South America: Amazonia and Orinoco Basin (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (87 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Llanos de Mojos region in the Bolivian Amazon has a long history of human occupation that challenges long-held ideas about the nature of pre-Contact communities. It has a tropical savanna ecosystem with very strong seasonality, resulting in annual cycles of flooding and drought. Large, long-term sedentary populations appear to have adapted to this...
Evidence of Pre-Columbian Polyculture and Agroforestry in the Eastern Amazon (2018)
The scale of pre-Columbian impact on Amazonia is one of the most debated topics in archaeology and paleoecology. To address this issue, an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological soil profiles and lake sediment cores from the lower Tapajos are used to investigate climate-human-ecosystem interactions over the past 8,000 years. Pollen and phytolith data indicate the presence of polyculture crops including Ipomea, Manihot, Zea mays, and Cucurbita. The presence of Theobroma,...
The Evolution of Domestication in Cassava Unraveled through Historical Genomics and Archaeobotany (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Frontiers of Plant Domestication" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cassava (‘manioc' or ‘yuca' regionally) is a staple food for 800 million people worldwide. It was domesticated in the southwestern Amazon ~7,000 years ago, and archaeobotanical evidence suggests that it dispersed widely, including through Central America, shortly thereafter. In the present day, it is most widely grown in Brazil and throughout sub-Saharan...
Finding a “Living Archaeology” among Tropical Trees: The Potential of Multidisciplinary Dendroarchaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Entangled Legacies: Human, Forest, and Tree Dynamics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tropical forests have often been synonymous with 'wilderness' in popular discourse. However, the last couple of decades of research in archaeological, palaeoecological and historical ecology have revealed that these ecosystems have actually been intensively managed by our species from at least 45,000 years ago. This necessitates...
Finding Sites in the Amazon Forest: AI-Based Deep Learning Analysis of Satellite Imagery from the Upper Xingu Basin, Brazil (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper summarizes preliminary results of an AI-based analysis that identifies potential precolumbian Amazonian archaeological site locations based on the presence of clusters of a specific species of palm tree. The study uses Landsat-8, Sentinel-2, and Planet satellite imagery as...
Flood Regimes, Earthworks, and Water Management in the Domesticated Landscapes of The Bolivian Amazon (2018)
Exploitation and control of wetland resources was a major strategy of early sedentary peoples in many areas of the world. In some cases, indigenous knowledge about flood pluses and water dynamics and anthropogenic transformation of waterscapes increased to the point where some wetlands were transformed into domesticated landscapes. Analysis and interpretations of relevant radar (TerraSAR-X, ALOS SAR-X, Sentinel-1), multispectral (Landsat ETM and ETM+, ASTER), DEMs (SRTM, ASTER) satellite and...
Flowers and Sherds: The Practice of Collecting Artifacts in Brazilian Amazon (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation we discuss the practice of collecting artifacts, considering the perspectives of the collectors and of the State in Brazil. We assume that collecting is an act that should be understood from a phenomenological approach. Our reflections take into account the affective relationships between the collectors and the artifacts, and also the...
Formation Processes, Fertility, Spatial Extent, and Carbon Content of Anthropogenic Soils in the Upper Xingu, Southern Amazon (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent research in the Upper Xingu carried out in partnership with the indigenous Kuikuro community (Associação Indígena Kuikuro do Alto Xingu; AIKAX) has revealed that modified soils associated with archaeological remains and possibly with ancient cultivation areas may be much more...
From the Early Holocene to Amazonian Forest Groves (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ecological studies in the Amazon increasingly report groves of economically useful tree species thought to be legacies of past human occupation and management practices, in contrast to an inherent composition with high species diversity and low species concentration. Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa – Lecythidaceae) trees occur in grove-type forest formations...
From the First to the Last Amazonian Dark Earths: The Longue-Durée of Landscape Management at the Teotônio Site, Upper Madeira River, SW Amazonia (2018)
The Teotônio site, situated on the right bank of the Madeira river near Porto Velho, Rondônia, is a key location for understanding the deep history of human-environment interactions and landscape management in southwest Amazonia. Its archaeological record stretches back to the early-mid Holocene and includes vestiges of 6,000-year old Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) belonging to the Massangana Phase, hypothesised as marking the beginning of widespread landscape transformations in the Upper Madeira...
A Historical Perspective on the Nature of Precolonial Settlements in the Middle Xingu River Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In order to understand the processes that generated the rich, complex, and diverse cultural and environmental history present in Amazonia, and specifically along the Xingu River basin, it is crucial that we generate information on when, where, and how small-scale foraging societies...
A History of Knowledge of the Amazonian Dark Earths (2018)
The anthropogenic origin of the Amazonian dark earths (Terra Pretas) has been a methodologically assured fact for 70 years. Especially during the last 30 years, Terra Preta have been scientifically investigated with increasing intensity and in an ever-widening context. Currently, the dominant concept guiding research is the idea of binding atmospheric carbon which artificially produced dark earths. The large-scale production of terra preta is said to be an efficient instrument to combat global...
