Eduardo Neves

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.

Our recent data, collected using remotely sensed imagery and unmanned aerial vehicle surveys, reveal the extremely well-defined patterning of archaeological plaza villages in the Brazilian Acre state in terms of size, layout, chronology, and material culture. The villages comprise various earthen mounds arranged around central plazas and roads that radiate outward from, or converge on, the sites. The roads connected the villages situated 2-10 km from each other in eastern Acre. Our study attests to the existence of large, sedentary, interfluvial populations sharing the same sociocultural identities, as well as structured patterns of movement and spatial planning in relation to operative road networks during the late precolonial period. The plaza villages of Acre show similarity with the well-documented communities organized by road networks in the regions of the Upper Xingu and Llanos de Mojos. Taking into consideration ethnohistorical and ethnographic evidence, as well as the presence of comparable archaeological sites and earthwork features along the southern margin of Amazonia, we suggest that the plaza villages of Acre were linked by an interregional road network to other neighboring territories situated along the southern Amazonian rim and that movement along roads was the primary mode of human transport in Amazonian interfluves. Los recientes datos, recopilados por nosotros a través de prospecciones utilizando imágenes de sensores remotos y vehículos aéreos no tripulados (VANT), revelaron aldeas arqueológicas con plazas en el estado brasileño de Acre que destacan por pre-sentar patrones bien definidos en términos de tamaño, diseño, cronología y cultura material. Las aldeas comprenden varios mon-tículos de tierra dispuestos alrededor de plazas centrales y caminos que se proyectan o convergen desde o hacia los sitios. Los caminos conectaban las aldeas situadas a una distancia de 2 a 10 km entre sí en el este de Acre. Nuestro estudio atestigua la existencia de grandes poblaciones interfluviales sedentarias que comparten las mismas identidades socioculturales, así como patrones estructurados de movimiento y planificación espacial en relación con los sistemas operativos de redes viales durante el período pre-Colonial Tardío. Las aldeas con plazas de Acre muestran una similitud con comunidades bien documentadas orga-nizadas por redes de caminos en las regiones del Alto Xingu y los Llanos de Mojos. Teniendo en cuenta la evidencia etnohistórica y etnográfica, así como la presencia de sitios arqueológicos comparables, y características de movimiento de tierras a lo largo del margen sur de la Amazonía, sugerimos que las aldeas con plazas de Acre estaban conectadas a los territorios vecinos por una red de caminos interregionales situados a lo largo del borde sur de la Amazonía, y ese movimiento a lo largo de las caminos fue el principal modo de transporte humano en las zonas interfluviales amazónicas. Palabras clave: Amazonia interfluvial, prospección con VANT, movimiento de tierras, redes de caminos, plazas

in this work, several attributes of the internal morphology of drupaceous fruits found in the archaeological site Monte Castelo (Rondonia, Brazil) are analyzed by means of two different imaging methods. The aim is to explore similarities and differences in the visualization and analytical properties of the images obtained via High Resolution Light Microscopy and X-ray micro-computed tomography (X-ray Microct) methods. Both provide data about the three-layered pericarp (exo-, meso-and endocarp) of the studied exemplars, defined by cell differentiation, vascularisation, cellular contents, presence of sclerenchyma cells and secretory cavities. However, it is possible to identify a series of differences between the information that can be obtained through each of the methods. These variations are related to the definition of contours and fine details of some characteristics, their spatial distribution, size attributes, optical properties and material preservation. the results obtained from both imaging methods are complementary, contributing to a more exhaustive morphological study of the plant remains. X-ray Microct in phase-contrast mode represents a suitable non-destructive analytic technique when sample preservation is required. The identification of the taxonomic provenance and preservation conditions of plant remains recovered from archaeological deposits is at the basis of archaeobotanical research. The whole procedure involves a detailed description of observable characteristics of the morphological phenotype of the sample, together with a comparative analysis of modern and ancient exemplars of related taxa. On the other hand, plant remains from archaeological sites are not always recognizable through their external morphological characteristics, for reasons that include the presence of similar traits between different species, morphological changes induced by taphonomic processes, and other issues which hinder the identification of specimens. In these cases, the analysis of the internal characteristics of the specimen can increase the amount of morphological data used to determine the anatomic and taxonomic provenance of ancient plant remains. In general, Archaeobotany has a wide palette of microscopy techniques that allow for various descriptions of both external and internal morphological features of archaeological plant samples 1,2. In fact, it is possible to obtain open

