Geoglifos da Amazônia ocidental

Abstract

Ecological differences between várzea and terra firme environments (agricultural land, access to riverine resources and navigation) have supported interpretations of terra firme peoples as semisedentary, slash-and-burn cultivators who never developed complex social institutions and elaborated material culture. This article aims to challenge this assumption by reporting the existence of hundreds of geometric earthen structures built by pre-Columbian populations in the clayed soils of occidental Amazonia, in the state of Acre and adjacencies. The geoglyphs, as they are been called, indicate that sizable, regionally organized populations were living for hundred of years in a habitat that was once considered inadequate to support cultural complexity. Raising some hypothesis about the geoglyphs' builders, the authors call for a revision of the ecological model in light of the new evidence.

Amazonian Dark Earth and Ring Ditches in the Central Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia

“…They may have included intensively farmed kitchen gardens, as well. Research both in eastern Mojos and throughout the Southern and Southwestern Amazon suggest that similar earthworks are widespread (Erickson 2006; Heckenberger et al 2008; Schaan et al 2007; Wüst and Barreto 1999). They may be associated with Arawak speakers, or with Arawak languages (Heckenberger 2005, 2006; Hornborg 2005; Walker 2008b).…”

Patterned Villagescapes and Road Networks in Ancient Southwestern Amazonia

“…One of the interfluve regions that most convincingly suggests longterm indications of landscape domestication processes is located in the state of Acre, near today's common border of Brazil, Bolivia, and Peru ( Figure 1). Archaeologists have used aerial photography and satellite imagery to discover hundreds of diverse precolonial earthwork complexes dispersed on the plateaus of the tributaries of the Purus and Madeira Rivers in eastern Acre (e.g., Ranzi et al 2007;Saunaluoma and Schaan 2012;Schaan et al 2010). In the nearby Llanos de Mojos of the Bolivian Amazon, in a seasonally inundated tropical savanna, purposefully constructed monumental residential mounds, causeways, ditches, raised fields, and other kinds of archaeological earthworks extend over an area of almost 110,000 km 2 (e.g., Denevan 1966; Erickson 2006;Lombardo et al 2015;Lombardo and Prümers 2010; Prümers 2014; Prümers and Jaimes Betancourt 2014; Walker 2008).…”

Anthropology

“…The 'geoglyphs' of the Upper Purús Some of the ceremonial arenas discovered underneath the tropical rainforest of Acre, Brazil (Schaan, Ranzi and Damasceno Barbosa 2010;Schaan 2012;Saunaluoma 2013), bear a strong formal resemblance to the plazas of highland ceremonial centres such as Tiwanaku in the Titicaca Basin. Although the geographical environments and available building materials are very different, it seems that people in both areas struggled to materialize conceptions of a quadrangular ceremonial space for public events.…”