From the Early Holocene to Amazonian Forest Groves

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ecological studies in the Amazon increasingly report groves of economically useful tree species thought to be legacies of past human occupation and management practices, in contrast to an inherent composition with high species diversity and low species concentration. Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa – Lecythidaceae) trees occur in grove-type forest formations and are currently a principal non-timber forest product and major source of income for indigenous and rural populations. Paleoethnobotanical results from 18 archaeological sites in the Brazilian states of Acre, Amazonas, Pará and Rondônia contribute a temporal dimension to discussions of the degree to which humans influenced, managed, and/or created Brazil nut groves. The majority of analyzed archaeological sites have remains of Brazil nut seed testa and occupation dates vary, ranging from 12,000 years ago to the late Holocene. The results indicate that human populations have had a long history of interaction with Brazil nuts and corroborate the hypotheses that these relationships, over millennia, contributed to the distribution of Bertholletia excelsa across the Amazon Basin. Furthermore we consider new dynamics in human-plant interactions where trees are a major component of the environment as they are conducive to different management practices than those employed in the production of annual plants.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25267