Environmental impact of geometric earthwork construction in pre-Columbian Amazonia

Carson, John F., Whitney, Bronwen, Mayle, Francis, Iriarte, José, Prumers, Heiko, Soto, J. Daniel and Watling, Jennifer (2014) Environmental impact of geometric earthwork construction in pre-Columbian Amazonia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111 (29). pp. 10497-10502. ISSN 0027-8424

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Abstract

There is considerable controversy over whether pre-Columbian (pre-A.D. 1492) Amazonia was largely “pristine” and sparsely populated by slash-and-burn agriculturists, or instead a densely populated, domesticated landscape, heavily altered by extensive deforestation and anthropogenic burning. The discovery of hundreds of large geometric earthworks beneath intact rainforest across southern Amazonia challenges its status as a pristine landscape, and has been assumed to indicate extensive pre-Columbian deforestation by large populations. We tested these assumptions using coupled local- and regional-scale paleoecological records to reconstruct land use on an earthwork site in northeast Bolivia within the context of regional, climate-driven biome changes. This approach revealed evidence for an alternative scenario of Amazonian land use, which did not necessitate labor-intensive rainforest clearance for earthwork construction. Instead, we show that the inhabitants exploited a naturally open savanna landscape that they maintained around their settlement despite the climatically driven rainforest expansion that began ∼2,000 y ago across the region. Earthwork construction and agriculture on terra firme landscapes currently occupied by the seasonal rainforests of southern Amazonia may therefore not have necessitated large-scale deforestation using stone tools. This finding implies far less labor—and potentially lower population density—than previously supposed. Our findings demonstrate that current debates over the magnitude and nature of pre-Columbian Amazonian land use, and its impact on global biogeochemical cycling, are potentially flawed because they do not consider this land use in the context of climate-driven forest–savanna biome shifts through the mid-to-late Holocene.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	paleoecology, Amazonian archaeology, human–environment interactions, Anthropocene, Amazon rainforest
Subjects:	D400 Agriculture F800 Physical and Terrestrial Geographical and Environmental Sciences
Department:	Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Geography and Environmental Sciences
Depositing User:	Bronwen Whitney
Date Deposited:	09 Jun 2015 08:47
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2019 22:52
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/22742

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