Legacy Landscapes of Amazonia

This is an article that surveys current knowledge that has been accumulating over the past decades and accelerating recently with the growing comprehension that the Indios conducted extensive settled field agriculture throughout the Amazon Basin in pre contact times. I find it very helpful, even though it is still a long way from the final answer of pre contact populations. Most encouraging to myself is that the consistent application of terra preta and terra mulato soils allows us to ultimately map truly settled lands like nowhere else in the world. We will ultimately get a measure of optimum population at the time of conquest.

I have also answered another question. While terra mulatto is much more prevalent than terra preta as it represents fields away from the actual village gardens, it holds no pottery. This is rather good news since it implies that pottery was not central to the manufacture of terra preta or terra mulato soils.

As I have extensively posted, the special characteristics of corn permit the easy construction of earthen kilns, not dissimilar to traditional charcoal kilns which are sealed up with mud. I had conjectured that pottery had been used to bring a hot coal charge to the kiln or even perhaps that it had been slathered over the outer mud surface to give better closure. I also felt that this might be a lot of unnecessary extra work but was confronted with the huge amount of pottery associated with the village gardens.

This clarifies the situation. In the open fields, the earthen kilns were ample and sufficient. Recall that a field of maize will produce a ton of biochar per acre which is sufficient to properly set up seed hills for the next season’s crop. An earthen kiln takes just a little extra effort to construct properly on top of the effort needed to pull the dried stalks at the end of harvest.

The pottery associated with the village gardens are no more than the natural build up of broken material accumulated over two thousands of years caused by using very inferior pottery making methods. Some could easily have been made by lining baskets and were meant to be entirely temporary.

It such basket pots were then used as cooking pots heated by cooking stones, the attrition would have been atrocious. Thus a massive amount of pottery in the kitchen garden is very believable.

The other aspect of Amazon antique civilization is that is was as well developed as the rest of Mesoamerica without the luxury of stone pyramids. There were a number of polities quite separate from each other and probably suppressing intervening development. To put this into perspective, the Amazon Basin is much larger than all of Europe and we have polities connected at best by rivers that held populations in the tens of thousands at the least yet sufficiently distant from each other as to discourage conflict. There were many of them and with satellite mapping we are beginning to grasp their scale.

It is this separation that likely kept the populations lower than is possible from the carrying capacity of the land, but the carrying capacity of the land used was extraordinary to begin with. Today we are barely exploiting the full potential of these lands and it is reasonable to say that if modern Brazil’s current occupied lands were reduced to the same level of culture that ninety percent of the lands would be withdrawn from cultivation. Yet however you wish to play with the assumptions, the occupied lands at the time of contact held millions and possibly tens of millions and was certainly up to handling a hundred million or more unlikely as that may seem.

We are now beginning to grasp just how much has been lost at the time of the contact. A real percentage of the Mesoamerican population managed to survive the impact and through the process of hybridization began a long recovery under the umbrella of a European organized polity. The Indians of the Amazon were not so lucky. Disease decimated them again and again allowing the remnants to be over run by the barbarians of the forest who still dominate many areas. This is a natural process and inevitable considering that ritual cannibalism was practiced throughout these polities as a derivative of such ongoing conflict.

I also have good reason to think that similar polities arose in the Mississippi Valley and have also gone unremarked to this day. The impulse was there and corn culture could support it. We also have the evidence of the mound builders to support the likelihood.

http://westinstenv.org/histwl/2009/01/11/the-legacy-of-cultural-landscapes-in-the-brazilian-amazon-implications-for-biodiversity/
The legacy of cultural landscapes in the Brazilian Amazon: implications for biodiversity

Michael J. Heckenberger, J. Christian Russell, Joshua R. Toney, and Morgan J. Schmidt. 2007. The legacy of cultural landscapes in the Brazilian Amazon: implications for biodiversity. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2007) 362, 197–208

Full text [here]

Selected excerpts:
Abstract

For centuries Amazonia has held the Western scientific and popular imagination as a primordial forest, only minimally impacted by small, simple and dispersed groups that inhabit the region. Studies in historical ecology refute this view. Rather than pristine tropical forest, some areas are better viewed as constructed or ‘domesticated’ landscapes, dramatically altered by indigenous groups in the past. This paper reviews recent archaeological research in several areas along the Amazon River with evidence of large pre-European (ca 400–500 calendar years before the present) occupations and large-scale transformations of forest and wetland environments. Research from the southern margins of closed tropical forest, in the headwaters of the Xingu River, are highlighted as an example of constructed nature in the Amazon. In all cases, human influences dramatically altered the distribution, frequency and configurations of biological communities and ecological settings. Findings of historical change and cultural variability, including diverse small to medium-sized complex societies, have clear implications for questions of conservation and sustainability and, specifically, what constitutes ‘hotspots’ of bio-historical diversity in the Amazon region.

