1) Marajó Island(Marajoara)

2) Santarem

3) Central Amazon

4) Gavan (Western Venezuela)

5) Acre, Brazil

6) Lowland Bolivia

7) Upper Xingu River

1

765

3 2

4AMAZON

Rolling Stone, 10/17/07

“In the beginning all the World was America”

John Locke, 1690

Res (terra) nullius

Handbook of SA Indians (1946-1950)

• Andean Civilization (2)(covered in PIII; pp. 640-668)

• Tropical Forest Tribes (3)(pp. 668-677)

• Circum-Caribbean Tribes (4)• Marginal Tribes (1)

• Based on geographic distributions and perceived cultural variability

Culture Areas of SACulture areas, although geographically defined, formed a classification of cultural groups in SA, based on economic, sociopolitical, and religious patterns.

• Culture change seen as adaptation to different environments, and

• Amazonian tropical forest environment seen as limiting

cultural development

Julian H. Steward andCultural Ecology

HSAI and Stages ofCultural Evolution

the tropical forest tribe:i.e., you get (in the past)

what you see (in 20th century),or, the “one size fits all

Amazonian Indian”

band

state

chiefdom

tribe

Marginal Bands

Andean States

Circum-CaribbeanChiefdoms

Tropical Forest Tribes

Tropical Forest Tribe

“the Tropical Forest peoples [like marginals] had sociopolitical units consisting principally of kin groups and structured along lines of age, sex, and associations, but theirs differed from those of the Marginal tribes in that more developed exploitative devices, which included farming, and better transportation afforded by the canoe, permitted larger and more stable units” (HSAI 1948; The Tropical Forest Tribes, Vol. 3)

The “Great Divide”

• According to Steward and followers, complex societies emerged in the Andean area and complex societies (chiefdoms) in Amazon must be the result of diffusion or migration from the Andes

Highlands(Andes)

Lowlands(Amazon)

The two major geographic blocks that cover the majority of South Americaare the Andes and Amazonia

• Archaeologists Betty Meggers and Clifford Evans carried forward Steward’s idea that only a tribal level of development could occur in lowland Amazonia due to environmental limitations

• Donald Lathrap (1970) defined “Tropical Forest Culture” based on shared economic and cultural patterns, rather than as an evolutionary stage, and argued that large complex societies emerged in Amazonia, as reported in early historical accounts.

• Today, the great variability recognized within the lowlands makes it difficult to define any “typical” cultural pattern, any more than other major world regions.

Early Agriculturalists• Lathrap suggested

that by 6,000-4,000 BP riverine agriculture, based on a diversified root and tree crops and other tropical forest plants was established

Manioc, the major Amazonian staple crop (domesticated by

6,000-8,000 BC, based on genetic evidence)

• At least 138 crops with some degree of domestication were being cultivated or managed by native Amazonians at the time of European conquest (83 crops native to Amazonia).

• 68% of these Amazonian crops are fruit or nut trees or woody perennials (not surprising in Amazon forest).

Peach Palm

Landscape domestication andmanagement of non-domesticated

plants and animals and incipient or semi-domesticates

Parrots & Macaws

Currasow (like “wild turkey”)

Muscovy Duck

Amazonian Barrancoid

• Lathrap also suggested that developed tropical forest agriculture, possibly associated with early complex societies (c. 1000-1 BC) shared this ceramic tradition across much of Amazonia, associated with speakers of Arawak languages

Distribution and movements of ArawakGroups in South America, 3-2,000 BP

AustronesianArawak

Bantu

The Tropical Diaspora

Tupi-Guarani

Tupi languages originated in SW Amazonia by 3000-2000 BCProto-Arawak likely began to diverge c. 2000 BC

Distribution of Tupi-Guarani languages

Origin(homeland)

By AD 1

The ArawakDiaspora

500 BC

300 BC

BC/AD1

Possible originareas

Saladoid ceramics, Caribbean (similatr to what

is called “Barrancoid” ni Amazonia; both defined

from Orinoco River, Venezuela

Trants, Caribbeanc. 500 BC-AD 600

Gaván, Western Orinoquia, c. AD 600-1300

Northern Amazonia (Saladoid/Barrancoid)

Polychrome Tradition

• The Amazonian Polychrome Tradition represents a transformation, c. 1000 years ago, of the earlier Barrancoid Tradition ceramic industry by widespread trade of fine ceramics (“wealth” goods) between elites up and down the Amazon

Amazonian Polychrome Tradition

Várzea-Terra Firme Dichotomy,or Várzea Model

• Distribution of fine ceramics (Amazonian Polychrome Tradition), large sites, and monuments led many researchers to suggest that chiefdoms were restricted to the floodplains of the Amazon and its Andean derived tributaries due to their rich agricultural soils

• Terra firme peoples still generally believed to have lived at a tropical forest or “tribal” level

The Várzea (Amazon floodplain) Model

By about 1970 scholars generally agreed that large, settled populations (chiefdoms) existed along the Amazon, based in large part on early historic accounts (16 th-17th century)

“We went among some islands which we thought uninhabited, but, after we got to be in among them, so numerous were the settlements which came into sight … that we grieved; and, when they saw us, there came out to meet us on the river over two hundred pirogues [canoes], that each one carries twenty or thirty Indians and some forty …; they were quite colorfully decorated with various emblems, and they had with them many trumpets and drums …. and on land a marvelous thing to see were the squadron formations that were in the villages, all playing on instruments and dancing about, manifesting great joy upon seeing that we were passing beyond their villages”

Gaspar Carvajal, 25 June 1542 (Medina 1988:218), reporting on the earliest expedition down the Amazon River in 1541-1542

MARAJOARA• Once thought to be a

chiefdom that migrated from the Andes (could not have emerged in Amazon due to environmental limitations)

• Now know that these monument-building regional chiefdoms developed in place starting soon after the time of Christ until the time of European contact (1492)

• Major mound-building after AD 400-600, early clear example of Amazonian Polychrome Tradition

Caumtins (Marajoara) mound group

Elite mounds

Domestic mounds

?