Resumo: Novos estudos arqueobotânicos mostram que a região da bacia do alto Madeira é uma área onde foram domesticadas várias plantas durante o Holoceno inicial e médio, confirmando o que já havia sido apontado por dados genéticos há anos. No entanto, há menos acúmulo de dados sobre as relações entre pessoas e plantas para as ocupações humanas no Holoceno tardio. Na calha do alto rio Madeira, ocorrem extensos pacotes de terra preta antropogênica associados a populações ceramistas que viviam na região entre 3.000 e 400 anos atrás. Essas populações deixaram uma riqueza de informações que nos permitem enxergar tais relações através de estudos arqueobotânicos. Este artigo relata novos dados microbotânicos dos sítios Teotônio e Santa Paula para propor novas hipóteses sobre os sistemas de manejo efetuados por essas populações. Além de documentar uma proliferação de cultivos domesticados, foi possível sugerir algumas mudanças no uso de plantas ao longo do tempo. Vimos também como os dados arqueobotânicos podem elucidar questões relacionadas à própria formação dos sítios arqueológicos. Palavras-chave: Arqueobotânica. Fitólitos. Grãos de amido. Sistemas de manejo. Terra preta antrópica. Sudoeste da Amazônia. Abstract: New archaeobotanical studies show that the region of the Upper Madeira River was where several economic plants were brought under domestication during the Early and Middle Holocene, confirming what had been indicated by plant genetics for several years. Little is known, however, about the more recent history of plant-people relationships, during the ceramic occupations of the Late Holocene. Along the upper Madeira river channel, extensive archaeological sites containing anthropogenic dark earths are associated with occupations by ceramic producers that lived in the area between approximately 3,000 and 400 years ago. These populations left a wealth of information that allows us to evaluate these relationships through archaeobotanical studies. This paper presents new microbotanical data from the Teotônio and Santa Paula archaeological sites to proposes new hypotheses about local plant management systems during this period. Apart from documenting a proliferation in domesticates, it was possible to suggest some changes in which plants were used and how over time. We also saw how archaeobotanical data can shed light upon issues related the formation of these archaeological sites.

Este artigo faz um balanço dos dados atualmente disponíveis para a arqueologia da área de jusante das cachoeiras do Alto Rio Madeira. Trata-se de um segmento chave do maior afluente do rio Amazonas, que possui suas áreas de cabeceiras nos Andes Centrais: ele é formado pela junção de grandes rios que vêm da Bolívia e Peru – Mamoré, Beni e Madre de Díos. Nossa análise comparativa indica que a arqueologia da área de jusante das cachoeiras do rio Madeira possui mais semelhanças com padrões observados na Amazônia central que com na região de seus formadores. Por outro lado, o alto Madeira também denota elementos da diversidade cultural que caracteriza o seu entorno. Sendo assim, propomos que as cachoeiras do Madeira funcionaram como uma área de fronteira persistente ao longo do Holoceno tardio, conectando regiões com padrões culturais distintos na bacia Amazônica.

Phytolith reference collections of plants and surface soils are a critical part of studies that use these micro-botanical remains for archaeological and paleoecological reconstruction. In the archaeologically-rich region of the Upper Madeira river in Rondônia, Brazil, phytolith analysis is being applied in both on-and off-site contexts in order to shed light on human-environment interactions over a period that extends almost the entire Holocene. The present study brings together data on phytolith production patterns among 90 native species, representing 36 plant families, as well as 56 surface soil samples taken from underneath 11 monitored forest plots. Our discussion focuses on the comparison between the surface soil phytolith records and the above-ground floristic inventories, scrutinized considering the plant reference collection results. We found that the phytoliths of several species which produce diagnostic or potentially-diagnostic morphotypes were under-represented in the surface soils, including several understory herbs. While the phytolith assemblages from three forest types (palm, sororoca and dense forest) presented considerable overlap, in accordance with similarities in the floristic inventories, bamboo forest and different types of campinaranas were able to be distinguished based on their phytolith signatures .