INTRODUCTION

The preservation of tropical forests in the Amazon is central to current debates about environmental and climate change across the globe. Greater Amazonia, which refers to the largely forested Orinoco and Amazon river basins, preserves nearly one half of the world’s remaining tropical forests. It contains nearly a quarter of the world’s fresh water and produces roughly one-third of the world’s oxygen, over an area larger than Europe (nearly one-third of South America). According to The Nature Conservancy (TNC website: www.nature.org; consulted 2December 2006), Amazonia is also home to over one-third of the Earth’s known species, and as such is one of the most critical reservoirs of biodiversity on the planet. Not surprisingly, concerns over biological conservation and the future of the region as a critical ‘tipping point’ in the Earth’s climate and ecology are widespread.

The discovery of remarkable variability within Amazonia over the past few decades has overturned popular characterizations of the region as a fairly uniform, impenetrable lowland jungle strangled with plants and teeming with exotic fauna of all kinds. Recent research coupled with the immense power and widespread availability of satellite imagery reveals that, although generally flat and green, there is astonishing biological and ecological variability. …

The documentation of immense biological variation has done little to change stereotypes of the indigenous occupants of the region—as traditionally small-scale and dispersed villages of ’stone-age primitives’ hidden away in forest clearings. The majority opinion still holds that natural forces and processes, little impacted by human actions until recently, are responsible for the current composition of the region. However, appearances are deceiving and, in this case, the present composition of the region as closed forest often masks an environmental history much more complex.

In-depth studies in ethnohistory and archaeology, i.e. studies with sufficient time-depth to evaluate long-term patterns, clearly document that some areas were home to fairly densely settled, highly productive and powerful regional polities in the past. These small to medium-sized complex societies converted many forests into patchy, managed landscapes, which included fairly large-scale transformations of soils, forest plants and animals, and wetlands.

Regional specialists agree that indigenous populations were decimated by colonialism, making it impossible to sustain the popular viewpoint that indigenous populations have changed little over the past few millennia. Post-contact (1492) population collapse resulted in a wholesale ‘fallowing’ of managed forest landscapes across large portions of Amazonia. Thus, the image of small, ephemeral indigenous groups and only minimal impacts upon the lands they occupied, still widely maintained by many natural scientists, conservationists, policy-makers and the public at large, is no longer tenable as a general characterization of native peoples and must be demonstrated rather than assumed. The time has come to abandon assumptions of uniformity in cultural terms, and recognize that biological and cultural variations are the result of the complex and dynamic histories of coupled human–environmental systems. …

HOTSPOTS THROUGH TIME

The focus on present conditions of nature and human society tends to portray virgin forest, which is then seen as negatively impacted by human use, in particular the dramatic and rapid expansion of Western technology. In a strategically placed advertisement at Boston’s Logan airport (3 October 2003), TNC appears to share this view of a changeless tropical forest in their promotion of efforts to preserve the natural places of the Amazon, “as they were, as they are, and as they always will be.” …
The difficulty of defining such things outside of specific situations is compounded by questions of anthropogenesis: being partially created by humans through secondary succession and ‘intermediate disturbance’ (Balée 2006).

It seems reasonable to suggest that perspectives outside of the natural sciences, i.e. from the social and historical sciences, at least, are required. Contemporary biodiversity is easily measured in terms of the contemporary distributions of plants and animals, as well as the soils, hydrology and other physical features of the land, but cultural landscapes can only be understood historically.

Anthropologists, in particular, due to their ‘grounded’ or participatory approaches, tend to see local socio-historical contexts as critical. From an anthropological viewpoint, several important questions emerge: (i) the incorporation (or lack thereof) of indigenous voices in debates about Amazonian environment, (ii) tensions between local and global considerations, and (iii) the degree to which the actual histories of indigenous peoples are considered. …

The destruction of native lifeways and population collapse is widely accepted throughout the Americas, including Amazonia (Denevan 1976), and archaeology and early ethnohistory show the massive diversity was lost in the wake of colonialism, nation-building and globalization. Indeed, conventional views that small, ephemeral occupations and very few people (0.01–0.3 persons per km2) were fairly ubiquitous in the region–societies that leave only a very minimal footprint on the natural tropical forest (small, short-term clearings)–are generally unsubstantiated historically or archaeologically, beyond a few generations, at the end of a long arduous history of indigenous struggles against hostile invasion. The idea that any sustained human presence, even indigenous peoples with simple tools, is destructive or even invasive of biodiversity, is not only questionable in many cases but also backwards, since it was cultural forces, in significant part, that were responsible for patterns of biodiversity in the first place. Worse yet, by characterizing groups as migratory or transhumant, or even fugitive, who have made no major ‘improvements’ to the land, enables adversaries of indigenous land or cultural rights to deny their claims.

