Localised land-use and maize agriculture by the pre-Columbian Casarabe Culture in Lowland Bolivia

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7170487
AutoresJoseph Hirst (0009-0008-0409-2033, University of Reading, autor de correspondencia), Marco F Raczka (0000-0002-6602-8087, University of Nottingham), Marco Raczka (University of Reading), Umberto Lombardo (0000-0002-0001-4870, Universitat Autonòma de Barcelona), Ezequiel Chavez (Museo de Historia Natural Noel Kempff Mercado), Lorena Becerra-Valdivia (0000-0001-5501-5347, University of Oxford), Mckenzie R Bentley (0000-0002-8121-1066, University of Oxford), Christopher B Ramsey (0000-0002-8641-9309, University of Oxford), Miros Stavros James Charidemou (0009-0009-2368-1033, British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility, National Oceanography Centre, UK), Suzanne Maclachlan (0009-0001-5898-4140, British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility, National Oceanography Centre, UK), Francis E Mayle (0000-0001-9208-0519, University of Reading)
Año2025
Volumen35
Número8
Páginas729-742
Fecha de publicación2025-08-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaThe Holocene (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0959-6836 • E-ISSN: 1477-0911
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/09596836251332794
OpenAlexW4410100892
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas77

Multiple pre-Columbian (pre-1492 CE) archaeological sites now challenge the traditional portrayal of Amazonia as a ‘pristine wilderness’. This is especially true within the forest-savanna mosaic landscapes of lowland Bolivia, where the pre-Columbian Casarabe Culture constructed hundreds of settlement mounds, integrated with a dense causeway-canal network – one of the most complex, stratified societies yet discovered in Amazonia. Excavations at previous sites indicate that this culture sustained itself by practicing large-scale, maize-based agriculture. However, the Casarabe Culture’s mounds have also been found within the riparian forests abutting major river systems, where their inhabitants could have benefitted from greater access to forest resources and local fish species. To determine whether these differences influenced how the Casarabe Culture utilised the landscape, we conducted palaeoecological analysis on the sediments collected from Laguna Loma Suarez (LLS), an oxbow lake situated adjacent to a monumental habitation mound within these riparian forests. Our analysis reveals that, despite significant differences in natural resource availability, the Casarabe Culture continued to cultivate maize locally around LLS for over a millennium, between 280 BCE and 1130 CE, with anthropogenic fires largely restricted to the open savannas. Our record also suggests that the Casarabe Culture possibly delayed either forest recovery or natural forest encroachment until after the nearby settlement mound was abandoned. These findings, when compared with those of other sites in the region, show that maize was an important crop in pre-Columbian times, irrespective of major differences in natural resource availability across the complex forest-savanna mosaic settings of Amazonian Bolivia

Agriculture · Agroforestry · Archaeology · Biology · Geography · Land use · Paleoethnobotany · Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Environmental Science · Indigenous Health and Education · Ecology