RESUMO Na arqueologia Amazônica são comuns sítios abrangendo vários hectares com sobreposição de camadas formadas por depósitos profundos e estratificados, com consequentes perturbações de depósitos mais antigos por ocupações posteriores. Tais características impõem dificuldades de interpretação dos registros. O objetivo deste artigo é realizar uma primeira tentativa de interpretar o significado da estratigrafia do sítio Teotônio, localizado às margens da cachoeira homônima, no alto rio Madeira, que tem uma cronologia de ocupação que chega há 9.000 anos antes do presente (AP). Nossa pesquisa se restringe às ocupações de grupos ceramistas que se estendeu desde cerca de 3.000 anos AP até o período colonial. Delineou-se a dispersão do material cerâmico assim como uma área específica que concentra quase todos os conjuntos.

and Keywords The tropical lowlands of South America were long thought of as a "counterfeit paradise," a vast expanse of mostly pristine rainforests with poor soils for farming, limited protein resources, and environmental conditions inimical to the endogenous development of hier archical human societies. These misconceptions derived largely from a fundamental mis understanding of the unique characteristics of ancient and indigenous farming and envi ronmental management in lowland South America, which are in turn closely related to the cultural baggage surrounding the term "agriculture." Archaeological and archaeobotanical discoveries made in the early 21st century have overturned these misconceptions and revealed the true nature of the ancient and tradi tional food production systems of lowland South America, which involve a complex combi nation of horticulture, agroforestry, and the management of non-domesticated or incipi ently domesticated species in cultural forest landscapes. In this sense, lowland South America breaks the mould of the Old World "farming hypothesis" by revealing cultivation without domestication and domestication without agriculture, a syndrome that has been referred to as "anti-domestication". These discoveries have contributed to a better under standing of the cultural history of South America, while also suggesting new paradigms of environmental management and food production for the future of this critical and threat ened biome.

This work applies the X-ray MicroCT imaging technique to discuss the identification and preservation/dis-turbance conditions of plant remains from the Monte Castelo archaeological site, in Brazil's southwestern Amazonia. A preliminary hypothesis based on external morphological traits and the presence of typical starch grains, associates these materials to the Poaceae caryopsis. Moreover, based on their well-preserved non-charred aspect, mineralization was considered as a possible in-situ preservation process. Data from the X-ray computed microtomography (MicroCT) analysis showed that the internal anatomy of the samples corresponds to another type of fruit, described as a small drupe sharing characters with some Anacardiaceae fruits. Additionally, all studied specimens contain a number of exogenous organic and inorganic elements suggesting the action of some disturbance processes on the Monte Castelo plant material.

It is accepted that many Amazonian indigenous societies are organized along regional networks connecting local communities. Such a regional dimension, at least as it is known today, includes the circulation of people and goods over sometimes fairly large areas. In many cases, these regional spheres of interaction are multilingual and range over areas with different ecological characteristics. There are two major sources of information for spheres of interaction: historical and ethnographic. The former consists of primary sources produced during the colonial period and secondary sources resulting from reanalysis of the primary data, and the latter are ethnographic. There are, however, still few archaeological data concerning ancient, precolumbian spheres of interaction. This chapter provides an initial step in this direction through instrumental neutron activation analysis (INAA) on ceramic assemblages excavated from two distinct but contemporary archaeological sites in the central Amazon of Brazil occupied from the middle to the late first millennium AD. After a brief review of the ethnographic and historical literature on ancient exchange networks in the Amazon and northern South America, the discussion will proceed to the archaeological contexts of the central Amazon. Then, the results obtained from INAA on ceramics will be discussed together with the archaeological correlations.

