Open air laboratories: Amazonian home gardens as sites of experimentation, collaboration, and negotiation across time

Abstract

In this article, we make the case for home gardens to be understood as “open-air” laboratories— sites of experimentation, collaboration, and negotiation both among humans and non-humans. Our examination specifically draws on case studies from Amazonia to highlight the deep history of concentrated human activities in gardens (or garden-like environments) as well as their ongoing importance for contemporary agrobiodiversity management, historical memory, and socio-cultural continuity in the face of modernization and environmental change. We discuss how Amazonian home gardens have evolved over time and how they serve to challenge Euro-American conceptions of gardens. Through an examination of both ethnobotanical and archaeological research, we show that Amazonian home gardens are manifestations of deeply rooted histories of experimentation with the diversity of Amazonian life.