Abstract
Despite a long-standing debate on its intensity and economic role, it has been generally assumed that swidden or extensive agriculture was an important economic component for Amazonian pre-colonial tropical forest societies. However, the available data do not back such a claim. In the central Amazon, the archaeological record shows that the establishment of sedentary societies in the area is quite recent, going back to no longer than 500 bc. Despite good conditions of preservation, so far, no evidence of manioc cultivation has been found during a record of 2,000 years of human occupation. In other areas such as Marajó Island, at the mouth of the Amazon, no evidence of agriculture whatsoever has been found so far, despite the presence of artificial earth mounds and elaborated pottery. Such evidence, when put together, suggests that although plant domestication may have been very ancient in the tropical lowlands, the advent of predominantly agricultural-based economies was much more recent. It is proposed here that agriculture was much more an opportunistic activity based on the intense and sophisticated management with stone axes of gardens and forest under different stages of ecological succession than the pattern of extensive cultivation with metal axes or chain saws of the large manioc gardens known today. If true, the hypotheses have as a corollary that the emergence of the pattern of extensive manioc-based agriculture typical of the tropical forest results from demographic and technological changes brought by the European conquest.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Ammerman, A., & Cavalli-Sforza, L. (1984). The Neolithic transition and the genetics of populations in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Anthony, D. (2007). The horse, the wheel, and language: How Bronze Age riders from the Eurasian steppes shaped the modern world. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Arroyo-Kalin, M. (2008). Steps towards an ecology of landscape: A geoarchaeological approach to the study of anthropogenic dark earths in the central Amazon region, Brazil. PhD dissertation, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge.
Baker, P. A., Seltzer, G. O., Fritz, S. C., Dunbar, R. B., Grove, M. J., Tapia, P. M., et al. (2001). The history of South American tropical precipitation for the last 25,000 years. Science, 291, 640–643.
Barse, W. (2003). Holocene climate and human occupation in the Orinoco. In J. Mercader (Ed.), Under the canopy: The archaeology of tropical rain forests (pp. 249–270). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Behling, H. (2002). Impact of the Holocene sea-level changes in coastal, eastern and central Amazonia. Amazoniana, XVII, 41–52.
Behling, H., & Hooghiemstra, H. (2000). Holocene Amazon rainforest-savanna dynamics and climatic implications: High-resolution pollen record from Laguna Loma Linda in eastern Colombia. Journal of Quaternary Science, 15(7), 687–695.
Behling, H., & Lima da Costa, M. (2000). Holocene environmental changes from the Rio Curuá records in the Caxiuanã region, Eastern Amazon basin. Quaternary Research, 53(3), 369–377.
Behling, H., Berrío, J. C., & Hooghiemstra, H. (1999). Late Quaternary pollen records from the middle Caquetá River Basin in Central Colombian Amazon. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, 146, 193–213.
Berrío, J. C. (2002). Synthesis of the paleoenvironmental changes in the Colombian lowlands. In J. C. Berrío (Org.), Lateglacial and Holocene vegetation and climatic change in lowland Colombia (pp. 219–231). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.
Brochado, J. (1984). An ecological model of the spread of pottery and agriculture into eastern South America. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois.
Burbridge, R., Mayle, F., & Killeen, T. (2004). Fifty-thousand-year vegetation and climate history of Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, Bolivian Amazon. Quaternary Research, 61, 215–230.
Chirinos, P. R. (2007). Padrões de assentamento no sítio Osvaldo, Amazonas. Dissertação de Mestrado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Arqueologia, Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Universidade de São Paulo.
Clement, C. (1999). 1492 and the loss of Amazonian crop genetic resources I: The relation between domestication and human population decline. Economic Botany, 53(2), 188–202.
Denevan, W. (1996). A bluff model of riverine settlement in prehistoric Amazonia. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 86(4), 654–681.
Dreyfus, S. (1993). Os empreendimentos coloniais e os espaços políticos indígenas no interior da Guiana ocidental (entre o Orenoco e o Corentino) de 1613 a 1796. In E. Viveiros de Castro & M. Carneiro da Cunha (Eds.), Amazônia: Etnologia e História Indígena (pp. 19–41). São Paulo: Núcleo de História Indígena e Indi-genismo – USP.
Evans, C., & Meggers, B. (1968). Archaeological investigations on the Rio Napo, Eastern Ecuador (Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, Vol. 6). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Freitas, H., Pessenda, L., Aravena, R., Gouveia, S., Ribeiro, A., & Boulet, R. (2001). Late Quaternary vegetation dynamics in the southern Amazon Basin inferred from carbon isotopes in soil organic matter. Quaternary Research, 55, 39–42.
