Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vpsfw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-18T03:56:56.812Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Further Reflections on Amazonian Environmental History: Transformations of Rivers and Streams

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Hugh Raffles  and
Antoinette M.G.A. WinklerPrins
Hugh Raffles
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Cruz
Antoinette M.G.A. WinklerPrins
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Despite the increasing sensitivity of researchers to historical and contemporary landscape manipulations in the Amazon basin, there is still a powerful consensus in both popular and scholarly literatures that, with the exception of predatory deforestation, the physical environment of the region is largely unmodified by human intervention. An emerging body of scholarship has challenged this view by describing ways that Amazonian populations have managed terrestrial ecosystems on a variety of spatial and temporal scales. In this research report, we present both new and previously published data showing that Amazonians also intervene in fluvial systems, manipulating rivers and streams to modify the landscape. We argue that these practices, occurring in many different forms, are widespread and commonplace throughout the region, and that, taken together with the emerging evidence for terrestrial manipulation, provide compelling reason for a fundamental reassessment of conventional views of Amazonian nature.

Type
Research Reports and Notes
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , 2003 , pp. 165 - 187
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

Our sincere thanks to the residents of Igarapé Guariba and Ilha Ituqui. In addition, for insightful comments on an earlier version of this paper, we are grateful to Bill Denevan and to the three reviewers from this journal. Thanks also to David Cleary, Susanna Hecht, Joe McCann, Christine Padoch, Miguel Pinedo-Vásquez, Fernando Rabelo, Michael Reynolds, Bill Woods and Dan Zarin. Writing of this paper was facilitated by faculty research funds granted by the University of California, Santa Cruz (to Raffles) and from the generous support of the National Science Foundation, the Association of American Geographers, the American Association of University Women, IPAM/ Projeto Várzea (Santarém) and ITC-International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (to WinklerPrins).

References

REFERENCES

ANDERSON, ANTHONY B., MOUSASTICOSHVILY, IGOR JR., and MACEDO, DOMINGO S. 1999 “Logging of Virola urinamensis in the Amazon Floodplain: Impacts and Alternatives.” In Várzea: Diversity, Development, and Conservation of Amazonia's Whitewater, edited by Padoch, Christine, José Marcio Ayres, Miguel Pinedo-Vásquez, and Henderson, Andrew, 119–34. New York: New York Botanical Garden Press.Google Scholar
ASSOCIAÇÃO BRASIL 500 ANOS ARTES VISUAIS 2000 Mostra do Descobrimento. 23 April–7 September, Parque do Ibirapuera, São Paulo.Google Scholar
BALÉE, WILLIAM 1989 “The Culture of Amazonian Forests.” In Resource Management in Amazonia: Indigenous and Folk Strategies, edited by Posey, Darrell A. and Balée, William, 1–21. New York: New York Botanical Garden.Google Scholar
BALÉE, WILLIAM 1994 Footprints in the Forest: Ka'apor Ethnobotany—The Historical Ecology of Plant Utilization by an Amazonian People. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
BALÉE, WILLIAM, ed. 1998 “Advances in Historical Ecology.” New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
BARRIOS, EDMUNDO 1996 “Managing Nutrients in the Orinoco Floodplain.” Nature and Resources 32 (4): 15–19.Google Scholar
BARRIOS, EDMUNDO, HERRERA, RAFAEL, and VALLES, JOSÉ L. 1994 “Tropical Floodplain Agroforestry Systems in the Mid-Orinoco River Basin, Venezuela.” Agroforestry Systems 28: 143–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
BATES, HENRY W. 1892 “The Naturalist on the River Amazons.” Unabridged commemorative edition. London: John Murray [1863].Google Scholar
BRONDÍZIO, EDUARDO S., and SIQUEIRA, ANDREA D. 1997 “From Extractivists to Forest Farmers: Changing Concepts of Caboclo Agroforestry in the Amazon Estuary.” Research in Ecological Anthropology 8: 233–79.Google Scholar