Without in-depth archaeological and historical research it is difficult to be certain what is being measured or how one or another environment has or will respond to human intervention. The discovery of large, settled communities and dense regional populations suggests a much longer and complex history of human use and, by definition, sustainable resource use. It also provides ways to look back in time to see differential use of Amazonian landscapes and the long-term outcomes of land use. Minimally, it can no longer be assumed that an apparent lack of human influences today is an indication that it was always this way. …

Nepstad et al.’s (2005) quantitative analysis of patterns revealed in satellite-based maps strongly shows that “indigenous lands occupy one-fifth of the Brazilian Amazon and are currently the most important barrier to Amazon deforestation.” In other words, indigenous resource management strategies are doing something right and it is worth understanding them, in the present and the past, and preserving them in the future.

BIO-HISTORICAL HOTSPOTS ALONG THE AMAZON RIVER

Archaeology is a critical component in recent discussions as often the only way to understand long-term dynamic change in coupled human–environment systems in tropical forest settings. In Amazonia, it has revealed a very deep and complicated history, extending from the late Pleistocene to today, and showing remarkable change and variability in cultural patterns through time and from region to region. In late prehistoric times, it is widely believed that large pre-Columbian populations managed resources effectively and on a fairly large scale, particularly in major river settings. Several areas along the Amazon River, in particular, have substantial evidence that large, productive economies were common in some parts of pre-Columbian Amazonia, notably river areas where forest farming and wetland management could be intensified. …

By the 1980s, it was widely believed that chiefdoms throughout the Amazon bottomlands, or várzea, associated with the ‘Amazonian polychrome tradition’ that includes Marajoara, depended on fairly intensive exploitation of aquatic resources and diversified cultivation (Lathrap et al. 1985; R. L. Carneiro, 1986, unpublished work). …

Wetland landscape management among Marajoara also appears to include river palms fruits, such as Açai palm (Euterpe oleracea and related Juçara, Euterpe edulis, used today primarily for heart-of-palm; family Arecaceae) and other agricultural crops, including possible indigenous seed crops (Roosevelt 1991; Schaan 2004).

Santarém is a related but distinctive culture concentrated in the region at the confluence of the Amazon and the Tapajós rivers (about 500 km upstream from Marajó), centered on the Brazilian city of the same name. Santarém is an archaeological culture known primarily by its ornate ceramics (see Gomes 2002). …

Roosevelt’s (1999) fieldwork in and around the city of Santarém leads her to believe that the polity was an even more populous and complex chiefdom than Marajó, characterized by intensive floodplain and upland agriculture, and significant impacts in forest and wetland ecologies. …

Based on largely unpublished fieldwork, she estimates that at its peak, in terminal pre-Columbian times, the site extended over an area of nearly 16 km2, although as is typical in other parts of the Amazon, the distribution of occupation areas is likely patchy and spread out over this area. Nonetheless, if correct, her estimate of this late prehistoric capital town rivals the size of Cahokia, the largest site in North America, or many of the stone and adobe temple centres of the central Andes and Mesoamerica. Its size and power are corroborated by diverse references to large settlements, populous regions and large-scale canoe flotillas of warriors in early chronicles of the river (Porro 1996).

Recent research on archaeological dark earth (ADE) soils from a variety of sites in the lower Tapajos River appears to have found the agronomic signature of these large populations (Lehmann et al. 2003; Glaser and Woods 2004; Glaser 2006). ADE research suggests that the area was densely occupied and that agricultural populations had a complex and sophisticated system of ADE creation and management, including both the occupational soils (terra preta) and the non-ceramic bearing agricultural soils (terra mulata; Woods and McCann 1999). Areas of altered (anthropogenic) soils vary from quite small (less than 1 ha) to quite large (more than 100 ha) and occur in a wide range of contexts, and in the Lower Tapajós ADE cover an area of well over a thousand hectares (Denevan 2001; Kern et al. 2003). Diverse techniques of management, including burning, mulching and other techniques are suggested and supported by ethnographic studies, such as Hecht’s (2003) discussion of Kayapó land and soil management and Posey’s (2004) general discussion of ‘forest islands’ (possible archaeological sites as well as integral parts of contemporary resource management) and eco-tone management in the neighbouring middle Xingu River region.

