Contours of the Past: LiDAR Data Expands the Limits of Late Pre-Columbian Human Settlement in the Santarém Region, Lower Amazon

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that pre-Columbian societies in the Amazon undertook significant landscape modifications, including earthworks. Our fieldwork has revealed that pre-Columbian settlements in the Santarém Region, Lower Amazon, were not limited to the vicinities of permanent water courses, as formerly often assumed. Instead, numerous archaeological sites, dating from ca. A.D. 1300 up to the time of European colonization in the seventeenth century, have been found in an upland area known as the Belterra Plateau, south of the present-day city of Santarém. These upland sites have been found to be associated with particular features in the landscape: cavities or depressions, known locally as "Poços de Água". LiDAR data shows that a pattern of non-randomly distributed depressions extends far into the densely forested Tapajós National Forest (Flona-Tapajós), allowing us to suggest that the expansion of inland settlement extended considerably farther to the south than what has previously been established through conventional archaeological fieldwork.

New Digs: Networks, Assemblages, and the Dissolution of Binary Categories in Anthropological Archaeology

“…In Central America, they have employed airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) to discover archaeological sites beneath the dense forest canopy (Canuto et al. ; see also Stenborg, Schaan, and Figueiredo ). Archaeologists are also realizing the analytical and illustrative promise of geographic information systems (GIS) and drone photogrammetry, employing them in tandem to systematically map architecture, model terrain, and examine relationships between spatial variables (Hixon et al.…”

Pre-Columbian soil fertilization and current management maintain food resource availability in old-growth Amazonian forests

“…Altitude varies among forest plots in the Madeira River basin (80-110 m) and in the Tapajós River basin (150-200 m), and this variation was detected using SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) images available at http://www.dsr.inpe.br/topodata/ Polychrome pottery tradition (Moraes and Neves 2012;Barreto et al 2016). Before this study, 148 archaeological sites had been recorded in the lower Tapajós River basin, in an area of 10,000 km 2 , including 13 sites inside the FLONA Tapajós (e.g., Schaan et al 2015;Stenborg, 2016;Stenborg et al 2018;Figueiredo 2019). Almost 70% of these archaeological sites are located on the interfluve (away from major Amazonian rivers), 6% are located on hillsides, and only 24% are located along the Tapajós River, secondary rivers and lakes (Stenborg et al 2018).…”

“…Before this study, 148 archaeological sites had been recorded in the lower Tapajós River basin, in an area of 10,000 km 2 , including 13 sites inside the FLONA Tapajós (e.g., Schaan et al 2015;Stenborg, 2016;Stenborg et al 2018;Figueiredo 2019). Almost 70% of these archaeological sites are located on the interfluve (away from major Amazonian rivers), 6% are located on hillsides, and only 24% are located along the Tapajós River, secondary rivers and lakes (Stenborg et al 2018). Despite the abundance of archaeological sites in interfluvial areas, riverside settings have a longer occupation history, likely starting about 4300 cal BP (calibrated years Before Present) (Maezumi et al 2018a).…”

An Archaeologist Writes against the Anthropocene

“…ISSUE FOURTEEN : SUMMER 2019 more sophisticated reconnaissance techniques being employed-among them lidar-right in the center of the area where Carvajal claimed there to have been extensive areas of settlement (Stenborg et al 2018). This is the area famous archaeologically for its almost-baroque, elaborate, Santaremstyle pottery vessels (Lopes-Alves 2018).…”