Gomes, D. (2002). A cerâmica arqueológica da Amazônia: vasilhas da coleção Tapajônica MAE-USP. São Paulo: Imprensa Oficial SP/Editora da Universidade de São Paulo.
Gomes, D. (2008). O uso social da cerâmica de Parauá, Santarém, baixo Amazonas: uma análise funcional. Arqueología Sul-Americana, 4, 4–33.
Headland, T., & Bailey, R. (1991). Introduction: Have hunter-gatherers ever lived in tropical rain forest independently of agriculture? Human Ecology, 19(2), 115–122.
Heckenberger, M. (2002). Rethinking the Arawakan diaspora: Hierarchy, regionality, and the Amazonian formative. In J. Hill & F. Santos-Granero (Eds.), Comparative Arawakan histories: Rethinking language and culture areas in the Amazon (pp. 99–122). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Heckenberger, M. (2008). Amazonian mosaics: Identity, interaction, and integration. In H. Silverman & W. Isbell (Eds.), Handbook of South American archaeology (pp. 941–962). New York: Springer.
Heckenberger, M., Neves, E., & Petersen, J. (1998). De onde surgem os modelos? As origens e expansões Tupi na Amazônia central. Revista de Antropologia, 41(1), 69–96.
Heckenberger, M. J., Kuikuro, A., Kuikuro, U. T., Russell, J. C., Schmidt, M., Fausto, C., et al. (2003). Amazonia 1492: Pristine forest or cultural parkland? Science, 301, 1710–1714.
Heckenberger, M. J., Russell, J. C., Fausto, C., Toney, J. R., Schmidt, M. J., Pereira, E., et al. (2008). Pre-Columbian urbanism, anthropogenic landscapes, and the future of the Amazon. Science, 321, 1214–1217.
Hornborg, A. (2005). Ethnogenesis, regional integration, and ecology in prehistoric Amazonia: Towards a systemic perspective. Current Anthropology, 46(4), 589–620.
Jackson, J. (1983). The fish people: Linguistic and exogamy and Tukanoan identity in northwest Amazonia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kirch, P. V. (2000). On the road of the winds: An archaeological history of the Pacific Islands before European contact. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lathrap, D. (1970). The upper Amazon. London: Thames & Hudson.
Lathrap, D. (1977). Our father the cayman, our mother the gourd: Spinden revisited or a unitary model for the emergence of agriculture in the new world. In C. Reed (Ed.), Origins of agriculture (pp. 713–751). The Hague: Mouton.
Lima, L. F. (2003). Levantamento arqueológico nas áreas de interflúvio da área de conflueência dos rios Negro e Solimões. Dissertação de Mestrado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Arqueologia, Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil.
Lowie, R. (1948). The tropical forests: An introduction. In J. Steward (Ed.), Handbook of South American Indians (Bulletin 143, Vol. 3, pp. 1–56). Washington, DC: Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution.
Meggers, B. J. (1997). La cerámica temprana en América del Sur: invención independiente o difusión? Revista de Arqueología Americana, 13, 7–40.
Meggers, B. J., & Evans, C. (1957). Archaeological investigations at the mouth of the Amazon (Bulletin No. 167). Washington, DC: Bureau of American Ethnology.
Meggers, B. J., & Miller, E. T. (2003). Hunter-gatherers in Amazonia during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. In J. Mercader (Ed.), Under the canopy: The archaeology of tropical rain forests (pp. 291–316). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Miller, E. T. (1999). A limitação ambiental como barreira à transposição do period formativo no Brasil: tecnologia, produção de alimentos e formação de aldeias no sudoeste da Amazônia. In P. Ledergerber-Crespo (Ed.), Formativo Sudamericano: Homenaje a Albert Rex González y Betty J. Meggers (pp. 331–339). Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala.
Miller, E. T. (Coord.). (1992). Arqueologia nos empreendimentos hidrelétricos da Eletronorte; resultados preliminares. Brasília: Eletronorte.
Moraes, C. P. (2007). Levantamento arqueológico da região do Lago do Limão, Iranduba, Amazonas. Dissertação de Mestrado, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Arqueologia, Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Universidade de São Paulo, Brasil.
Neves, E. G. (2006). Arqueologia da Amazônia. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar.
Neves, E. G. (2008). Ecology, ceramic chronology and distribution, long-term history and political change in the Amazonian floodplain. In H. Silvermann & W. Isbell (Eds.), Handbook of South American archaeology (pp. 359–379). New York: Springer.
Neves, E. G., & Petersen, J. B. (2006). Political economy and pre-Columbian landscape transformations in central Amazonia. In W. Balée & C. Erickson (Eds.), Time and complexity in historical ecology: Studies in the neotropical lowlands (pp. 279–309). New York: Columbia University Press.