Southwestern Amazonia is considered an early centre of plant domestication in the New World, but most of the evidence for this hypothesis comes from genetic data since systematic archaeological fieldwork in the area is recent. This paper provides first-hand archaeobo-tanical evidence of food production from early and middle Holocene (ca. 9,000–5000 cal. BP) deposits at Teotonio, an open-air site located on a 40 m-high bluff on the south bank of the Madeira river. Such evidence includes the presence of local and exotic domesticates such as manioc (Manihot esculenta), squash (Cucurbita sp.) and beans (Phaseolus sp.), alongside edible fruits such as pequiá (Caryocar sp.) and guava (Psidium sp.) that point to the beginnings of landscape domestication. The results contribute to an ever-growing number of studies that posit southwest Amazonia as an important centre for early crop domesti-cation and experimentation, and which highlight the longue-duré e of human impacts on tropical forest biodiversity around the world.

The nature of subsistence strategies employed by the past inhabitants of Amazonia has been a widely debated topic, however little evidence has been found so far in order to support some of the proposed hypotheses. This article contributes to this debate by presenting new d 13 C and d 15 N data from the human populations that occupied the Marac a region of the mouth of the Amazon river, around 500 BP (years before present). It directly compares these newly generated results to previously published human isotope data from neighbouring Maraj o Island (Marajoara phase, 1600 to 700 BP), as well as other areas in the lowland Neotropics, in an attempt to build a bigger picture of the dietary habits of the Lower Amazon pre-colonial populations. The overall results suggest that the populations that occupied the mouth of the Amazon after 2000 BP had diets based on the exploitation of fish and a wide range of C 3 plant resources, as well as possibly having a minor C 4 or CAM component. The data presented are also consistent with an emerging consensus that there was no single adaptive pattern for ancient Amazonian populations and proposes that diversified economic strategies based on wild and cultivated plants combined with the exploitation of faunal resources could have developed over time and sustained long-term successful patterns of human occupations.

O texto apresenta novas informações contextuais e cronológicas da fase Caiambé, trazendo resultados de pesquisa realizada na Reserva de Desenvolvimento Sustentável Amanã, médio Solimões, Amazonas, Brasil. Inicialmente é realizada a contextualização da definição da fase e das questões de pesquisa. Em seguida, são expostos os sítios e contextos locais da fase Caiambé e os resultados da análise cerâmica, com o objetivo de oferecer o refinamento das suas características tecnológicas e contextuais.  Por fim, são discutidos possíveis significados sociopolíticos de sua ocorrência no lago Amanã, de modo a compreender os processos de continuidade e mudança cultural em maior escala no médio Solimões.

A sequência crono-estilística ligada à variabilidade cerâmica na Amazônia central tem sido foco de debates há tempos. Algumas hipóteses clássicas sobre a ocupação humana na área são agora reavaliadas através de uma ampla gama de dados empíricos aliada a um novo corpus teórico-analítico. Este artigo apresenta parte dos resultados das análises cerâmicas levadas a cabo por uma pesquisa de doutorado no âmbito do Projeto Amazônia Central (MAE-USP). Os dados aqui apresentados apontam maneiras de se reacessar o uso de conceitos caros à arqueologia brasileira, como as fases e tradições, sob uma perspectiva diferenciada. Na área de confluência dos rios Negro e Solimões, tais conceitos permitiram a construção de uma cronologia de ocupação baseada no entendimento das relações existentes entre as fases Açutuba, Manacapuru e Paredão, relacionadas à Tradição Borda Incisa/Barrancóide da Amazônia.

The Amazon is one of the few independent centres of plant domestication in the world, yet archaeological and ethnographic evidence suggest a relatively recent transition to agricul- ture there. In order to make sense of this time lag, the authors propose the use of the concept of ‘familiarisation’ instead of ‘domestication’, to explain Amazonian plant management, and the long-term relationship between plants and people in the region. This concept allows them to cast a fresh eye over ancient and contemporary patterns of plant cultivation and management that may be distinct to the ones described for the Old World.

