Handbook of SA Indians (1946-1950)

• Andean Civilization (2)• Tropical Forest Tribes (3)• Circum-Caribbean Tribes (4)• Marginal Tribes (1)

• Based on geographic distributions and perceived cultural variability

Culture Areas of SA

Culture areas, although geographically defined, formed a classification of cultural groups in SA, based on economic, sociopolitical, and religious patterns.

In the eyes of Julian Steward, the editor of the Handbook, the four-part division also represented an evolutionary sequence leading from small “Marginal” bands, to “Tropical Forest” tribes, Circum-Caribbean chiefdoms, and Andean civilization.

Julian H. Steward andCultural Ecology

HSAI and Stages ofCultural Evolution

the tropical forest tribe:i.e., you get (in the past)

what you see (in 20th century),or, the “one size fits all

Amazonian Indian”

band

state

chiefdom

tribe

The Great Divide

• Thus, complex societies emerged in the Andean highlands and the Pacific coast, and complex societies in lowland SA must be the result of diffusion or migration

Tropical Forest Stage

“the Tropical Forest peoples [like marginals] had sociopolitical units consisting principally of kin groups and structured along lines of age, sex, and associations, but theirs differed from those of the Marginal tribes in that more developed exploitative devices, which included farming, and better transportation afforded by the canoe, permitted larger and more stable units” (HSAI 1948; The Tropical Forest Tribes, Vol. 3)

• “archaeological evidence sustains the point of view that the surviving, non-acculturated groups continue a way of life already established in the lowlands before the Christian Era” (Meggers 1990).

• “Ecological research also indicates that higher population could not have been sustained in most of the terra firme” (Meggers 1990).

• “Early European explorers reported large settlements along the várzea, but their existence has been questioned by historians and is unsupported thus far by archaeology” (Meggers and Miller 2003).

Tropical Forest Tribes• Archaeologists Betty Meggers and Clifford

Evans carried Steward’s idea of environmental constraints forward, arguiomng that only a Tropical Forest (tribal) level of development could occur in lowland Amazonia

Tropical Forest Culture

• Donald Lathrap (1970) defined Tropical Forest Culture based on shared economic and cultural patterns, rather than as an evolutionary stage

• Today, the great variability recognized within the lowlands makes it difficult to define any “typical” cultural pattern, except in the most general and uninformative way

Early Agriculturalists

• Lathrap suggested that by 6,000-4,000 BP riverine agriculture, based on a diversified root crop, fruit tree, and other tropical forest plant inventory, was established

Amazonian Barrancoid

• Early complex societies and their neighbors, by c. 3-2000 BP, shared a ceramic tradition widespread across the Amazon, first defined at the site of Saladero (Barrancas style) in the lower Orinoco

• Developed tropical forest agriculture

Distribution and movements of ArawakGroups in South America, 3-2,000 BP

• “It has been generally assumed until recently that tropical rain forests are food-rich biomes for human foragers, and that prehistoric hunter-gatherers once lived completely independent of cultivated foods in such environments. An alternative hypothesis that such forests are actually food-poor for humans is proposed here. Specifically, that wild starch foods such as yams were so scarce and so hard to extract that human foragers could not have lived in such biomes without recourse to cultivated foods....” [T. Headland 1987:463]

• “Studies of tropical forest hunting and gathering peoples have contributed to our perceptions of the foraging way of life. Yet no peoples have ever been directly observed living independently of agriculture in tropical rain forest. This article tests the hypothesis that humans do not exist nor have ever existed independently of agriculture in tropical rain forest. We find no convincing ... evidence ... for pure foragers in undisturbed tropical rain forests....” [R. Bailey et al. 1989:59]

PaleoIndian• Long held that human

groups could not live in the Amazon tropical forest before agriculture (Bailey & Headland hypothesis)

• The earliest clear occupation of the Amazon Basin begins at the same time as in NA and Western SA: roughly 12,000-10,000 years ago

• Mobile hunter-gatherers, more or less like a tropical forest variant on Clovis-like band societies

PedraPintada

?

Pedra Furada

• Controversial pre-Paleoindian occupations, c. 48,000-14,000 BP, from Pedra Furada, a tropical parkland just south of Amazon mouth

• Other sites in SA, notably Monte Verde in Chile, reported to be older than Paleoindian, c. 15,000-13,500, or older.

