Early Agriculture and Landscape Domestication along the Middle Berbice River, Guyana

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

This project builds on preliminary research along the middle Berbice River, Guyana (NSF International Planning Grant, OISE #0923703), which revealed an extremely long sequence of settled agricultural occupations, spanning five millennia. The primary objective is to characterize initial settled agricultural occupations (ca. 5200-4700 year before present), which include one of the earliest ceramic industries in the Americas. These occupations provide the earliest examples of heavily modified 'black earth' or 'Amazonian dark earth'(ADE) soils from tropical forest regions of South America (Amazonia), typically associated semi-intensive land management. A further objective is to refine the regional chronology of agricultural occupations, including an early complex of agricultural mounds (ca. 2000-1500 BP) and large settlements reported in early historical documents (ca. 1540 and later). The project, designed as the initial phase of a multi-year, interdisciplinary study, involves archaeological survey and excavations at several occupation sites and associated agricultural earthworks within a 30 x 10 km study area, as well as related studies on paleoethnobotany, soils studies, biogeography, and ethnohistory within the study area. Archaeological perspectives on Amazonian tropical forests have changed dramatically in the past few years. Long portrayed as relatively pristine tropical forest, recent archaeology suggests novel pathways of early domestication, agriculture, and semi-intensive resource management, including large occupations sites, agricultural and village earthworks, and substantially human-modified soils (ADE). However, sites that pertain to the earliest agricultural populations, which regional specialists suggest may have appeared ca. 5,000 to 4,000 BP, are virtually unknown. This project provides an important case for the transition from incipient to more intensive agro-economies and land-use in Amazonia. It helps situate the region in broader archaeological discussions regarding the development of agriculture, settled community life, and landscape transformation in other parts of the world. The project will also refine the chronology of agricultural occupations in this little known portion of northern Amazonia, notably including periods of agricultural intensification associated with the construction of artificial farming mounds and the transitional period between late prehistoric and historic period occupations. The project contributes to broader discussions of long-term change in coupled natural-human systems in tropical forest regions, notably the effects of early agricultural populations on tropical ecology. Researchers from varied disciplines agree that planning, conservation, and local, regional, and global ecological modeling must account for the human dimensions of long term change. The findings of this study will therefore have critical implications for contemporary questions of conservation, sustainable development, biodiversity, and ecological integrity in the region. The project, which integrates archaeology, historical anthropology, and ecology, will strengthen international collaboration and provides diverse opportunities for local communities and Guyanese students, including collaboration with descendant Amerindian communities.