19 research outputs found
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Evidence confirms an anthropic origin of Amazonian Dark Earths.
Arising from: Silva et al. Nature Communications https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20184-2 (2021
Terras crescidas e terras antigas: novas aplicações do sensoriamento remoto à prospecção de sítios arqueológicos em várzeas amazônicas
Resumo As várzeas e suas paisagens estão presentes em várias teorias sobre a ocupação humana na região amazônica. Entretanto, ainda há lacunas sobre a diversidade de ambientes e temporalidades que compõem esse ecossistema. Várzeas amazônicas são planícies sazonalmente inundadas, formadas por rios com alta carga sedimentar. Ainda que conhecidas pela abundância de recursos aquáticos e a fertilidade de suas terras, não há métodos de prospecção arqueológica construídos para esses contextos. Por isso, existem poucos sítios registrados. Como prospectar sítios em áreas submetidas a um intenso dinamismo geomorfológico? Buscando preencher essas lacunas, partiu-se de um estudo de caso realizado em uma área de várzeas entre Alenquer e Curuá (oeste paraense, Baixo Amazonas) para entender suas dinâmicas fluviais de formação e propor ferramentas e métodos de prospecção específicos para terrenos de várzea. Trabalhou-se na construção de uma metodologia que inclui a análise das transformações da várzea através do estudo de imagens de satélite, entre 1991 e 2015. Em seguida, interpretou-se a deposição geomorfológica e propôs-se uma cronologia da formação da várzea, procurando detectar áreas mais estáveis e antigas (onde há mais chances de preservação de sítios). Essa pesquisa traz contribuições metodológicas de prospecção em áreas extensas, sujeitas a dinâmicas contínuas de inundações sazonais
Pre-Hispanic fishing practices in interfluvial Amazonia: Zooarchaeological evidence from managed landscapes on the Llanos de Mojos savanna
International audienceRecent evidence suggests the existence of Pre-Hispanic fisheries in savanna areas of the Amazon basin. How these fisheries may have functioned is still poorly known. Although many studies have drawn attention to how Pre-Hispanic inhabitants of these savannas managed to deal with excess water, little attention has been paid to understanding how large and permanent populations were sustained during long periods of drought. In the Llanos de Mojos, one of the largest savannas in South America, the landscape is greatly affected by the impacts of annual, seasonal flooding and inundations, alternating with a dry period that can last 4-6 months. The fishing practices in this area were studied on the basis of analysis of more than 17,000 fish remains recovered at Loma Salvatierra, a monumental mound located in an interfluvial area 50 km from the Mamoré River and occupied between 500 and 1400 AD. In Loma Salvatierra, a network of circular walled ponds connected to a system of canals has been identified, raising questions about a possible use of these structures for fishing. The exceptional conservation of the bone material has enabled precise taxonomic identification of more than 35 taxa, the richest fish spectrum thus far documented in the Mojos region. The dominant fish, swamp-eels (Synbranchus spp.), armored catfishes (Hoplosternum spp.), lungfish (Lepidosiren paradoxa), and tiger-fish (Hoplias malabaricus) are characteristic of shallow and stagnant waters. Our work documents the first zooarchaeo-logical evidence of a dryland, interfluvial fishing system in the Bolivian Amazon that incorporates distinct species and fishing practices, demonstrating that these regions contain year round resources. Research is taking its first steps toward understanding landscape modifications , fish environments, and specific cultural technologies employed on this and other lowland neotropical savannas that differ from those for fishing in open waters and rivers
Reconstructing freshwater fishing seasonality in a neotropical savanna: First application of swamp eel (Synbranchus marmoratus) sclerochronology to a pre-Columbian Amazonian site (Loma Salvatierra, Bolivia)
