Nature as kin: reconsidering evidence of agriculture in Southwest Amazonia in the Early Holocene

Abstract

Palaeoecological evidence for southwest Amazonia reveals subtle but complex botanic management stretching back 10,000 years. In situ cultivation of root crops in managed tree groves comprised a pattern of polyculture agroforestry that left a marked footprint on modern floral biodiversity. This evidence rejects traditional archaeological definitions of ‘agricultural societies’ and indicates the need to rethink how we approach archaeobotanical remains in tropical forest environments. This forms the basis of a proposed new paradigm for approaching the archaeobotanical record: familiarisation. Familiarisation draws on Amazonian anthropological theory and ethnography to conceptualise human-nonhuman relationships as fluid, reciprocal, and laden with ontological significance. Applied here to the early and middle Holocene in Amazonia (c. 10,000-4,000 calBP), it is a productive milieu for examining horticulture systems in the deep past.