. This article documents the monumentality of ditches through an examination of 11 Scioto Hopewell ditches. Well known for their ornate crafts of exotic raw materials and massive geometric earthworks – constructed of ditches and embankments, usually in tandem – Scioto Hopewell was comprised of small-scale societies of the Middle Woodland period (1950–1550 BP) of the Scioto River Valley of southern Ohio. Though garnering archaeological attention for over two centuries, most research directed at understanding earthwork construction in this region has been relatively recent and primarily focused on embankment wall construction. This article represents the first exploration of Scioto Hopewell ditch construction and demonstrates that these ditches are monumental architecture that carry various meanings and whose construction was ritualized. Establishing a basis for the monumentality of Scioto Hopewell ditches has broad implications, as there is a global record of ditches that were multivalent and multi-functional landscape features that remain understudied beyond their possible functional or pragmatic purposes. This article demonstrates the value of the systematic archaeological examination of these features and the informational potential they hold.
Hypotheses concerning climatic change during the Amazonian Holocene often assume that the presence of ancient charcoal from forest fires indicates periods of drier climate in the past. These theories, however, neglect the possibility that such charcoal may result from early human activity. This article presents new evidence of anthropogenic ash and charcoal accumulation in the state of Acre, Brazil, dating back to c . 10 000 cal BP, which questions the value of charcoal as a proxy for phases of natural climate aridification. Carbon isotope (δ ¹³ C) values also suggest no significant changes in Holocene climate or vegetation. If these results are confirmed, previous studies on Amazonian Holocene climate will require re-evaluation.
Evidence from several earthwork-building societies has recently been discovered in Amazonia that challenges existing theories about precolonial, human-environment interactions. Combining data obtained by plant macrofossil analyses, archaeological excavations, historical sources, and indigenous oral histories, we focus on the pre-colonial sources of subsistence and domestication processes of some tree species. Our study shows that the societies that built geoglyph-type earthworks in southwestern Amazonia harvested and consumed both wild and domesticated palm fruits, Brazil nuts and other identified species in the first millennium of the Common Era. Drawing on theories of human ecology, we argue that in the pre-colonial Amazonian context, plant domestication occurred as complex and nonlinear activities of protecting, supporting, and cultivating. This multifaceted indigenous cultural phenomenon of domestication had an important long lasting impact on Amazonian forest composition, and it is obvious that human and botanical interaction has also led to clear and observable differences in Brazil nuts and some palm fruits compared to their ancestors.
Fieldwork and desk-based research in the western Amazon basin has led to an explosive growth in the state of knowledge surrounding the pre-Columbian archaeology of this region. Previously thought to be a sparsely occupied environment, archaeologists have recorded hundreds of geometric earthworks between the Purús and Acre rivers in recent years, spurring renewed interest in understanding the distribution, age, and function of these structures. A challenge has been to identify possible relationships between sites and to place them in their broader landscape setting. The precise spatial scale, relative importance of different factors, and strength of any relationships that contributed to shaping their distributions remain an open question. This paper develops and applies an explicitly spatial framework to address this problem, drawing on a rich body of recent research in Acre state (Brazil) and advanced point process modelling. The analytical approach, which is fully documented and reproducible with the accompanying code, infers the factors affecting geometric earthwork distribution at multiple spatial scales. This enables the first robust predictions of territorial integration in the region, which is discussed context of extant archaeological models. The findings support the interpretation that non-stratified societies likely occupied Acre during the late pre-Columbian period.
Continuing advances in the archaeology of the Amazon have changed long-standing misconceptions about the rainforest as a homogeneous, nearly pristine environment occupied by small, scattered groups. Massive archaeological sites, deep deposits of anthropogenic soils, and earthworks found over thousands of kilometers now testify to the scale and intensity of past human impact in some parts of the Amazon. However, debate persists about the extent of such transformations, as distinct environments within the Amazon Basin (floodplains, savannas, seasonal forests) reveal different scales and intensities of pre-Columbian landscape modification. In that context, the discovery of hundreds of geometric earthen enclosures in the southern rim of the Amazon is proving that some areas that were previously considered virtually untouched forest may have been densely settled in the past. Although regional variations exist, most southern Amazonian enclosures appear to be defensive earthworks built at the turn of the second millennium ce, a period recognized by archaeologists as one of escalating population densities, migrations, and warfare across the Amazon Basin.
This paper applies concepts from the fields of historical ecology and human niche construction theory to interpret archaeological and palaeoecological data from the Brazilian state of Acre, southwest Amazonia, where modern deforestation has revealed hundreds of pre-Columbian monumental earthworks called ‘geoglyphs’, largely built between ca. 2000–650 cal. BP (calibrated years before present). Our main objective was to move away from the debate which currently dominates Amazonian archaeology over large- vs. small-scale pre-Columbian environmental impacts, and instead offer a more nuanced interpretation of human-environment interactions in our specific study area. Despite the difficulties presented by working with an incomplete regional archaeological dataset, interpreting our findings in light of these theoretical frameworks allowed us to re-think landscape history and ask new questions about a possible relationship between anthropogenic forests, symbolic capital and monument building in our particular study area.
The discovery of large geometrical earthworks in interfluvial settings of southern Amazonia has challenged the idea that Pre-Columbian populations were concentrated along the major floodplains. However, a spatial gap in the archaeological record of the Amazon has limited the assessment of the territorial extent of earth-builders. Here, we report the discovery of Pre-Columbian ditched enclosures in the Tapajós headwaters. The results show that an 1800 km stretch of southern Amazonia was occupied by earth-building cultures living in fortified villages ~Cal AD 1250–1500. We model earthwork distribution in this broad region using recorded sites, with environmental and terrain variables as predictors, estimating that earthworks will be found over ~400,000 km2 of southern Amazonia. We conclude that the interfluves and minor tributaries of southern Amazonia sustained high population densities, calling for a re-evaluation of the role of this region for Pre-Columbian cultural developments and environmental impact.
For millennia, Amazonian peoples have managed forest resources, modifying the natural environment in subtle and persistent ways. Legacies of past human occupation are striking near archaeological sites, yet we still lack a clear picture of how human management practices resulted in the domestication of Amazonian forests. The general view is that domesticated forests are recognizable by the presence of forest patches dominated by one or a few useful species favored by long-term human activities. Here, we used three complementary approaches to understand the long-term domestication of Amazonian forests. First, we compiled information from the literature about how indigenous and traditional Amazonian peoples manage forest resources to promote useful plant species that are mainly used as food resources. Then, we developed an interdisciplinary conceptual model of how interactions between these management practices across space and time may form domesticated forests. Finally, we collected field data from 30 contemporary villages located on and near archaeological sites, along four major Amazonian rivers, to compare with the management practices synthesized in our conceptual model. We identified eight distinct categories of management practices that contribute to form forest patches of useful plants: (1) removal of non-useful plants, (2) protection of useful plants, (3) attraction of non-human animal dispersers, (4) transportation of useful plants, (5) selection of phenotypes, (6) fire management, (7) planting of useful plants, and (8) soil improvement. Our conceptual model, when ethnographically projected into the past, reveals how the interaction of these multiple management practices interferes with natural ecological processes, resulting in the domestication of Amazonian forest patches dominated by useful species. Our model suggests that management practices became more frequent as human population increased during the Holocene. In the field, we found that useful perennial plants occur in multi-species patches around archaeological sites, and that the dominant species are still managed by local people, suggesting long-term persistence of ancient cultural practices. The management practices we identified have transformed plant species abundance and floristic composition through the creation of diverse forest patches rich in edible perennial plants that enhanced food production and food security in Amazonia.