Earliest clear occupation of the Amazon Basin begins at the same time as in Clovis NA and Western SA: roughly 11,000-10,500 years ago (or earlier based on calibrated C14 dates)

Mobile hunter-gatherers, more or less like a tropical forest variant on Paleo-Indian band societies

Caverna de Pedra Pintada

Taperinha

• In the lower part of Level 17c at a depth of ≈120-130 cm, datedto ca. 11,000-10,500 or earlier, pigments used in rock paintings were found (C14 on cracked palm fruits in stratum 17c)

• The Paleo-Indian layers were full of carbonized wood and the pits and nutshells of the fruits of evergreen tropical forest and seasonal woodland trees and palms that still grow in the region today. Among them was the highly important economic species Brazil nut, Bertholletia excelsa, and other trees: Sacoglottis guianensis, Mouriri apiranga, Byrsonima crispa, numerous palms (Attalea spp. and Astro•caryum spp.), and tree legumes (Hymenea, c.f., parvifolia and oblongifolia).

• The faunal remains were poorly preserved but highly diverse: taxa included fish, tortoises, turtles, toads, snakes, shellfish, small and medium-sized rodents, bats, and very rare large mammals (probably ungulates). Many of the reptiles and rodents were juveniles. Fish, the most common fauna, included very large fishes (1.5 m) to very small ones (10 cm); species ranged from Hoplias malabaricus to Arapaima gigas, and there were numerous unidentified catfishes, characins, and cichlids.

• The fact that none of the plant or animal species are particularly adapted to cold, desert, or grass savanna environment confirmed that this was indeed a tropical forest adaptation, as did the carbon isotope patterns. The presence of several tree species considered to be adapted to human disturbance suggests that the Paleo-Indian occupation may have already begun to have an impact on the character of the forest.

• (from Roosevelt et al. 1996)

Dona Stella, 7500-2500 BC, Near Manaus

Pedra PintadaLower Amazon

Anna C. Roosevelt

Archaic Sedentary Shellfishers• These early ceramic making peoples, unlike preceding cave-

dwelling Paleoindians, lived in settled villages next to rivers. • They apparently lived largely off the rich aquatic resources of

the Amazon River, as shown by the massive shell heaps they left.

• The earliest ceramics in the New World, some of the earliest in world, c. 7,100-5,700 BP (controversial)

• Reminiscent of Carl Sauer’s SE Asian model of origins of agriculture: settled riverine villages in tropical forest areas likely areas for pristine domestication (horticulture?)

• Recent work on the Berbice River (Guyana), Madeira (Brazil) and Caqueta (Columbia) show evidence of early settled agriculturalists, but “one of the great unknowns of Amazonian archaeology” (Oliver 2008)

• View of Taperinha shellmound. Roosevelt et al. (1991) excavated the site in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Early Holocene strata near the base of the 6 m high mound produced a series of radiocarbon dates on shell, charcoal, and pottery and TL dates on pottery, between 7100 and 5700 years ago. About 100 sherds of Archaic and Formative period pottery, a small percentage of which bears geometric incised rim decoration. Subsistence remains include abundant fishbone and fresh water pearly shellfish, small turtles, and amphibians. No apparent domesticated plants.

sambaqui, southern coastal Brazil

South American Food Production: Andean

Complexes • Potato• Peppers• Beans• Squash• Maize• Cotton• Bottle gourds • Llamas• Alpaca• Guinea Pigs

Amazonia• Focused on root crop agriculture, likely very

early domestication of root crops, such as manioc and sweet potato, but very little evidence from region thus far: sampling and preservation big problems

• Lowland complex: manioc, tobacco, sweet potato, chili pepper, squash, cotton, papaya, avocado, pineapple, and other fruits and nuts

• Maize appears to diffuse into Amazonia relatively late: after ca. 3,000 years ago, but uncertain

• At least 138 crops with some degree of domestication were being cultivated or managed by native Amazonians in various types of production systems at the time of European conquest, including 83 crops native to Amazonia and immediately adjacent areas in northern South America, and 55 exotic ones, i.e., from other Neotropical regions, such as northeastern Brazil, the Caribbean and Mesoamerica.

• Overall, 68% of these Amazonian crops are fruit or nut trees or woody perennials. In landscapes largely characterized by forest, a predominance of tree crops is perhaps not surprising.

