Abstract
Archaeology is a discipline that can offer a long term perspective on the impacts human societies have had on the environment. Landscape studies are critical for understanding these impacts, because they embrace a dialectical view regarding the relationship between humans and their immediate surroundings. Such studies are well suited to the Amazon basin, a region that has driven much media attention due to astonishing rates of deforestation in certain areas, with likely consequences on the planet’s climate, posing challenges to the survival of the human species for the coming decades. In fact, although much has been said about the impacts of contemporary societies on tropical forest environments, ancient landscape management practices have not yet been considered part of the equation. Thus far, we know that Amerindian societies have been actively transforming their surroundings for millennia. On the eve of European contact, large, complex societies were bringing about long-lasting transformations of landscapes throughout the basin. Conquest and colonization resulted in epidemics, enslavement, and changes to the indigenous economies that managed to survive the genocide. Afterwards, as colonizers would exploit traditional resources leading, in many instances, to their exhaustion, a huge quantity of information on sustainable ways of dealing with certain environments became lost. Traditional knowledge, however, still survives among certain indigenous, peasant (caboclo), and African-Brazilian populations. Documentation of surviving management practices together with the study of the archaeological record could provide valuable information for policy makers. This article examines historical transformations that took place on Marajó Island during the last two millennia and advocates the importance of archaeological research for understanding the historical ecology of landscape change. It is argued that ancient economic strategies, some still being practiced today, could be re-created in the present, since these may constitute opportunities for sustainable sources of income to local communities.
Highlights
Marajó Island provides a rich laboratory for the study of long-term interaction between human societies and the environment (Figure 1)
I intend to show that traditional knowledge of the environment and strategies to gather resources are based on a long term history of landscape management, which started about 2,000 years BP, when indigenous populations were organized into small chiefdoms, articulated within a larger context of complex regional systems
In order to model and study aboriginal subsistence strategies in Amazonia, scholars have historically relied on ethnographic studies of surviving indigenous groups, which despite the population losses and displacement suffered in the last five hundred years, still represent a living testimony of human strategies on Amazonian landscapes
Summary
Marajó Island provides a rich laboratory for the study of long-term interaction between human societies and the environment (Figure 1). Major ecological problems in the island were reported during the 20th century by journalists, geographers, geologists, ecologists, and even archaeologists, based on both scientific literature and oral tradition, which mentioned river obstructions, disappearance of lakes, longer floods, harsher droughts, lack of water, saltiness of water courses, decrease in fauna species (caimans, jaguars, piranhas, large fish), among others [3,8,9,10,11] Many of these problems are due to ecologically irrational water management (ranchers dam rivers to retain water for their livestock), overfishing, overhunting, and sedimentation of rivers by aquatic buffaloes (carrying heavy loads of sediments into the water courses). I intend to show that traditional knowledge of the environment and strategies to gather resources are based on a long term history of landscape management, which started about 2,000 years BP, when indigenous populations were organized into small chiefdoms, articulated within a larger context of complex regional systems. I aim to discuss the importance of restoring ancient land management systems in order to restore the landscape and its biotic wealth of resources, for this has been greatly affected to date by decidedly irrational economic decisions
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