Peach palm (Bactris gasipaes Kunth) is a Neotropical palm domesticated by Native Americans. Its domestication resulted in a set of landraces (var. gasipaes), some with very starchy fruit used for fermentation, others with an equilibrium of starch and oil used as snacks. Which of the three wild types (var. chichagui) was involved and where the domestication process began are unclear, with three hypotheses under discussion: an origin in southwestern Amazonia; or in northwestern South America; or multiple origins. We reevaluate one of the wild types, defining it as the incipient domesticate, and then evaluate these hypotheses using the Brazilian peach palm Core Collection and selected herbaria samples to: (1) model the potential distributions of wild and domesticated populations; (2) identify the probable origin of domestication with a phylogeographic analysis of chloroplast DNA sequences; and (3) determine the dispersal routes after domestication using spatial analysis of genetic diversity based on 17 nuclear microsatellite loci. The two very small-fruited wild types have distinct distributions in the northern Andes region and across southern Amazonia, both under moderately humid climates, while the incipient domesticate, partly sympatric with the southern wild type, is also found along the Equatorial Andes, in a more humid climatic envelope, more similar to that of the domesticated landraces. Two distribution models for Last Glacial Maximum conditions (CCSM4, MIROC) also suggest distinct distributions for the two wild populations. The chloroplast DNA phylogeographic network confirms the area of sympatry of the incipient domesticate and the southern wild type in southwestern Amazonia as the origin of domestication. The spatial patterns of genetic diversity confirm the proposal of two dispersals, one along the Ucayali River, into western Amazonia, northwestern South America and finally Central America; the other along the Madeira River into central and then eastern Amazonia. The first dispersal resulted in very starchy fruit for fermentation, while the second may have been later and resulted in snack fruits. Further explorations of southwestern Amazonia are essential for more precise identification of the earliest events, both with new archeological methods and genetic analyses with larger samples.
The extent to which pre-Columbian societies altered Amazonian landscapes is hotly debated. We performed a basin-wide analysis of pre-Columbian impacts on Amazonian forests by overlaying known archaeological sites in Amazonia with the distributions and abundances of 85 woody species domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples. Domesticated species are five times more likely than nondomesticated species to be hyperdominant. Across the basin, the relative abundance and richness of domesticated species increase in forests on and around archaeological sites. In southwestern and eastern Amazonia, distance to archaeological sites strongly influences the relative abundance and richness of domesticated species. Our analyses indicate that modern tree communities in Amazonia are structured to an important extent by a long history of plant domestication by Amazonian peoples.
Significance
Amazonian rainforests once thought to be pristine wildernesses are increasingly known to have been inhabited by large populations before European contact. How and to what extent these societies impacted their landscape through deforestation and forest management is still controversial, particularly in the vast interfluvial uplands that have been little studied. In Brazil, the groundbreaking discovery of hundreds of geometric earthworks by modern deforestation would seem to imply that this region was also deforested to a large extent in the past, challenging the apparent vulnerability of Amazonian forests to human land use. We reconstructed environmental evidence from the geoglyph region and found that earthworks were built within man-made forests that had been previously managed for millennia. In contrast, long-term, regional-scale deforestation is strictly a modern phenomenon.
Archaeological sites surrounded by ditches are scattered over a wide geographical area of the Amazon. In the specific case of the northeastern part of the Llanos de Mojos, several of these sites were dated to the late pre- Hispanic era, between 1.200 and 1.400 dC. However, new archaeological findings show that within a same system of ditches, different spaces were occupied at least for a thousand years without an occupational overlap. Although, it is not yet certain when they started to build ditches around the villages, the sequential pattern occupying a horizontal level is shown dynamic and maintains an extensive regional interaction. This article presents two ceramic phases of the forest Island of Jasiaquiri.
O artigo apresenta os resultados do primeiro inventário de um hecta¬re realizado na área de um sítio tipo geoglifo. Até o momento, todos os geoglifos estudados não tinham cobertua vegetal. O geoglifo Três Vertentes não mostra evidência de ter sido queimado ou usado para agricultura ou assentamento no passado recente. Assim, é possível que a vegetação existente sobre o geoglifo não tenha sido perturbada, com a possívele exceção de usos extrativos pela caça ou coleta de látex. Trata-se de uma mata de cipó. Essa conclusão apoia-se na grande proporção de árvores dicotiledôneas cobertas por cipós, com a alta densidade e frequência de moráceas, cuja maior parte é composta por cipós ou trepadeiras. Há grande densidade e frequência de palmeiras excluem cipós, também a alta frequência de bananeiras bravas (Phenakospermum guyannense). Nota-se uma área basal relativamente pequena e o pequeno número de indivíduos com dbh ? 10 cm dentro de um hectare de floresta. É surpreendente o fato de haver uma nova espécie a cada dois ou três in-divíduos com dbh ? 10 cm. A conclusão resultante desses dados é que os engenheiros e construtores oiginais do geoglifo não deixaram como legado pobreza de espécies vegetais e degradação ambiental. Palavras-chave: inventário florestal, arqueologia Amazônica, biodiversidade.
The history of human-environment interactions and the role of agriculture among pre-Columbian populations of Amazonia has been a long-standing topic of debate, usually backed by scattered data. Although most archaeologists agree that Amazonia was inhabited by demographically dense and socio-politically complex societies during the millennium that preceded the European conquest, the vast forests of the terra firme (uplands) interfluves have only recently been studied for human impacts. In this article, we present the results of phytolith analyses from samples recovered from archaeological sites situated in the interfluves of Southwestern Amazonia, and discuss their implications for subsistence systems among terra firme populations in areas devoid of anthropogenic dark earths (ADEs). We conclude that a subsistence strategy based on a mixture of domesticated and wild plants was widespread in the region, and that maize, squash, and palms were particularly important resources.
Extensive earthworks in the form of fields, canals, mounds, and causeways have been reported for the tropical savannas in many areas of South America, but few such earthworks are known from the tropical forest habitat outside of these grasslands. This paper reports on the ditch-like earthworks at a remote site in the tropical forest of extreme NE Bolivia. In contrast to most earthworks reported elsewhere in South America, those described here are identified, based on ethnographic parallels, as canals and moats and lie on the edge of the active floodplain on the Beni River in a tropical forest environment. While such earthworks occur in the forested "islands" of the Llanos de Mojos further south, earthworks of this size and extent are unusual in the tropical forest of South America because much of this environment cannot support sedentary populations of the size and density necessary for their construction.
In the present paper we explore to what degree soil properties might have influenced pre-Columbian settlement patterns in the Monumental Mounds Region (MMR) of the Llanos de Moxos (LM), Bolivian Amazon. Monumental mounds are pre-Hispanic earth buildings and were preferentially built on mid to late Holocene paleo levees of the Grande River (here denominated PR1), while levees of older paleorivers (PR0) were only sparsely occupied. We dug two transects across PR0 and PR1 levee-backswamp catenas and analysed them for grain size, pH, CEC and Corg. Our data show that PR1 soils, where the density of mounds is higher, have far greater agricultural potential than PR0 soils, which are affected by aluminium toxicity in the backswamps and by high levels of exchangeable sodium in the levees. This study provides new data on the soil properties of the south-eastern Bolivian Amazon and reinforces the thesis that environmental constraints and opportunities exerted an important role on pre-Columbian occupation patterns and the population density reached in the Bolivian Amazon.
The nature and spatial scale of prehistoric human landscape modifications in Amazonia are enduring questions. Original conceptions of the issues by archaeologists published more than 40 years ago posited little human influence because of putative environmental constraints. Empirical data accumulated more recently demonstrated dense, permanent settlements along major watercourses of the central and southern Amazon, and profound landscape alterations in seasonally flooded savanna regions of Bolivia. These results led some investigators to propose that most to all of Amazonia was heavily populated and modified before European arrival, and that prehistoric fires and forest clearing were of such a massive scale that post-Columbian reforestation was a significant contributor to decreasing atmospheric CO2 levels and the onset of the ‘Little Ice Age’. Recent data generated from investigations of soils sampled from underneath standing terra firme forests in parts of the western Amazon indicate ephemeral ancient human occupation and little vegetation disturbance there. These issues are central to ongoing discussions surrounding the classification and timing of the Anthropocene, because a geological epoch proposed on the basis of profound human alteration of environments and considerations of when during the Holocene it should begin, require robust paleo-environmental and archaeological data from major, critically important zones such as the Amazon Basin. This paper reviews debates and existing information on prehistoric human influences in Amazonia, provides new data from the western Amazon, and attempts to arrive at reasonable conclusions based on the available empirical data.