Identifying Past Vegetation Dynamics in Xingu Indigenous Territory Using Soil Phytolith Analysis (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the preliminary hypotheses of a soil sampling programme aimed at mapping precolumbian and historic vegetation dynamics in the Xingu Indigenous Territory (TIX), Brazil. Research carried out with the Kuikuro during the last three decades has resulted in the archaeology...
An Independent Center of Early Ceramic Production in SW Amazonia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Monte Castelo has one of the earliest records of ceramic production in the New World. Occupation of the site dates to between 6000 and 700 BP and demonstrates covariances between technological changes and environmental scenarios since the beginning of its chronology. We present petrographic, chemical, and isotopic data on ceramics from different periods to...
Indigenous Land Use and Cultural Burning in the Amazon Rainforest Ecotone (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southwestern Amazon Rainforest Ecotone is the transitional landscape between the tropical forest and seasonally flooded savannahs of the Bolivian Llanos de Moxos. These heterogeneous landscapes harbor high levels of biodiversity and some of the earliest records of human occupation and plant domestication in...
Is There a Public Archaeology?: an approach from Brazil (2018)
This presentation aims to discuss Public Archaeology (PA) from a Brazilian approach. Based on a study that includes a bibliographical survey, and the analysis of the papers presented at scientific meetings in Brazil, I examined: a) the role of PA in the contemporary agenda of the archaeology in Brazil; b) the connections between PA, Heritage Education (HE), and the development projects, and c) its relationship with the decolonizing perspective of the discipline in Latin America. In addition, I...
Landscapes of the Mid-Low Xingu: Archaeology, Temporality, and *Longue Durée Indigenous Stories (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation deals with the archaeological research carried out in the indigenous land Koatinemo, together with the Asurini do Xingu Indigenous people. From this experience, a reflection on the temporality of the landscapes and on the *longue durée Indigenous stories of the mid-low...
Large Centralized Fired-Clay Cooking Stoves of Communal Households on Marajoara Mounds at the Mouth of the Amazon c. AD 400–1100 (2018)
Rarely does the New World a thropological literature mention the existence of large centralized, multi-unit fired clay cooking structures of some prehistoric or recent indigenous Amazonian households. Yet these large, highly patterned features have been informative for archaeology from several points of view. Their existence and common presence as permanent structures built into the floors of prehistoric mound sites on Marajo Island have demonstrated that the mounds they occur in had sizeable,...
Living Things in the Landscape: Gendered Perspectives from Amazonia (2018)
Santos-Graneros writes about persistent places in Amazonia, places that have been used by generation after generation of people, because of their special qualities—waterfalls, mountains, caves. The current interest in the ontology of objects, inspired by the work of Ingold, Latour, Gell, and others has opened the door for archaeologists to consider how we can investigate the meanings of places and objects in these ways, as living things. Like objects, places are alive. The headwaters of the...
Making the Case for “Zombie Trees”: Intangible Cultural Heritage Management in Guyana (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent discoveries of substantial offshore oil and gas reserves and large-scale international development projects highlight the need to identify and preserve Guyana’s poorly documented cultural heritage. At particular risk of destruction are some of Guyana’s Silk Cotton (Ceiba pentandra) trees, which serve as tangible markers of one aspect of the...
Mapping Marronnage: Creating, Managing, and Visualizing Archival Datasets (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Spatial Archaeometry: A Survey of Recent High-Resolution Survey and Measurement Applications" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the nineteenth century, captive Africans in Guyane, a French colony and overseas territory in northeastern South America, increasingly sought their own freedom leading up to definitive abolition in 1848. Colonial administrators recognized the practice as a problem and began...
Materiality of Amerindian Human Bodies in the Mouth of the Amazon River: Life and Death at the Curiaú Mirim I Site, Around the Second Millennium AD (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Individual Bodies to Bodies of Social Theory: Exploring Ontologies of the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. These paper aims to show an osteobiographical approach to read human bodies like a special kind of material culture which was inspired by the concepts of Amerindian ideas of construction of bodies and persons in the interpretation of the data analyzed. The Curiaú Mirim site is formed by funerary...
Mayo Chinchipe-Marañón Complex, the Unexpected Spirits of the Ceja (2018)
The fringes of the eastern Andean slopes that conform Ecuador’s Ceja de Montaña are a steep transitional zone between the cordillera highlands and the Amazonian lowlands, where altitude varies from 1800 to ca.-400 masl, The ceja is covered by a dense humid tropical forest that has been traditionally seen as unfit for the development of social complexity. In spite of the apparent adverse ecological conditions this region became an important cultural area around 5000 years ago. A precocious...
Millenial Tropical Urbanism in the Upper Amazon (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A dense system of prehispanic urban centers has been found in the Upano Valley of Amazonian Ecuador, in the eastern foothills of the Andes. Fieldwork and lidar analysis reveal a deeply anthropized landscape with complexes of monumental platforms; plazas and streets...
The Missing Mammals of Cerro Azul (Guaviare, Colombia): Extreme Fragmentation in Neotropical Zooarchaeological Assemblages (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ongoing research by the LASTJOURNEY project has investigated multiple archaeological sites located near rock art panels in the Serranía La Lindosa, Colombia, to explore human-environmental interactions during the Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene transition. Due to severe taphonomic conditions in the Colombian Amazon, only one of these sites, Cerro Azul, has...