Signatures of human occupation in Amazonian soils

Summary

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 Traditional views of pre-Columbian Amazonia as a ‘pristine forest’ have recently been replaced by predictions of vibrant cultures frequently scattered across the Basin.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 are typically site-specific, but soil phytoliths and charcoal can be analyzed from any point across the ~6 million km2 tract of Amazonian forest. Here, we use both proxies to reconstruct fire and vegetation change from sites with known pre-Columbian human occupations (terra preta sites). We compare these data with previously published soil charcoal and phytolith data from sites with no known or unknown occupation histories.

The terra preta sites contained large amounts of charcoal, and phytolith assemblages were dominated by palm taxa. These results corroborated previous findings in areas with lesser human impacts, which contained less charcoal and were dominated by forest taxa (not palms). These comparisons will allow us to calibrate charcoal and phytolith signatures along a gradient of ancient human impacts.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• ‘Siempre a la Vanguardia’: A Tribute to Dolores Piperno Contributions to the Origins and Spread of Agriculture   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage