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

Laura P Furquim,Carlos Augusto Zimpel,Myrtle P Shock,Lautaro M Hilbert,Carlos Augusto Da Silva,Eduardo G Neves,Kelly Brandão,Gabriela Prestes-Carneiro,Jennifer Watling,Anne R Py-Daniel,Cristina Marilin Calo,Francisco Pugliese

doi:10.3390/quat4010008

Abstract

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.

Highlights

The macrobotanical assemblage of the Monte Castelo shellmound (Figure 3) is mainly composed of carbonized remains of seeds, fruits, and parenchymatous plant parts, the presence of mineralized Anacardiaceae seeds is notable throughout the stratigraphy
The generally low percentage of wood charcoal recovered at Monte Castelo is different from the pattern observed in the majority of Amazonian archaeological sites, especially within Amazonian Dark Earths (ADEs) [7,61,90,91]
The exact relationship between the Monte Castelo shellmound builders and those of the Llanos de Mojos forest islands is still unclear, but it can at least be assumed that they formed part of a connected network of people based on archaeological similarities and proximity

Summary

Introduction

As our knowledge of early human occupations, dating back to ~13,000 yr BP [1,2,3,4], expands, archaeological and archaeobotanical records contradict the dominant notion that ancient human groups were nomadic hunter-gatherers that gradually became horticulturalists—and agriculturalists—through the intensification of food production. Even the most ancient sites were frequented as part of established territories, becoming significant places to be reoccupied over millennia [12,13]. Such a pattern is likened to people “walking in their own footsteps” [4], how the mobility of these groups occurred in a more restricted time scale is still unknown

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion