Pre-Columbian geometric earthworks in the upper Pur’us: a complex society in western Amazonia
Martti Parssinen, Denise Schaan, and Alceu Ranzi. 2009. Pre-Columbian geometric earthworks in the upper Pur’us: a complex society in western Amazonia. Antiquity 83 (2009): 1084–1095
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Abstract
It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good. The combination of land cleared of its rainforest for grazing and satellite survey have revealed a sophisticated pre-Columbian monument-building society in the upper Amazon Basin on the east side of the Andes. This hitherto unknown people constructed earthworks of precise geometric plan connected by straight orthogonal roads. Introducing us to this new civilisation, the authors show that the ‘geoglyph culture’ stretches over a region more than 250km across, and exploits both the floodplains and the uplands. They also suggest that we have so far seen no more than a tenth of it.
Introduction
According to mid-twentieth-century neo-evolutionist interpretations of cultural development in the South American lowlands, pre-European Amazonian societies were mainly considered to be primitive egalitarian tribes living in small, impermanent villages in a hostile environment, unable to develop complex socio-political institutions (Steward 1948; Meggers 1954). Although historical accounts mentioned that floodplain river banks and islands were heavily populated by chiefdoms with village leaders and superior lords, some students of Amazonian archaeology and ethnology emphasised important differences between floodplain (varzea) and upland (terra firme) ecosystems. According to Lathrap’s model, for example, the varzea constantly attracted peoples due to its bountiful resources, especially aquatic fauna and good alluvial soils; but, as population pressure over limited land took its toll, they were forced to flee to the hinterland terra firme, where their cultural level decreased (Lathrap 1968, 1970). In her own way, Meggers (1991, 1995) also acknowledged higher levels of cultural complexity for varzea peoples, where some level of social hierarchy and elaborate material culture could develop, thanks to better soils. In her account, terra firme peoples remained demographically smaller and less complex, and were forced to live as hunters, collectors and semi-sedentary slash-and-burn cultivators. …
Roosevelt (1980), for her part, also had an important role in defending the varzea/terra firme dichotomy, emphasising the fact that the alluvial soils of the varzea were critical for supporting the indigenous development of chiefdoms, an idea not backed up by neo-evolutionist determinism, which always gave priority to outside cultural developments. …
As we can see, although scholars had different ideas on how to account for the differences between the two main Amazonian environments, the basic dichotomy between varzea (floodplain) and terra firme (interfluvial hinterland) remained valid for some time. In fact, given the scarcity of archaeological data for hinterland areas, researchers concentrated their efforts in trying to figure out how social complexity arose among floodplain societies (Carneiro 1970, 1987; Roosevelt 1993), accepting, even if not explicitly, that terra firme peoples had remained smaller and simpler.