CAMARGO, FELISBERTO C. DE 1958 “Report of the Amazon Region.” In Problems of Humid Tropical Regions, 11–24. Paris: UNESCO.Google Scholar
CHERNELA, JANET M. 1989 “Managing Rivers of Hunger: The Tukano of Brazil.” In Resource Management in Amazonia: Indigenous and Folk Strategies, edited by Posey, Darrell A. and Balée, William, 238–48. New York: New York Botanical Garden.Google Scholar
CLEARY, DAVID 2001 “Towards an Environmental History of the Amazon: From Prehistory to the Nineteenth Century.” Latin American Research Review 36 (2): 64–96.Google ScholarPubMed
COLBY, GERARD, and DENNETT, CHARLOTTE 1995 Thy Will be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil.“ New York: HarperCollins.Google Scholar
CONKLIN, BETH A., and GRAHAM, LAURA R. 1995 “The Shifting Middle-Ground: Amazonian Indians and Eco-politics.” American Anthropologist 97 (4): 695–710.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
COOMES, OLIVER T. 1992 “Blackwater Rivers, Adaptation, and Environmental Heterogeneity in Amazonia.” American Anthropologist 94 (3): 698–701.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CRONON, WILLIAM 1996 “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, edited by Cronon, William, 69–90. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
CUMMINGS, BARBARA J. 1990 Dam the Rivers, Damn the People: Development and Resistance in Amazonian Brazil. London: Earthscan.Google Scholar
DEMERITT, DAVID 1994 “The Nature of Metaphors in Cultural Geography and Environmental History.” Progress in Human Geography 18 (2): 163–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DENEVAN, WILLIAM M. 1966 The Aboriginal Cultural Geography of the Llanos de Mojos of Bolivia. Ibero-Americana 48. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
DENEVAN, WILLIAM M. 1970 “Aboriginal Drained-field Cultivation in the Americas.” Science 169 (3926): 647–54.Google ScholarPubMed
DENEVAN, WILLIAM M. 1992 “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82 (3): 369–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DENEVAN, WILLIAM M. 1996 “A Bluff Model of Riverine Settlement in Prehistoric Amazonia.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86 (4): 654–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DENEVAN, WILLIAM M. 2001 Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
DENEVAN, WILLIAM M. n.d “Pre-European human impacts on tropical lowland environments.” In The Physical Geography of South America, edited by Veblen, Tom, Young, Kenneth, and Anthony Orme (in press). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
DENEVAN, WILLIAM M., and ZUCCHI, ALBERTA 1978 “Ridged Field Excavations in the Central Orinoco Llanos, Venezuela.” In Advances in Andean Archaeology, edited by Browman, David L., 235–46. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
DENEVAN, WILLIAM M., and PADOCH, CHRISTINE, EDS. 1987 Swidden-fallow Agroforestry in the Peruvian Amazon. New York: New York Botanical Garden.Google Scholar
DESCOLA, PHILIPPE 1994 In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology of Amazonia. Translated by Scott, Nora. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
DOOLITTLE, WILLIAM E. 1984 “Agricultural Change as an Incremental Process.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 74 (1): 124–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
EDEN, MICHAEL J. 1990 Ecology and Land Management in Amazonia. London: Belhaven.Google Scholar
ERICKSON, CLARK L. 1980 “Sistemas agrícolas prehispánicos en los Llanos de Mojos.” América Indígena 40: 731–755.Google Scholar
ERICKSON, CLARK L. 2000 “An Artificial Landscape-scale Fishery in the Bolivian Amazon.” Nature 408: 190–193.Google ScholarPubMed
ERICKSON, CLARK L., WINKLER, WILMA, and CHANDLER, KAY 1997 “Las investigaciones arqueológicas en la Región de Baures en 1996.” Proyecto Agro-Arqueológico del Beni, Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
GENTIL, JANETE M. L. 1988 “A juta na agricultura de várzea na area de Santarém - Médio Amazonas.” Boletim do Museu Paraense Emilio Goeldi, Antropologia 4 (2): 118–99.Google Scholar
