Palisades, Ponds, and House Gardens: Phytolith Analysis on the Functionality and Importance of a Ring Ditch in Llanos de Mojos, Southwestern Amazonia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In Southwestern Amazonia, the seasonally flooding, anthropogenic landscapes of Llanos de Mojos may be associated with the domestication of several important crops such as manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanuts (Arachis spp.), peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), and chili pepper (Capsicum baccatum). These landscapes, which increased the productivity of the environment through the investment of human labor, consist of unique patterns of earthworks, including raised fields, causeways, canals, fish weirs, and ring ditches. The relationships between these features and the exact roles they may have played for past inhabitants, however, are not well known. Ring ditches in particular have been debated as serving defensive and hydraulic functions for local communities, given the way they encircle village sites. More recent research reveals their possible connection to the cultivation of house gardens with fertile soils. Here we show the results of phytolith analysis on a sediment core, which was sampled from one of these features during the excavation of the forest island Santa Maria in 2018 in order to interpret the function and importance of the ring ditch surrounding the settlement.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36929.0