Quilts and Palimpsests: Intensive Agricultural Landscapes in the Llanos de Moxos

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Llanos de Moxos (Moxos) in the Bolivian Amazon is a useful case study for questions of settlement pattern, agricultural intensification, and social organization, particularly in light of its ambiguous status as both Amazonian and Andean, and neither Andean nor Amazonian. Moxos contains at least seven distinct examples of large landscape patterns of varying density, as measured by mapping forest islands, ring ditches, monumental mounds, causeways, zigzag features, fish weirs, raised fields, drained fields, mound fields, and domesticated wetlands. Comparisons within this set of related but distinct landscapes suggest that precolumbian communities organized their daily activities in a variety of ways, always in a context of marked seasonality. Recent research suggests that this variety of landscapes may have existed as early as 1700 BCE, and persisted into the Jesuit period (ca. 1665–1767 CE).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39241.0