CLASER, B., HAUMAIER, L., GUGGENBERGER, G., and ZECH, W. 2001 “The Terra Preta' Phenomenon: A Model for Sustainable Agriculture in the Humid Tropics.” Naturwissenschaften 88: 37–41.Google Scholar
GREENBLATT, STEPHEN 1991 Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
GONDIM, NEIDE 1994 A invenção da Amazônia. São Paulo: Marco Zero.Google Scholar
HAMES, RAYMOND B., and VICKERS, WILLIAM T. 1983 Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
HARAWAY, DONNA J. 1997 Modest Witness@Second Millennium. FemaleMan© Meets OncoMouse™: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
HARRIS, MARK 1998 “‘What It Means to be Caboclo‘: Some Critical Notes on the Construction of Amazonian Caboclo Society as an Anthropological Object.” Critique of Anthropology 18 (1): 83–95.Google Scholar
HECHT, SUSANNA B., and POSEY, DARRELL A. 1989 “Preliminary Results on Soil Management Techniques of the Kayapó Indians.” In Resource Management in Amazonia: Indigenous and Folk Strategies, edited by Posey, Darrell A. and Balée, William, 174–88. New York: New York Botanical Garden.Google Scholar
HOMMA ALFREDO K. O. 1998 “A civilização da juta na Amazônia: expansão e declino.” In Amazônia: Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento Agrícola, edited by Homma, Alfredo K. O., 33–60. Brasília: EMBRAPA.Google Scholar
HULME, PETER 1992 Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean, 1492–1797. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
IRVINE, DOMINIQUE 1989 “Succession Management and Resource Distribution in an Amazonian Rain Forest.” In Resource Management in Amazonia: Indigenous and Folk Strategies, edited by Posey, Darrell A. and Balée, William, 223–37. New York: New York Botanical Garden.Google Scholar
IRION, GEORG 1984 “Sedimentation and Sediments of Amazonian Rivers and Evolution of the Amazon Landscape Since Pliocene Times.” In The Amazon: Limnology and Landscape Ecology of a Mighty Tropical River and its Basin, edited by Sioli, Harald, 201–14. Dordrecht: Dr. W. Junk Publishers.Google Scholar
LATOUR, BRUNO 1993 We Have Never Been Modern. Translated by Porter, Catherine. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
LOBATO, ELADIO 1985 Caminho de canoa pequena: história do município de Igarapé-Miri. 2d. ed. Belém: Imprensa Oficial.Google Scholar
LUXARDO, LÍBERO 1977 Marajó: Terra Anfíbia. Belém: Grafisa.Google Scholar
MCCANN, JOSEPH M. 2001 “‘Extinct’ Cultures and Persistent Landscapes of the Lower Tapajós Region, Brazilian Amazonia.” Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Association of American Geographers, New York City, 27 February–3 March.Google Scholar
MCCANN, JOSEPH M., WOODS, WILLIAM I., and MEYER, DONALD W. 2001 “Organic Matter and Anthrosols in Amazonia: Interpreting the Amerindian Legacy.” In Sustainable Management of Soil Organic Matter, edited by Rees, Robert M., Ball, Bruce C., Campbell, Colin D., and Watson, Christina A., 180–89. Wallingford: CAB International.Google Scholar
MCEWAN, COLIN, BARRETO, CHRISTINA, and NEVES, EDUARDO, EDS. 2001 Unknown Amazon: Culture in Nature in Ancient Brazil. London: British Museum Press.Google Scholar
MCGRATH, DAVID G., CASTRO, FABIO DE, FUTEMMA, CÉLIA, DE AMARAL, BENEDITO D., and CALABRIA, JULIANA 1993 “Fisheries and the Evolution of Resource Management on the Lower Amazon Floodplain.” Human Ecology 21 (2): 167–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MACEDO, DOMINGO S., and ANDERSON, ANTHONY B. 1993 “Early Ecological Changes Associated with Logging in an Amazon Floodplain.” Biotropica 25 (2): 151–63.Google Scholar
MANN, CHARLES C. 2002 “1491.” Atlantic Monthly (March): 41–53.Google Scholar
MEGGERS, BETTY J. 1954 “Environmental Limitation on the Development of Culture.” American Anthropologist 56: 801–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MEGGERS, BETTY J. 1996 Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press [1971].Google Scholar
MERTES, LEAL A. K. 1994 “Rates of Floodplain Sedimentation on the Central Amazon River” Geology 22: 171–74.2.3.CO;2>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MÉTRAUX, ALFRED 1948–50 “Tribes of Eastern Bolivia and the Madeira Headwaters.” In Handbook of South American Indians. Vol. 3, The Tropical Forest Tribes, edited by Julian STEWARD. 381–454. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