In this paper we present new data on the precolumbian geometric ditched enclosures identified in Acre State, western Amazonia, Brazil. Remote sensing and ground survey have revealed 281 earthworks, located mainly on the edges of high plateaus overlooking the river valleys drained by the southeastern tributaries of the Upper Purus River. Excavations have shown that the few existing cultural materials are concentrated on the slopes and in the bottoms of the ditches, as well as on small mounds that were likely remains of houses, whereas the central, flat enclosed areas lack major archaeological features. New radiocarbon dates place the initial stage of earthwork construction as early as ca. 2000 B.P. We suggest that the building of these geometric earthworks may have been a regionally shared phenomenon, especially among the Arawak and the Tacana peoples, who used them for special gatherings, religious activities, and, in some cases, as village sites.
Thirty five radiocarbon dates for the Neolithic
and Chalcolithic ditched enclosure of Perdigões (Reguengos
de Monsaraz, Portugal) are presented. After a discussion
of some of the problems of dating negative structures, a
chronological sequence is presented for the ditch structures
and for the social practices related to funerary behaviours
and the manipulation of human remains. A clear Neolithic
phase is identified, well separated chronologically from the
Chalcolithic one. The possibility of the gradual and eventually
interrupted development of the site, is discussed. Funerary
contexts and the manipulation of human remains are
present from the earliest phase of the site, but the practices
became significantly diverse during the 3rd millennium by
the end of which the site seems to decay and significant activity
seems to stop.
Amazonian soils are almost universally thought of as extremely forbidding. However, it is now clear that complex societies with large, sedentary populations were present for over a millennium before European contact. Associated with these are tracts of anomalously fertile, dark soils termed terra preta or dark earths. These soils are presently an important agricultural resource within Amazonia and provide a model for developing long-term future sustainability of food production in tropical environments. The late Dutch soil scientist Wim Sombroek (1934-2003) was instrumental in bringing the significance of these soils to the attention of the world over four decades ago.
Wim saw not only the possibilities of improving the lives of small holders throughout the world with simple carbon based soil technologies, but was an early proponent of the positive synergies also achieved in regards to carbon sequestration and global climatic change abatement. Wim’s vision was to form a multidisciplinary group whose members maintained the ideal of open collaboration toward the attainment of shared goals. Always encouraged and often shaped by Wim, this free association of international scholars termed the Terra Preta Nova Group came together in 2001 and has flourished. This effort has been defined by enormous productivity. Wim who is never far from any of our minds and hearts, would have loved to share the great experience of seeing the fruits of his vision as demonstrated in this volume.
In Amazonia, monumentality has tradition-ally been considered characteristic of the late pre-colonial densely populated complex soci-eties. Recent archaeological fieldwork con-cerning the geometric earthworks in the Brazilian state of Acre has shown that the southwestern Amazonian interfluvial zone was a significant setting for long-term large land-scape modifications. We describe the geomet-ric ditched enclosure sites of Acre as early monumental public spaces reserved for cere-monial purposes, analogous to the central Andean ceremonial-civic centers of the Formative period. The geometric earthwork sites contain contiguous ditches and embank-ment structures of varying forms enclosing areas typically 3-10 hectares in size. Documented cultural features are sparse with-in the enclosed areas. Making use of satellite imagery, aerial photographs, and pedestrian surveys, 360 earthwork enclosures have been recorded in southwestern Amazonia. Our radiocarbon dates suggest that construction and use of geometric earthworks began at the latest around 1000 BC, and prevailed in the region until 1400 AD. The relatively small num-ber of ceramics recovered from the geometric ditched enclosure sites appear to be local sub-styles of the same tradition, sharing certain attributes with contemporary ceramic tradi-tions of the upper Amazonian region. This, and consistency in ceremonial earthwork architec-ture, indicate close cultural interaction between communities that built and used the earthwork sites, and imply probable relation-ships also with the central Andean area.
The archaeological study of agricultural systems
Archaeological gardens and field systems are notoriously difficult to study. They tend to be “artifact poor” contexts, and thus, extremely difficult to date with accuracy. Stratigraphy tends to be heavily reworked and eroded, the result of continual cultivation and mixing of soil structure by humans and nature, both during the time of use, and after abandonment. Due to the poor preservation of botanical remains, there is usually no direct evidence for the crops which were cultivated. Technological information on cultivation practices and tools is limited, and rarely is there direct evidence for labor and social organization, land tenure, and efficiency of the system.