Sclerochronology is a method used to estimate the season of death (season of capture) of archaeological individuals based on a modern growth model. This method has been increasingly accepted in South America and has mainly been applied to coastal archaeological sites (on the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean). This is the first time that this method has been applied to a freshwater species, the marbled swamp eel (Synbranchus marmoratus), in archaeology. Excavations undertaken at Loma Salvatierra, a human-built platform located in the Bolivian Amazon and occupied from 500 until 1400 AD, have yielded 111 zooarchaeological vertebrae of the marbled swamp eel, which is one of the most widely distributed species recovered in South American continental archaeological sites. In order to estimate the fishing season for these archaeological individuals, we developed a modern osteological reference collection, made up of 61 specimens with known capture dates sampled monthly over a one-year period, about 60 km from Loma Salvatierra. The vertebrae present periodic growth patterns with a succession of dark and light bands alternately. Consequently, the vertebrae are a reliable basis for the estimation of the marbled swamp eel fishing season. The analysis of the marginal increments of vertebrae in present-day fish allowed us to elaborate a modern growth model showing that the seasonal growth of the marbled swamp eel is related to the hydrological cycle, whereby the fast growth period coincides with the onset of rainfall in the region. On the basis of this modern-based model, the analysis of zooarchaeological vertebrae demonstrates that fish were captured over several seasons. Demonstrating that human groups occupied villages year-round does not mean that they were not mobile but shows year-round fishing in the savanna. This year-round fishing practice raises questions concerning the generalized idea of fishing as an exclusively dry-season activity. As wild resources are generally seasonal, the evidence of the year-round fishing of swamp eels might suggest year-round fishing at Loma Salvatierra and contributes to the understanding of late-Holocene mobility patterns in pre-Columbian times
Archaeological history of Middle Holocene environmental change from fish proxies at the Monte Castelo archaeological shell mound, Southwestern Amazonia
International audienc
Facing change through diversity : Resilience and diversification of plant management strategies during the mid to late holocene transition at the monte castelo shellmound, sw amazonia
Recent advances in the archaeology of lowland South America are furthering our understanding of the Holocene development of plant cultivation and domestication, cultural niche construction, and relationships between environmental changes and cultural strategies of food production. This article offers new data on plant and landscape management and mobility in Southwestern Amazonia during a period of environmental change at the Middle to Late Holocene transition, based on archaeobotanical analysis of the Monte Castelo shellmound, occupied between 6000 and 650 yr BP and located in a modern, seasonally flooded savanna-forest mosaic. Through diachronic comparisons of carbonized plant remains, phytoliths, and starch grains, we construct an ecology of resource use and explore its implications for the long-term history of landscape formation, resource management practices, and mobility. We show how, despite important changes visible in the archaeological record of the shellmound during this period, there persisted an ancient, local, and resilient pattern of plant management which implies a degree of stability in both subsistence and settlement patterns over the last 6000 years. This pattern is characterized by management practices that relied on increasingly diversified, rather than intensive, food production systems. Our findings have important implications in debates regarding the history of settlement permanence, population growth, and carrying capacity in the Amazon basin
The unique functioning of a pre-Columbian Amazonian floodplain fishery
Archaeology provides few examples of large-scale fisheries at the frontier between catching and farming of fish. We analysed the spatial organization of earthen embankments to infer the functioning of a landscape-level pre-Columbian Amazonian fishery that was based on capture of out-migrating fish after reproduction in seasonal floodplains. Long earthen weirs cross floodplains. We showed that weirs bear successive V-shaped features (termed 'Vs' for the sake of brevity) pointing downstream for outflowing water and that ponds are associated with Vs, the V often forming the pond's downstream wall. How Vs channelled fish into ponds cannot be explained simply by hydraulics, because Vs surprisingly lack fishways, where, in other weirs, traps capture fish borne by current flowing through these gaps. We suggest that when water was still high enough to flow over the weir, out-migrating bottom-hugging fish followed current downstream into Vs. Finding deeper, slower-moving water, they remained. Receding water further concentrated fish in ponds. The pond served as the trap, and this function shaped pond design. Weir-fishing and pond-fishing are both practiced in African floodplains today. In combining the two, this pre-Columbian system appears unique in the world
Facing Change through Diversity: Resilience and Diversification of Plant Management Strategies during the Mid to Late Holocene Transition at the Monte Castelo Shellmound, SW Amazonia
Recent advances in the archaeology of lowland South America are furthering our understanding of the Holocene development of plant cultivation and domestication, cultural niche construction, and relationships between environmental changes and cultural strategies of food production. This article offers new data on plant and landscape management and mobility in Southwestern Amazonia during a period of environmental change at the Middle to Late Holocene transition, based on archaeobotanical analysis of the Monte Castelo shellmound, occupied between 6000 and 650 yr BP and located in a modern, seasonally flooded savanna–forest mosaic. Through diachronic comparisons of carbonized plant remains, phytoliths, and starch grains, we construct an ecology of resource use and explore its implications for the long-term history of landscape formation, resource management practices, and mobility. We show how, despite important changes visible in the archaeological record of the shellmound during this period, there persisted an ancient, local, and resilient pattern of plant management which implies a degree of stability in both subsistence and settlement patterns over the last 6000 years. This pattern is characterized by management practices that relied on increasingly diversified, rather than intensive, food production systems. Our findings have important implications in debates regarding the history of settlement permanence, population growth, and carrying capacity in the Amazon basin
The unique functioning of a pre-Columbian Amazonian floodplain fishery
Archaeology provides few examples of large-scale fisheries at the frontier between catching and farming of fish. We analysed the spatial organization of earthen embankments to infer the functioning of a landscape-level pre-Columbian Amazonian fishery that was based on capture of out-migrating fish after reproduction in seasonal floodplains. Long earthen weirs cross floodplains. We showed that weirs bear successive V-shaped features (termed ‘Vs’ for the sake of brevity) pointing downstream for outflowing water and that ponds are associated with Vs, the V often forming the pond’s downstream wall. How Vs channelled fish into ponds cannot be explained simply by hydraulics, because Vs surprisingly lack fishways, where, in other weirs, traps capture fish borne by current flowing through these gaps. We suggest that when water was still high enough to flow over the weir, out-migrating bottom-hugging fish followed current downstream into Vs. Finding deeper, slower-moving water, they remained. Receding water further concentrated fish in ponds. The pond served as the trap, and this function shaped pond design. Weir-fishing and pond-fishing are both practiced in African floodplains today. In combining the two, this pre-Columbian system appears unique in the world.This research was funded by grants to D.M. from the Institut Universitaire de France, the Institut Ecologie et Environnement (INEE)/CNRS (Projets Exploratoires Pluridisciplinaires program), the Mission pour l’Interdisciplinarité of the CNRS, the TOSCA committee (Terre Solide, Océan, Surfaces Continentales, Atmosphère) of the CNES (French National Center for Space Research), the Groupement de Recherche Mosaïque (GDR 3353, INEE/CNRS); and by grants to R.B. from the Institut Ecologie et Environnement (INEE)/CNRS (Projets Exploratoires Pluridisciplinaires TOHMIS), to L.R. from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) [grant no. P2BEP2_172250] and to U.L. from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme [Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, EU project 703045]. This work was supported by public funds received in the framework of GEOSUD, a project (ANR-10-EQPX-20) of the program Investissements d’Avenir managed by the French National Agency. Research was also funded in part by the European Research Council project ‘Pre-Columbian Amazon-Scale Transformations’ (ERC-CoG 616179) to J.I. Data for Supplementary Figs S2 and S9 were provided by TerraSAR-X/TanDEM-X (grant no. DEM_OTHER1040)
Nouveau projet de recherche 2013-2015
Scritture ibridate contemporanee: ricerca sulle modalità di creazione transmediale e intermediale in ambito plurilingue Le PRA, Progetto di ricerca di Ateneo a été financé par le Dipartimento di Lingue e culture moderne. Participants: Elisa Bricco, Micaela Burger, Anna Fochesato, Valeria Mosca, Nancy Murzilli, Laura Quercioli, Chiara Rolla, Simone Torsani. Description du projet La questione del rapporto tra letteratura e arte è da sempre stato oggetto della riflessione critica. Vasti parallel..