MORAN, EMILIO F. 1996 “Nurturing the Forest: Strategies of Native Amazonians.” In Redefining Nature, edited by Ellen, Roy and Fukui, Katsuyoshi, 531–55. Oxford: Berg Publishers.Google Scholar
MOTTA-MAUÉS, MARIA A. 1993 ‘Trabalhadeiras’ e 'camarados: relações de gênero, simbolismo e ritualização numa comunidade Amazônica.“ Belém: Universidade Federal do Pará.Google Scholar
NORDENSKIÖLD, ERLAND 1916 “Die Anpassung der Indianer an die Verhältnisse in den Überschwem-mungsgebieten in Südamerika”. Ymer 36 (2): 138–55.Google Scholar
NUGENT, STEPHEN 1981 “Amazonia: Ecosystem and Social System.” Man N.S. 16: 62–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
NUGENT, STEPHEN 1993 Amazonian Caboclo Society: An Essay on Invisibility and Peasant Economy. Providence: Berg.Google Scholar
NUGENT, STEPHEN 1997 “The Coordinates of Identity in Amazonia: At Play in the Fields of Culture.” Critique of Anthropology 17 (1): 33–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PADOCH, CHRISTINE, AYRES, JOSÉ MÁRCIO, PINEDO-VÁSQUEZ, MIGUEL, and HENDERSON, ANDREW, EDS. 1999 Várzea: Diversity, Development, and Conservation of Amazonia's Whitewater Flood-plains. New York: New York Botanical Garden Press.Google Scholar
PADOCH, CHRISTINE, and PINEDO-VÁSQUEZ, MIGUEL 1999 “Farming Above the Flood in the Várzea of Amapá.” In Várzea: Diversity, Development, and Conservation of Amazonia's Whitewater Floodplains, edited by Padoch, Christine, et al., 345–354. New York: New York Botanical Garden Press.Google Scholar
PAGDEN, ANTHONY 1993 European Encounters with the New World: From Renaissance to Romanticism. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
PALMATARY, H. C. 1949 “The Pottery of Marajó Island, Brazil.” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society N.S. 39 (3): 260–470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PEREIRA, VALERIA F. G. 1998 “Spatial and Temporal Analysis of Floodplain Ecosystems—Amapá, Brazil—Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing.” Master's thesis, Department of Natural Resources, University of New Hampshire.Google Scholar
PETERSEN, JAMES B., NEVES, EDUARDO, and HECKENBERGER, MICHAEL J. 2001 “Gift from the Past: Terra Preta and Prehistoric Amerindian Occupation in Amazonia.” In Unknown Amazon, edited by Colin McEwan et al., 86–105. London: The British Museum Press.Google Scholar
PINTO PARADA, RODOLFO 1987 Pueblo de leyenda. Trinidad, Bolivia: Editorial Tiempo del Beni.Google Scholar
POETZSCHER, JULIO 1940 A juta: no Brasil e no mercado mundial. Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional.Google Scholar
POSEY, DARRELL A. 1985 “Indigenous Management of Tropical Forest Ecosystems: The Case of the Kayapó.” Agroforestry Systems 3: 139–58.Google Scholar
POSEY, DARRELL A. 1992 “Reply to Parker.” American Anthropologist 94: 441–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
PYNE, STEPHEN J. 1982 Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire. 2d ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
RAFFLES, HUGH 1999 “Exploring the Anthropogenic Amazon: Estuarine Landscape Transformations in Amapá, Brazil.” In Várzea: Diversity, Development, and Conservation of Amazonia's Whitewater Floodplains, edited by Padoch, Christine, et al., 355–70. New York: New York Botanical Garden.Google Scholar
RAFFLES, HUGH 2002 In Amazonia: A Natural History. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
ROOSEVELT, ANNA C. 1980 Parmana: Prehistoric Maize and Manioc Subsistence along the Amazon and Orinoco. New York: Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ROOSEVELT, ANNA C. 1991 Moundbuilders of the Amazon: Geophysical Archaeology on Marajó Island. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
ROOSEVELT, ANNA C. 1999 “Twelve Thousand Years of Human-Environment Interaction in the Amazon Floodplain.” In Várzea: Diversity, Development, and Conservation of Amazonia's Whitewater Floodplains, edited by Padoch, Christine, et al., 371–92. New York: New York Botanical Garden.Google Scholar