Elite Mounds (Camutins) Regional Ceramic Traditions

Marajoaraburial urns

Megaliths north of the Mouth of the Amazon

AD 1-500

Amazonian Stonehenge (Amapa), ca. AD 1-500

Macapa burial urns, north of the mouth of the Amazon, ca. AD 1500-1600

CENTRALAMAZON

Eduardo Neves, “Long-term Interactions between People and Nature in the Central Amazon” (UF, Monday 03/01, 12:00; Dauer Hall 219)

Açutuba (“big Port”), central Amazon, ca. 300

BC-AD 1600

Guarita (APT) midden, c. 1200-1400

Barrancoid, etc. middenc. 300 BC – AD 800

Amazonian Polychrome Tradition

(Guarita) midden, ca. AD 1000

Ceramics from Açutuba (Central Amazon, Polychrome Tradition)

Amazonian “black earth” sites - “terra preta” (TP), after ca. AD 1

Cahokia, AD 1150

Hidden Civilizations?

Santarém

Santarém ceramics

“very great quantities of porcelain ware of various makes … the best that has ever been seen in the world” (Carvajal 1542)

European Contact • Recent research

demonstrates that the catastrophic effects of European contact, notably depopulation from Old World diseases, decimated the complex societies of the Amazon floodplains, but also reached throughout the Amazon forest, even though European explorers themselves seldom ventured into many parts of the Amazon until recently

Areas of ComplexSocieties in Amazonia

1

3

2

1) Acre, Brazil; 2) lowland Bolivia; 3) Upper Xingu River

Geoglyphs of Western Amazonia(Acre, Brazil)

Acre, Brazil

Mound linked by causeways in domesticated landscapes of lowland Bolivia

Raised Agricultural Fields, Bolivian lowlands

Fish-farming,eastern lowland Bol.ivia

Areas of Arawak and related polities in AD

1500: 1) Upper Xingu; 2) Pareci; 3)

Baures (eastern Bolivia)

The Pareci Nation

“These people exist in such vast quantity, that it is not possible to count their settlements or villages, [and] many times in one day’s march one passes ten or twelve villages, and in each one there are from ten to thirty houses … even their roads they make very straight and wide, and they keep them so clean that one will find not even a fallen leaf”

Antonio Pires de Campos, 1862 [1720]

Galactic settlement clusters: central plaza

settlement, four primary plaza satellites

positioned according to cardinal directions, and other small peripheral

plaza settlements (about the size of

contemporary Upper Xingu villages)

These galactic clusterswere small, territorial

polities (complex societies) in AD 1500

Large central and four primary satellite settlements often enclosed

by large wall (archaeological ditches, But would have been associated with

tree-trunk palisades)

High-resolution GPS mapping of ancient settlements and modern

features

Core area of one galactic cluster (note

central settlement X13 and four primary

satellites

Nature : Human : Supernature

Ebenezer Howard’s “Garden cities of Tomorrow” (1902)

Garden Cities of Yesterday?

Ancient Amazonian Urbanism, or What?

“… the medieval topography was … a collection of greater and smaller clearings … rather like a photographic negative of the Muslim east which was a world of oases in the midst of deserts.”Le Goff 1988:131

What is urbanism in its earliest and most minute forms?

Lost cities of the Amazon, likely not, but what of hierarchical networks of towns and villages in discrete territorial polities and highly self-organized landscapes?

What of multi-centric forms, and the implications for the urban-rural?

What of regional planning and design?

Galactic Urbanism or “Garden Cities”: precisely designed network of five core settlements and smaller peripheral settlements in territorial polities, with mosaic of occupation areas, agricultural countryside, and managed wetlands, interspersed by patches of forest and separated from other clusters by closed forest zones (green belts)

Regional distribution of

galactic clusters (polities) in a peer polity system, in other words each

polity was politically equal (not single capital center)

Not extent of anthropogenic

areas (denoted by large orange and red circles): no “pristine forest”

here

The “Urban Revolution”• V. Gordon Childe (remember the “Neolitihic Revolution” and

“Oasis Theory” was among the first to discuss the development of ancient civilizations (Near/Middle East)

• defined states based on the presence of certain key elements, most notably: cities, writing, surplus, metallurgy, craft specialization

• technological innovations (e.g., metallurgy, writing), craft specialization, and agricultural surplus were key in the emergence of ancient states

• Surplus, in particular, allowed certain individuals to be freed from agricultural labor, creating social inequality (capital, alienation, and class)

• as with “Neolithic Revolution,” states were seen as an advancement over earlier cultural forms and given the right conditions a natural development for humankind

The Urban Revolution• Childe introduced the Urban Revolution in 1936 (“Man Makes

Himself”); article in “Town Planning Review” (1950) described 10 traits that defined it:

– Large population and large settlements (cities) – Full-time specialization and advanced division of labor – Production of an agricultural surplus to fund government and a

differentiated society – Monumental public architecture – A ruling class – Writing – Exact and predictive sciences (arithmetic, geometry, astronomy,

calendars) – Sophisticated art styles – Long-distance trade – The state.

What is a City? Definitions Vary, and some quite small.

• “In Germany as a whole in the late middle ages [1300-1500], 3,000 places were reckoned to have been granted the status of cities; their average population was no more than 400 individuals” (Braudel 1985:482)

• Among largest, Dresden about 2500