The Middens, the Terraces and What Lies in Between: a test for the middenscape model of terra preta formation at the mouth of the Xingu River

Summary

Remarkable marks of an intense occupation in pre-Columbian times, the Amazonian Dark Earths are spread ubiquitously over a large area in the Amazon River basin. Despite being products of human interaction with the landscape, the differences between each one of them can be significant in terms of its physical and chemical properties, probably reflecting a diversity of both cultural and natural processes which they were exposed. As the increasing studies in Amazonian Archaeology the processes of formation of ADEs constitutes an important case to understand how these groups interacted with their environment, intensively transforming their landscape. This presentation aims on the spatial analysis of the data collected in two ADE sites, in the mouth of Xingu River, testing a hypothesis that accumulated and processed refuge from the daily activities from households (middens), in opposition to the ever swept public areas (terraces) was responsible for the actual features seen in these places.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Ceramics, Identity and Regional Interaction in the Lower Amazon

Keywords

Spatial Coverage