• The most important subsistence crop domesticated in Amazonia is an herbaceous shrub, manioc, and several other domesticates are also root or tuber crops, most of which are adapted to savanna-forest transitional ecotones with pronounced dry seasons. (Clements et al. 2010)

• Solid molecular data are available for manioc (Manihot esculenta), cacao (Theobroma cacao), pineapple (Ananas comosus), peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) and guaraná (Paullinia cupana), while hot peppers (Capsicum spp.), inga (Inga edulis), Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa) and cupuassu (Theobroma grandiflorum) are being studied. Emergent patterns include the relationships among domestication, antiquity (terminal Pleistocene to early Holocene), origin in the periphery, ample pre-Columbian dispersal and clear phylogeographic population structure for manioc, pineapple, peach palm and, perhaps, Capsicum peppers.

• (Clement et al. 2010)

• Two types of domestication: landscape domestication and plant (or animal) population domestication

• Intimately related because domesticated populations require some kind of landscape management, especially cultivation

• Plant population domestication can now be examined with new genetic techniques

Clement et al. (2010)

• Plant population domestication is a co-evolutionary process by which human selection on the phenotypes of promoted, managed or cultivated individual plants results in changes in the descendent population‘s phenotypes and genotypes that make them more useful to humans and better adapted to human management of the landscape.

• The degree of change in populations can vary along a continuum from wild (no human-mediated change), through incipiently domesticated, to semi-domesticated, to domesticated.

• An incipiently domesticated population has gone through a founder event (defined as human selection of a small sample of the wild population and propagation of descendents from this sample; also called a bottleneck) that reduces its genotypic diversity and its phenotypic diversity varies only somewhat from the ancestral wild population in the traits selected by humans.

• A semi-domesticated population has gone through several sequential founder events that reduce further its genotypic diversity, but its phenotypic diversity is enhanced by accumulation of diverse alleles for traits selected by humans.

• (Clement 2010)

• The degree of modification during domestication can be dramatic in many crops, including some tree crops, such as peach palm, where the difference in fruit size between the wild type and the most derived domesticated population is on the order of 2000%.

• Several other Amazonian tree crops show considerable, although not as dramatic, modification due to domestication.

• These degrees of change suggest that domestication started quite early, perhaps at the beginning of the Holocene, rather than when production systems coalesced and became prominent 3,000 to 4,000 years before present (BP).

• The archaeological record, however, does not contain early records of Amazonian tree crops, although manioc and sweet potato were present between 8,000 and 6,000 BP in caves along the western Andean foothills of Peru, indicating early domestication.

• The earliest lowland tree crop, guava, was present in the same area before 5,000 BP.

• The archaeological record of lowland South America east of the Andes is much less studied than the dry Pacific coast, western foothills and the highlands, where preservation is better, but is gradually gaining attention and patterns will become apparent as critical mass increases.

• (Clement et al. 2010)

• Manioc or cassava (Manihot esculenta) is a tuber originally domesticated as early as 8,000-10,000 years ago along the southwestern border of the Amazon basin. It is the primary calorie source in most Amazonian economies and other tropical regions around the world, and the sixth most important crop plant worldwide.

• The progenitor of manioc (M. esculenta ssp. flabellifolia) exists today and is adapted to forest and savanna ecotones. Direct archaeological evidence of manioc is rare across the lowlands, but ceramic griddles and grinder chips seen as evidence of its use (in some cases may be other plants however, such as maize).

• Early archaeological evidence of manioc is from starches and pollen grains, after it spread outside the Amazon: north central Colombia by ~7500 years ago, and in Panama at Aguadulce Shelter, ~6900 years ago. Pollen grains from cultivated cassava have been found in archaeological sites in Belize and Mexico's gulf coast by ~5800-4500 bp, and in Puerto Rico about 3300-2900 years bp.

• Manioc or Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz). Toxic variety (bitter manioc) contains prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide). Over the millennia, developed varieties with less toxin found in wild species (sweet manioc).

• To use the nutritious starch of bitter manioc, the root was processed to break open each cell and separate starch granules and the hydrogen cyanide. Through continual rinsing with fresh water, the starch and toxin became separated; a difficult and labor-intensive way to make meal for flat bread.