Ethnographic analogy can be useful in many contexts, but it is usually difficult to determine direct historical ties between contemporary farmers and their previous counterparts. In many situations, ancient field and garden systems have been completely abandoned, breaking any continuity between past and present. Even in cases where ties can be demonstrated, the social, political, economic, and environmental situation has changed so much that the usefulness of direct analogy is limited. Historical records can sometimes be extrapolated back into the past, but agricultural practices are not often discussed in sufficient detail. Despite these limitations to research, certain archaeological field methods, combined with experimental archaeology, can provide the detailed information lacking in cases where historical and ethnographic analogy is inadequate and preservation is poor.
The Amazon is one of the few independent centres of plant domestication in the world, yet archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggest a relatively recent transition to agriculture there. In order to make sense of this time lag, the authors propose the use of the concept of 'familiarisation' instead of 'domestication', to explain Amazonian plant management, and the long-term relationship between plants and people in the region. This concept allows them to cast a fresh eye over ancient and contemporary patterns of plant cultivation and management that may be distinct to the ones described for the Old World.
This book explores the degree to which landscapes have been enriched with palms by human activities and the importance of palms for the lives of people in the region today and historically. Palms are a prominent feature of many landscapes in Amazonia, and they are important culturally, economically, and for a variety of ecological roles they play. Humans have been reorganizing the biological furniture in the region since the first hunters and gatherers arrived over 20,000 years ago.
Bayesian models have proved very powerful in analyzing large datasets of radiocarbon ( ¹⁴ C) measurements from specific sites and in regional cultural or political models. These models require the prior for the underlying processes that are being described to be defined, including the distribution of underlying events. Chronological information is also incorporated into Bayesian models used in DNA research, with the use of Skyline plots to show demographic trends. Despite these advances, there remain difficulties in assessing whether data conform to the assumed underlying models, and in dealing with the type of artifacts seen in Sum plots. In addition, existing methods are not applicable for situations where it is not possible to quantify the underlying process, or where sample selection is thought to have filtered the data in a way that masks the original event distribution. In this paper three different approaches are compared: “Sum” distributions, postulated undated events, and kernel density approaches. Their implementation in the OxCal program is described and their suitability for visualizing the results from chronological and geographic analyses considered for cases with and without useful prior information. The conclusion is that kernel density analysis is a powerful method that could be much more widely applied in a wide range of dating applications.
Interpretations of the Amazonia prehistory have changed significantly in the last few decades, as the complexity and diversity of the Amazonian cultures are beginning to be documented and understood. Earthworking, a long-term conscious anthropogenic landscape alteration, was a widespread phenomenon throughout the South American tropical lowlands. A variety of earthworks has been documented in the Southwest Amazon, including ditches and embankments of different shapes and sizes, roads, extensive raised fields, canals, causeways, and artificial wetlands linked to adjacent mounds and forest island settlement sites. A field survey and test excavations were undertaken in the region of Riberalta, in the Bolivian Amazon. The purpose of these investigations was to study the distribution and characteristics of the pre-Columbian occupation in the region. We found different types of sites, some without visible earthworks, indicating fairly dense occupation on river bluffs and terra firme, but lacking long permanence in the same location. The earthwork tradition prevailed in the Riberalta region from at least 100 B.C. until the period of European contact. The function of the less-complex earthworks may have been to enclose the occupation areas, and in some cases, to serve as canals. Compared to the variable layout of the sites, the ceramic assemblages of the region are relatively homogeneous. A central objective for future research will be to determine if the earthwork sites correlate with a single or multiple cultural traditions.Key-words: Southwest Amazonian archaeology, earthworks, ceramic traditions.
This well-illustrated, concise text will serve as a benchmark study of the Nasca people and culture for years to come. © 2002 Helaine Silverman and Donald A. Proulx. All rights reserved.
In 1884 a community of Brazilians was "discovered" by the Western world. The Ecology of Power examines these indigenous people from the Upper Xingu region, a group who even today are one of the strongest examples of long-term cultural continuity. Drawing upon written and oral history, ethnography, and archaeology, Heckenberger addresses the difficult issues facing anthropologists today as they "uncover" the muted voices of indigenous peoples and provides a fascinating portrait of a unique community of people who have in a way become living cultural artifacts. © 2005 by Taylor & Francis Group, a Division of T & F Informa. All rights reserved.
An important debate has been re-invigorated by new data concerning the size and environmental impacts of human populations in the Amazon Basin during pre-history. Here, we review the history of debates concerning pre-historic human occupation of the Amazon Basin along with the presentation of empirical data from archaeological and palaeoecological research. The combined evidence suggests that human occupation and resulting influence on Amazonian ecosystems were heterogeneous on both regional and local scales. Pre-historic occupation sites are more likely to have been located in forests with a pronounced dry season or in forests that are within 15 km of a river floodplain, rather than in ever-wet forests or in interfluvial regions far removed from large rivers. Forest enrichment of preferred species and game depletion through hunting are most probable within 15 km of an occupation site. Given the spatial and temporal patterning of these data, views of significant Amazonian-wide cultural impacts on riverine and interfluvial forest are not supported at this time.
Aim Our goal was to test the hypothesis that ancient humans substantially contributed to shaping the current distribution of Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa), an Amazonian tree species that has been important for human livelihoods since pre-Columbian times. We scrutinized the putative association between Brazil nut and Amazonian Dark Earth soils (ADE) and geometric earthworks called geoglyphs, and examined the existence of continental patterns in human footprints on Brazil nut stands.
Location Amazon Basin.
Methods We carried out a spatially explicit meta-analysis of the variation of Brazil nut stand metrics across the Amazon Basin based on 87,617 density estimates, and 488 average stand diameter assessments, and related these to previously published datasets and suitability maps of Brazil nut, ADE and geoglyphs.
Results We found consistently higher Brazil nut suitability scores, stand densities and average stand diameters in the vicinities of ADE than at larger distances, regardless of their position along a gradient from south-western to north-eastern Amazonia. For geoglyph sites such a pattern was only found for Brazil nut habitat suitability scores. The available data further revealed an accumulation of Brazil nut stands with increasing densities and average diameters from south-western to central and eastern Amazonia.
Main conclusions Our findings suggest that the chance of encountering Brazil nut stands bearing the marks of past human influences increases from south-western to central and eastern Amazonia. In south-western Amazonia, the regeneration of Brazil nut seems to have been controlled predominantly by natural processes, whereas in central and eastern Amazonia, anthropogenic disturbance has been more important since pre-Columbian times. However, it remains challenging to disentangle human influences on the distribution and abundance of Brazil nut from existing environmental gradients across the Amazon Basin. In general, the results of this meta-analysis bode well for the future coexistence of Brazil nut with different forms of contemporary human land use.
Keywords: Amazonian Dark Earth soils, Brazil nut, disturbance, genetic diversity, geoglyphs, historical ecology, megafauna, palaeodistribution, seed dispersal anachronism, terra preta.
In the Department of Beni, northeastern Bolivia, there are remnants of cultivated fields, roadways, and canals that are distributed over an area of 15,000 square miles. These features are interpreted as indicating the former existence of a highly organized, populous, agrarian society that antedates the culture of the Indian tribes now in the area.
Geometric earthworks located in the interfluvial zone of the Upper Purús and Madeira river tributaries in the southwestern Amazon are formed by ditches of varying shapes and sizes along with contiguous exterior embankments and roads terraced with low backfill banks. The earthworks
in the Brazilian state of Acre were used from 1200 B.C. to the fourteenth century A.D., indicating a continuous, collective cultural institution, a generalized regional phenomenon characterized by local variants and alterations and probably not exclusively restricted to a specified ethnic
group. The carefully planned position of the earthworks in the landscape and the recurring geometric forms represented in this earthwork architecture suggest functions that were part of a tradition of shared ideology related to rituals and/or the sociopolitical activities of ancient Amazonian
peoples. Recent archaeological fieldwork on two composite earthwork sites, Fazenda Atlântica and Quinauá, situated in the core location of the geometric earthworks, provides further evidence for the predominantly ceremonial use of these constructions.