Abstract
Historical ecologists have demonstrated legacy effects in apparently wild landscapes in Europe, North America, Mesoamerica, Amazonia, Africa and Oceania. People live and farm in archaeological sites today in many parts of the world, but nobody has looked for the legacies of past human occupations in the most dynamic areas in these sites: homegardens. Here we show that the useful flora of modern homegardens is partially a legacy of pre-Columbian occupations in Central Amazonia: the more complex the archaeological context, the more variable the floristic composition of useful native plants in homegardens cultivated there today. Species diversity was 10% higher in homegardens situated in multi-occupational archaeological contexts compared with homegardens situated in single-occupational ones. Species heterogeneity (β-diversity) among archaeological contexts was similar for the whole set of species, but markedly different when only native Amazonian species were included, suggesting the influence of pre-conquest indigenous occupations on current homegarden species composition. Our findings show that the legacy of pre-Columbian occupations is visible in the most dynamic of all agroecosystems, adding another dimension to the human footprint in the Amazonian landscape.
Highlights
Humans have domesticated landscapes in varying degrees [1, 2] at an accelerating pace as population expanded during the Holocene and into the Anthropocene [3]
Archaeological context explained 59%, while soil fertility explained 39%, locality explained 3% and homegarden size had no measurable effect. This result holds even in simple comparisons. This effect of archaeological context was obscured by the introduction of non-Amazonian species that have little or no relation with the indigenous past (80 Old World species and 50 non-Amazonian New World species)
The α-diversity of useful species within homegardens was high compared to other studies in Amazonia [23], with 205 species recorded in the 40 homegardens
Summary
Humans have domesticated landscapes in varying degrees [1, 2] at an accelerating pace as population expanded during the Holocene and into the Anthropocene [3]. Studies in archaeology have identified long-term patterns, especially of plant and animal domestications [4, 5] that represent the legacies of long forgotten peoples. An increasing number of historical ecologists are identifying biodiversity legacies of long-term landscape domestication near ancient settlements, especially in forests in Europe [6], Mesoamerica [7], Africa [8] and Oceania [9]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript
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