Complex Societies in Amazonia

• Sometime around 3,000 BP in the Amazon and Orinoco we begin to see suggestive evidence of institutional social hierarchy (class-like elite groups), by 2,000-1500 BP evidence of regional societies (chiefdoms) in several areas: corresponds in time to Andean Early Horizon

Chavin de Huantar, 2800 BP

The ArawakDiaspora

AustronesianArawak Bantu

The Tropical Diaspora

And, Ethnogenesis

Trants, Montserrat, Lesser Antillesc. 500 BC – AD 600

Gaván, Western Orinoquia, c. AD 600-1300

Northern Amazonia(Saladoid/Barrancoid)

Osvaldo (AM-IR-9)c. 300 BC – AD 600

CENTRALAMAZON

Várzea-Terra Firme Dichotomy,or Várzea Model

• Distribution of fine ceramics (Amazonian Polychrome Tradition), large populations, and monuments have led many researchers to suggest that chiefdoms were restricted to the floodplains of the Amazon and its Andean derived tributaries due to their rich agricultural soils

• By about 1970 scholars generally agreed that large, settled populations (chiefdoms) existed along the Amazon (Carneiro 1970; Denevan 1970; Lathrap 1970; Meggers 1971; Gross 1975)

• Anna Roosevelt (1980) reformulated debate around maize in Parmana

• Terra firme peoples still generally believed to have lived at a tropical forest or “tribal” level

Amazonian Polychrome Tradition

Polychrome Tradition

• Marajoara is earliest member of a widespread ceramic tradition along the Amazon from the mouth to the foot of the Andes

• The Polychrome Tradition represents a transformation, c. 1000 years ago, of the earlier Barrancoid Tradition ceramic industry by widespread trade of fine ceramics (“wealth” goods) between elites up and down the Amazon

MARAJOARA• Once thought to be a

chiefdom that migrated from the Andes (could not have emerged in Amazon)

• Now know that these monument-building regional chiefdoms developed in place starting soon after the time of Christ until the time of European contact (1492)

• Major mound-building after AD 400-600

Landscape domestication andmanagement of non-domesticated

plants and animals and incipient or semi-domesticates

Amazonian Stonehenge (Amapa), ca. 2000-1500 BP

The Várzea (Amazon floodplain) Model

CENTRALAMAZON

Amazonian “black gold” -“terra preta” (TP)

Guarita (APT) midden, c. 1200-1400

Barrancoid, etc. middenc. 300 BC – AD 800

Cahokia, AD 1150

Hidden Civilizations?

Santarém

santarém

Terra Firme Chiefdoms

• Recent research in areas that lack good soils demonstrates that chiefdoms developed in terra firme areas (i.e., a simple dichotomy is wrong)

• Thus, the view that population growth and agricultural intensification in restricted areas with good agricultural soils was a necessary condition for the development of complex societies is also wrong.

European Contact

• This research demonstrates that the catastrophic effects of European contact, notably depopulation from Old World diseases, after 1492, reached throughout the Amazon forest, though European explorers themselves seldom ventured far into Amazonia until centuries after Columbus

Areas of ComplexSocieties in Amazonia

Bauré mound with causeways

Earthworks provide key:Highly visible and datable,

contiguous, and precisely laid out

Ancient Amazonian Urbanism, or What?

“… the medieval topography was … a collection of greater and smaller clearings … rather like a photographic negative of the Muslim east which was a world of oases in the midst of deserts.”

Le Goff 1988:131

What is urbanism in its earliest and most minute forms?

Lost cities of the Amazon, likely not, but what of hierarchical networks of towns and villages in discrete territorial polities and highly self-organized landscapes?

What of multi-centric forms, and the implications for the urban-rural?

What of regional planning and design?

We went among some islands which we thought uninhabited, but, after we got to be in among them, so numerous were the settlements which came into sight … that we grieved; and, when they saw us, there came out to meet us on the river over two hundred pirogues [canoes], that each one carries twenty or thirty Indians and some forty …; they were quite colorfully decorated with various emblems, and they had with them many trumpets and drums …. and on land a marvelous thing to see were the squadron formations that were in the villages, all playing on instruments and dancing about, manifesting great joy upon seeing that we were passing beyond their villages

Gaspar Carvajal, 25 June 1542 (Medina 1988:218)

This short passage, but one of many from early chronicles, attests to the vigorous and populous societies that thronged the banks of the river, but it suggests how foreign this complexity was to the European eyes. “Great was their [early European colonial authorities] disapproval on seeing that those strapping men glowing with health preferred to deck themselves out like women with paint and feathers instead of perspiring away in their gardens (Clastres 1987:193).”