A Relationship between Seasonal Flooding and Raised Agricultural Fields in the Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia

Summary

The Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia, a seasonally flooded savanna region in the western Amazon lowlands, has several types of artificial landscape modifications that point to a significant pre-Columbian occupation with some approximately as old as 500BCE. These earthworks include 40-50,000 raised fields which were used as a regional-wide agricultural technique to grow a variety of crops. This paper focuses on the relationship of these fields to their hydrological environment. Using GIS in conjunction with digitized data from the Proyecto SIG Arqueológico del Beni and the Dartmouth Flood Observatory at the University of Colorado this paper analyzes large-scale regional variation in the presence of flood water and the placement of raised fields within distinct hydrological constraints. It is suggested that their construction is associated with the amount of nearby regional flooding that is the result of topographical, geomorphological, and riverine relationships. These separations can be seen along distinct intraregional lines, dividing the denser fields in the northern part of the Llanos from the less dense southern section. By focusing on these kinds of seasonal hydrological distinctions, the results demonstrate that crop cultivation may have relied on the placement of raised fields to facilitate water management.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22369