Neves, E. G., Petersen, J. B., Bartone, R. N., & da Silva, C. A. (2003). Historical and socio-cultural origins of Amazonian dark earths. In J. Lehmann, D. Kern, B. Glaser, & W. I. Woods (Eds.), Amazonian dark earths: Origins, properties, management (pp. 29–50). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Neves, E. G., Petersen, J. B., Bartone, R. N., & Heckenberger, M. J. (2004). The timing of terra preta formation in the central Amazon: Archaeological data from three sites. In B. Glaser & W. I. Woods (Eds.), Amazonian dark earths: Explorations in space and time (pp. 125–134). Berlin: Springer.
Nordenskiöld, E. (1930). Ars Americana: L’archéologie du bassin de l’Amazone. Paris: Les Éditions G. Van Oest.
Oliver, J. (1989). The Archaeological, linguistic and ethnohistorical evidence for the expansion of Arawakan into northwestern Venezuela and northeastern Colombia. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois.
Perry, L. (2005). Reassessing the traditional interpretation of “manioc” artifacts in the Orinoco valley of Venezuela. Latin American Antiquity, 16(4), 409–426.
Petersen, J. B. (1996). The archaeology of Trants, Montserrat, part 3. Chronological and settlement data. Annals of the Carnegie Museum, 65, 323–361.
Petersen, J. B., Neves, E. G., & Heckenberger, M. J. (2001). Gift from the past: Terra Preta and prehistoric Amerindian occupation in Amazonia. In C. McEwan, C. Barreto, & E. Neves (Eds.), Unknown Amazon: Culture in nature in ancient Brazil (pp. 86–105). London: British Museum Press.
Piperno, D., & Becker, P. (1996). Vegetational history of a site in the central Amazon basin derived from phytolith and charcoal records from natural soils. Quaternary Research, 45, 202–209.
Renfrew, C. (2000). At the edge of knowability: Towards a prehistory of languages. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 10(1), 7–34.
Roosevelt, A. (1991). Moundbuilders of the Amazon. New York: Academic.
Roosevelt, A. (1995). Early pottery in the Amazon: Twenty years of scholarly obscurity. In W. K. Barnett & J. Hoopes (Eds.), The emergence of pottery: Technology and innovation in ancient societies (pp. 115–131). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Roosevelt, A., Housley, R. A., Imazio Da Silveira, M., Maranca, S., & Johnson, R. (1991). Eighth millennium pottery from a prehistoric shell midden in the Brazilian Amazon. Science, 254, 1621–1624.
Roosevelt, A., Douglas, J., & Brown, L. (2002). The migrations and adaptations of the first Americans: Clovis and pré-clovis viewed from South America. In N. Jablonski (Ed.), The first Americans, the Pleistocene colonization of the new world (Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences, No. 27, pp. 159–235). San Francisco: University of California Press.
Rouse, I. (1992). The Tainos: Rise and decline of the people who greeted Columbus. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Schaan, D. (2004). The Camutins Chiefdom. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh.
Schaan, D. (2008). The non-agricultural chiefdoms of Marajo Island. In H. Silverman & W. Isbell (Eds.), Handbook of South American archaeology (pp. 339–357). New York: Springer.
Simões, M. (1969). The Castanheira site: New evidence on the antiquity and history of the Ananatuba phase. American Antiquity, 34(4), 402–410.
Simões, M. (1981). Coletores-pescadores ceramistas do litoral do Salgodo (Pard). Boletim do Museu Paraense Emilo Goeldi (NS) 78.
Souza-Filho, P. W. M., Lessa, G. C., Cohen, M. C. L., Costa, F. R., & Lara, R. J. (2008). The subsiding macrotidal barrier estuarine system of the eastern Amazon Coast, Northern Brazil. In S. F. Dillenburg & P. A. Hesp (Eds.), Geology of Brazilian coastal barriers (Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences, Vol. 107, pp. 347–375). New York: Springer.
Toledo, M., & Bush, M. (2008). Vegetation and hydrology changes in Eastern Amazonia inferred from a pollen record. Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências, 80(1), 191–203.
Wüst, I., & Barreto, C. (1999). The ring villages of central Brazil: A challenge for Amazonian. Latin American Antiquity, 10(1), 3–23.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Neves, E.G. (2013). Was Agriculture a Key Productive Activity in Pre-Colonial Amazonia? The Stable Productive Basis for Social Equality in the Central Amazon. In: Brondízio, E., Moran, E. (eds) Human-Environment Interactions. Human-Environment Interactions, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4780-7_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4780-7_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-4779-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-4780-7
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)