Facing Change through Diversity

Resilience and Diversification of Plant Management Strategies during the Mid to Late Holocene Transition at the Monte Castelo Shellmound, SW Amazonia

Bibliographic Data

ID8085229
AuthorsLaura Pereira Furquim (0000-0001-8425-3125, Universidade de São Paulo, corresponding author), Jennifer Watling (0000-0001-7897-5105, Universidade de São Paulo), Lautaro Maximiliam Hilbert (0000-0003-3406-4478, Universidade de São Paulo), Myrtle Pearl Shock (0000-0001-9129-0442, Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará), Gabriela Prestes Carneiro (0000-0003-2958-5797, Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará), C M Calo (0000-0002-1444-8231, Universidade de São Paulo), Anne Rapp Py-Daniel (0000-0002-5919-452X, Universidade Federal do Oeste do Pará), Kelly Brandão Vaz Da Silva (0000-0003-3375-3191, Universidade de São Paulo), Francisco Pugliese (0000-0002-2087-3875, Universidade de São Paulo), Carlos Zimpel (0000-0001-9876-9130, Department of Archaeology, Federal University of Rondônia, Porto Velho, Rondônia 76801-059, Brazil), Camila Aparecida Da Silva (0000-0003-1529-7209), Carlos Augusto Da Silva (Center for Environmental Sciences, Federal University of the Amazon, Manaus, Amazonas 69080-900, Brazil), Eduardo Neves (0000-0002-2830-2735, Universidade de São Paulo)
Year2021
Volume4
Issue1
Pages8-8
Publication date2021-03-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueQuaternary (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2571-550X • E-ISSN: 2571-550X
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/quat4010008
OpenAlexW3133548317
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited72

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

Agriculture · Archaeology · Biology · Geography · Historical ecology · Holocene · Human settlement · Livelihood · Population · Subsistence agriculture · Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory · Cassava research and cyanide · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies · Demography · Ecology

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