ROOSEVELT, ANNA C. 2000 “The Lower Amazon: A Dynamic Human Habitat.” In Imperfect Balance: Landscape Transformations in the pre-Columbian Americas, edited by Lentz, David L., 455–91. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
SAUER CARL O. 1963 “The Morphology of Landscape.” In Land and Life: Selections from the Writings of Carl Ortwin Sauer, edited by Leighly, John, 315–50. Berkeley: University of California Press [1925].CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SCOTT, JAMES C. 1998 Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
SIOLI, HARALD 1951 “Sôbre a sedimentação na várzea do Baixo Amazonas.” Boletim Técnico do Instituto Agronômico do Norte 24: 45–65.Google Scholar
SLATER, CANDACE 1994 Dance of the Dolphin: Transformation and Disenchantment in the Amazonian Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SLATER, CANDACE 1996 “Amazonia as Edenic Narrative.” In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, edited by Cronon, William, 91–131. New York: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
SMITH, NIGEL J. H. 1980 “Anthrosols and Human Carrying Capacity in Amazonia.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 70 (4): 553–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SMITH, NIGEL J. H. 1995 “Human-induced landscape changes in Amazonia and implications for development.” In Global Land Use Change: A Perspective from the Columbian Encounter, edited by Billie L. Turner II, Sal, Antonio G., Fernando G. Bernáldez, and Francesco di Castri, 221–51. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.Google Scholar
STERNBERG, HILGARD O'R. 1975 The Amazon River of Brazil. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.Google Scholar
STERNBERG, HILGARD O'R. 1995a “Water and Wetlands of Brazilian Amazonia: An Uncertain Future.” In The Fragile Tropics of Latin America: Sustainable Management of Changing Environments, edited by Nishizawa, Toshie and Uitto, Juha I., 113–79. Tokyo: United Nations University Press.Google Scholar
STERNBERG, HILGARD O'R. 1995b “Proposals for a South American Waterway.” Proceedings of the 48th International Congress of Americanists, edited by Magnus Mörner and Mona Rosendahl, 99–125. Stockholm-Uppsala, Sweden.Google Scholar
STERNBERG, HILGARD O'R. 1998 A água e o homen na várzea do careiro. 2d ed. Belém: Museu Emílio Goeldi Press.Google Scholar
STEWARD, JULIAN H., ED. 1946–50 Handbook of South American Indians, 6 vols. Washington: United States Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
STEWARD, JULIAN H., and FARON, LOUIS C. 1959 Native Peoples of South America. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
STRATHERN, MARILYN 1981 “No Nature, No Culture: The Hagen Case.” In Nature, Culture, and Gender, edited by MacCormack, Carol and Strathern, Marilyn, 174–222. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, EDUARDO 1996 “Images of Nature and Society in Amazonian Ethnology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 25: 179–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
WALLACE, ALFRED R. 1911 Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro. London: Ward Lock & Co. [1853].Google Scholar
WILLIAMS, RAYMOND 1973 The Country and the City. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
WILLIAMS, RAYMOND 1980 “Ideas of Nature.” In Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays, edited by Williams, Raymond, 67–85. London: Verso.Google Scholar
WINKLERPRINS, ANTOINETTE M. G. A. 1994 “Soils Under Indigenous Agroforestry in the Amazon Estuary.” Transactions, Fifteenth World Congress of Soil Science, edited by Jorge D. Etchevers Barra, 291–92. Acapulco, Mexico.Google Scholar
WINKLERPRINS, ANTOINETTE M. G. A. 1999 “Between the Floods: Soils and Agriculture on the Lower Amazon Floodplain, Brazil.” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison.Google Scholar
WINKLERPRINS, ANTOINETTE M. G. A. 2002 “Recent Seasonal Floodplain-Upland Migration Along the Lower Amazon River.” The Geographical Review 92 (3): 415–431.Google Scholar
WOODS, WILLIAM I., and MCCANN, JOSEPH M. 1999 “The Anthropogenic Origin and Persistence of Amazonian Dark Earths.” Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers Yearbook 25: 7–14.Google Scholar