Climate Change and Polyculture Agroforestry Systems: Examples from Amazonian Dark Earths

Summary

In this presentation, we discuss pre-Columbian Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE) polyculture agroforestry systems and its implications for management and conservation efforts on Amazonian sustainable futures under current threat from climate change and development. We present and compare new multi-proxy paleoclimate, palaeoecological and archaeobotanical data from two mid to late Holocene records of land use history of ADE in Santarem (Lower Amazon) and the Itenez Forest Reserve (SW Amazonia). Our data complement the previous understanding pre-Columbian land use of Amazonian Dark Earths based on soil science and geoarchaeology by offering new palaeoecological insights into ADE in relation to resilience to climate change, crop and fruit-tree cultivation, as well as fire and forest management. Our results provide a long-term example of sustainable anthropogenic landscapes in the Amazon which can inform sustainability and climate change in tropical social systems.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20570