The infrastructural elaboration of Açutuba, including mounds, ramps and ditches, sculpted plazas and agricultural areas, attest to the necessarily great alteration of the tropical forest in this riverine setting. Use of the broad area was highly patchy and variable as people move from place to place, or not, through time. This brings to mind Balée’s (1989, 2006) notion of broad anthropogenic landscapes built up through time, as well as Denevan’s (1992, 1996, 2001) suggestion of intensively used zones around bluff settlements, which he feels was more typical in the past before metal axes. These findings corroborate early ethnohistoric accounts from the middle Amazon River (Porro 1996). …

The PAC [Projeto Arqueológico de Amazônia Central] provides the strongest archaeological evidence to date that the Amazon River bottomlands and adjacent areas were densely populated and some settlements had heavily constructed core areas, including architectural earthworks, massive soil alteration in and around settlements, large agricultural areas and possible wetland management systems. …

THE UPPER XINGU: A HOTSPOT THROUGH TIME

The headwater region of the Xingu River, or Upper Xingu, in northeastern Mato Grosso state, Brazil, provides another clear case of anthropogenic modification of Amazonian landscapes over the long term (see Heckenberger et al. 2003; Heckenberger 2005). The Upper Xingu is one of several areas in the southern Amazon region where densely settled complex societies flourished during the late prehistory. …

Archaeological complexes associated with these groups, including sophisticated agricultural, settlement and road earthworks, have long been known from the eastern lowlands of Bolivia (Denevan 2001). Aerial photography in the mid-twentieth century made it more feasible to visualize the scale and configuration of agricultural earthworks, raised causeways and other features in open savanna. Erickson’s (e.g. 2000, 2001, 2006) recent archaeological work has revealed a complex system of earthworks, including causeways, fish weirs and ponds, and forest islands (ancient settlements), raised fields and diverse other archaeological landscape features. Erickson (2000, p. 193) notes that: ‘Rather than domesticate the species that they exploited, the people of Bauré domesticated the landscape’. Recent research suggests that not only is much of the area anthropogenic, but that biodiversity is equal if not higher in anthropogenic than in nonanthropogenic areas (see Bale´e 2006). …

This raises the question of whether post-European depopulation truncated a pattern of forest conversion that may have been degrading landscapes by late prehistoric times. Certainly in the past there was a greater proportion of non-forested to forested areas, but evidence suggests that sustainable levels of land use were being maintained. In fact, it seems that economic productivity and landscape configuration had coevolved over many centuries, and intensification was carried out by fine-tuning the diverse and patchy orchard, field and garden agricultural areas, as well as by management of wetland fisheries. …

Plaza villages, like today, were critical social nodes and tied into elaborate socio-political networks. Primary roads and bridges are oriented to plazas, or more accurately, are ordered by the same spatial principles, which also order domestic and public space, creating a cartography and landscape that was highly partitioned and rigidly organized according to the layouts of settlements and roads …

FINAL COMMENT: REQUIEM FOR A PRIMITIVE WORLD?

Clearly in the Upper Xingu, like the other areas discussed, a new concept, distinct from traditional conceptions of biodiversity, must be developed, which includes biocultural diversity—looking at the way certain cultural and biological patterns are mutually constituted—and bio-historical diversity, for lack of a better term, to describe how this process unfolds over the long term.

The realization that Amazonia is not a land of primitive peoples and pristine nature, untouched until quite recently, does not imply that indigenous societies are similar to contemporary (Western) society. What is interesting is how native peoples developed through time in unique ways, organizing themselves and the natural world through complex cultural relations with nature and sophisticated technologies through which to manipulate or manage the natural environment, rather than ‘tame’ it. …

That Amazonian landscapes are richly historical and constructed makes them no less natural or interesting, or tainted in terms of biodiversity. Many aspects of indigenous and folk resource management provide ready-made alternatives to imported and far more destructive development strategies and technologies. As Laurance et al. (2001, p. 439) suggest: ‘Rather than rampant exploitation, an alternative and far superior model for Amazonian development is one in which agricultural land is used intensively rather than extensively and ‘high-value’ agroforestry is valued and perennial crops are favoured over fire-maintained cattle pastures and slash-and-burn farming plots.’ Indeed, this is precisely what it seems some indigenous groups were doing. Indigenous practices limit deforestation and lasting partnerships between indigenous and rural peoples in the region will maintain standing forests and potentially even restore tropical forest degradation (Lamb et al. 2005; Nepstad et al. 2005). …

[A]s a hotspot in terms of genes, species and the overall ecosystem(s), as well as in terms of local, national and world heritage, issues of human agency, dynamic change in coupled human–environmental systems and human rights loom large in questions of conservation or sustainable development. In this regard, understanding indigenous systems of management, including those that are only or largely apparent archaeologically, may hold critical keys to future approaches to land use and land rights.