ADE, a result of domestic, economic, and agricultural activities in and around human settlements, are noted for their extraordinary fertility and resilience and for the significant quantities of organic carbon, much in the form of charcoal. The deepest and most extensive areas of ADE are generally located on the bluffs of major rivers adjacent to floodplains, but significant areas of ADE have also been found in floodplains and in headwater and interfluvial areas. Our research aims to shed light on the distribution of modified soils in distinct regions of the Amazon in relation to landforms and the environment. Although research on ADE has led to a proliferation of studies on charcoal in soil management and the development of a ‘biochar’ industry that promotes the incorporation of charcoal into the soil for the dual purpose of improving fertility and sequestering carbon, there is a notable lack of research attempting to quantify the carbon over the scale of a site or region in Amazonia. We undertook this challenge in the Upper Xingu region of southeastern Amazonia in partnership with the local Kuikuro indigenous community who have shared their valuable traditional knowledge on the creation and management of ADE. We used data from over 3500 soil samples from diverse contexts, both ancient and modern, that we collected and analyzed over the past two decades for organic carbon and a range of other chemical and physical properties. Dark earth samples from profiles down to 1 m depth in archaeological sites ranged from 20% to 150% more OC than unmodified forest soil and dark earth profiles in current and historic villages ranged from 20-90% more. We used the results from soil sample transects to estimate the carbon in landuse zones within and surrounding modern, historic, and ancient settlement sites. In continuing work, we are attempting to use satellite remote sensing and artificial intelligence with ground truth data to extrapolate our results across the Upper Xingu region and beyond.

Morgan J. Schmidt1, J. Taylor Perron1, Michael Heckenberger2, Wetherbee Dorshow3, Bruno Moraes4, Jennifer Watling5, Eduardo Neves5, Dorothy Hosler6, Samuel L. Goldberg1, Luiz Fernando Leal7,
Kumessi Waura8, Hulke Kuikuro8, Wate Kuikuro8, Afukaka Kuikuro8

1 Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, MIT; 2 Anthropology, University of Florida; 3 Earth Analytic/ Puente Institute; 4 Emilio Goeldi Museum; 5 Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, University of Sao Paulo; 6 Materials Science and Engineering, MIT; 7 Florida Institute of Technology; 8 Kuikuro Indigenous Association of the Upper Xingu (AIKAX)

Amazonian dark earth (ADE) has received global attention for its remarkable fertility and high carbon content in a region known for low-nutrient soils. ADE is an anthropic soil produced by human activities, including refuse disposal and crop cultivation, that concentrated charcoal, organic matter and nutrients. Evidence for modified soils reaches back to the terminal Pleistocene in the Amazon while the formation of ADE began by the mid-Holocene and appears to have increased substantially around 3000 years before present. ADE may be a major reservoir of soil carbon, but it is not known how widely distributed it is across the Amazon or how much total carbon it contains. We investigate the extent and composition of ADE in collaboration with the Kuikuro, an indigenous community in the Upper Xingu River Basin, Southeastern Amazon. Recent surveys combining satellite remote sensing with observations from soil pits suggest that modified soils in the Upper Xingu are much more extensive than previously thought. Areas of altered forest visible in satellite images in and around known archaeological sites appear to correlate well with known distributions of darkened and enriched anthropic soils. We test this correlation by quantifying the total carbon and soil fertility across the landscape in the study area. Combining ground truth data from systematic soil sampling with satellite images and machine learning techniques, we create predictive models to estimate the distribution and total carbon content of modified soils in the study area. In the unique context of the Upper Xingu, we explore the formation processes of ADE in a place where it is still being created, while building upon a solid foundation of archaeological research and partnership with the local indigenous community. In ongoing research, we plan to take what we learn from the Upper Xingu and apply it to other regions of the Amazon, using the methods to benefit local communities interested in mapping their cultural landscapes while gaining a better understanding of the magnitude and extent of anthropic soils. Determining the extent to which past human activities modified soils and sequestered carbon in Amazonia offers valuable insights for our efforts to understand human interactions with the environment and how to manage it.