Amazonia (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stéphen Rostain.

Because the subject of the archaeological study disappears nowadays and exists only as traces, it is necessary to diversify the points of view to comprehend the past. The interdisciplinary approach helps to interpret better the human and natural components of the environment. On the basis of two Amazonian cases, from French Guiana and from Ecuador, it will be shown how cooperation between various disciplines improves considerably the interpretation. The first case concerns thousands of small...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Michael Heckenberger. Wetherbee Dorshow.

The Anthropocene is defined here as the time when human-induced alterations of the environment become a driver of regional and global climate. The Amazon has very deep histories of human alterations of forest systems, but settled occupations that dramatically altered forest structure in regional systems of Late Holocene age, particularly following the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), ca. 900-1300 CE. Global population loss in the Old World, beginning in the 13th century, and the demographic...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Bruna Rocha. Vinicius Oliveira.

The first millennium AD saw an increase in population density throughout much of Amazonia; this is testified by an increase in the number and size of coeval archaeological sites, many of which include anthropogenic dark earths, widely considered as proxies for intensive and continuous human habitation and alteration of the environment. The Terra Preta do Mangabal and Sawre Muybu sites were village settlements occupied from c.700AD and c.900AD respectively, located along the rapids of the upper...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcos Magalhães.

Arqueólogos estão revelando que além de terem domesticado algumas plantas para consumo, como a mandioca, por exemplo, os indígenas teriam agido de modo a cultivar florestas inteiras! Além disso, pesquisadores de diferentes áreas do conhecimento estão confirmando que a formação de parte das florestas e biodiversidade amazônicas, é produto da seleção cultural de espécies. A consequência disto foi que, muito provavelmente, boa parte das florestas conhecidas como naturais seriam, na verdade, obra...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Morgan Schmidt. Anne Rapp Py-Daniel. Marcos Pereira Magalhães. Helena Lima. Vera Guapindaia.

Short-term, small-scale interactions between humans and the environment may result in profound transformations of that environment over time. Recent archaeological research in Amazonia has revealed the extent that daily practices, such as refuse disposal or cultivation, have modified the soil in the vicinity of ancient and modern settlements. The fertile anthropic soil known as terra preta, formed mainly through the discard of refuse around habitation areas, is an example of how quotidian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Umberto Lombardo.

Estimates of population density in pre-Columbian Amazonia have been based on calculations of the carrying capacity of the environment, generally classified as varzea, terra firme and savannah. These estimates, however, have been criticized because they overlook the fact that i) the Amazonia environment is far more diverse in terms of soils, vegetation and climate than this simplistic classification and ii) pre-Columbians increased, both intentionally and unintentionally, the productivity of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Manuel Arroyo-Kalin.

Assessing the landscape impact of past settlement and subsistence systems in space and in time is essential to reconstructing pre-Columbian land use in the Amazon basin. In this paper we consider archaeological and landscape evidence for past land use by examining the strengths and limitations of archaeological radiocarbon evidence as a proxy for broad demographic patterns in pre-Columbian Amazonia.

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lautaro Maximilian Hilbert. José Iriarte. Eduardo Góes Neves. Francisco Pugliese.

This paper will address and evaluate the micro botanical remains of the Monte Castelo (9343 calB.P) shell mound in southwestern lowland Amazonia (state of Rondonia) and the sambaqui do Tucumã (7.000 -4.000 B.P) located on the southeast lower Amazon River (state of Para). The focus in identifying and evaluating the floral dietary peculiarities of these specific pre-Colombian settlements from the principle that the south and southeast Brazilian shell mound occupants are known to have had a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cheryl N. White.

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. A Participating 3-Dimensional Modeling exercise (P3DM) was conducted along the Suriname River of Suriname, South America. The study sought to better understand the historical and contemporary cultural landscape and identify areas of high cultural-historical value. Over a period of eleven days, a total of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jose Iriarte. Francis Mayle. Ruth Dickau. Bronwen Whitney. John Carson.

This paper summarises the results of a multiproxy study on the past human impact of Late Holocene peoples across different regions of the Llanos de Moxos. In the Monumental Mound Region, palaeoecological data show that the savanna soils were sufficiently fertile to support crops; maize being a predominant one. Macrobotanical remains from mound habitation sites in this region documented the presence of maize (Zea mays), squash (Cucurbita sp.), peanut (Arachis hypogaea), cotton (Gossypium sp.),...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charlotte Robinson. Neil Duncan. John Walker.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Southwestern Amazonia, the seasonally flooding, anthropogenic landscapes of Llanos de Mojos may be associated with the domestication of several important crops such as manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanuts (Arachis spp.), peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), and chili pepper (Capsicum baccatum). These landscapes, which increased the productivity of the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Renzo Duin.

Ceramic analysis is essential to understand identity and regional interaction in pre-Columbian (before AD 1492) Amazonia. Underpinning existing ceramic analysis are time-space graphs developed and established in the second half of the twentieth century by Irving Rouse and José Cruxent (Orinoco and Caribbean) and by Betty Meggers and Clifford Evans (Amazon and Guiana). These time-space graphs are grounded in the concept of a culture-historical mosaic, aimed at fixing peoples in time and space by...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Davis.

A prehistoric Amazonian site near the town of Monte Alegre in the state of Pará, Brazil shows evidence for potential use as a sandstone quarry by paleolindians. The rock art site at Painel do Pilão has a wall, that appears to have been reduced to a flat surface through repeated micro flaking, forming part of a semi subterranean shelter. The flattened wall comprises a platform from which ancient artists painted mostly sky-themed paintings on the open-air stage above. The shelter itself had...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Per Stenborg.

The potentials of using analysis of remote sensing data (particularly Lidar data) as a method of predicting the presence of archaeological sites in densely forested areas are discussed in this paper. The case study deals with an inland area — the Belterra Plateau — situated south of Santarém in the State of Pará, Brazil. Recent fieldwork has suggested that late pre-Columbian settlements generally are found in the surroundings particular geological features and in this region. Drawing on the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Crystal McMichael. Dolores Piperno. Eduardo Neves. Eduardo Tamanaha.

The extent and intensity of pre-Columbian human impacts on Amazonian forests has remained a topic of debate for decades. Traditional views of pre-Columbian Amazonia as a ‘pristine forest’ have recently been replaced by predictions of vibrant cultures frequently scattered across the Basin. A primary form of evidence for the latter includes the presence of terra preta soils, which are nutrient-enriched anthrosols that were formed in prehistory. Archaeological and paleoecological investigations...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Anna Browne Ribeiro.

The Mouth of the Xingu River, on the Lower Amazon River, is a place of many histories. The edge of the Amazon Delta, it was the first Portuguese foothold in contemporary Northern Brazil, and later home to a "glorious" 19th-Century rubber boomtown. Centered on the city of Gurupá, the region was a major hub in the traffic of Amerindians and also marked the Western extent of African slaving networks in Luso-Amazonia. Part of the Cabanagem revolt, place of Amazonian Jewry, export center for forest...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stéphen Rostain.

Modern archaeology must diversify its scientific approaches. First, it is essential to get various viewpoints and different scales to understand better the artifact. Moreover, the interdisciplinary methodology improves considerably the interpretation. The Amazonian raised fields study is a good example of such multiple scientific approaches. While raised field agriculture is no longer widely practiced today, it was quite widespread in the past. These structures are frequently found on the coast...