Raised fields in Suriname’s coastal plain have been described as artificial varzeas (Versteeg 2003). The fields are enriched by a fertile layer on a regular base, that is, by a natural agent on the varzea, and by an artificial agent in the case of raised fields. In both cases fresh water surrounds the plots. Optimized agricultural production on the varzea became the economic basis for complex Amazonian cultures, such as the Santarem culture. Though all the details are not yet clear, it has been argued (Roosevelt 1987) that events similar to those elsewhere in the world also occurred in Amazonia: groups cultivating varzea areas along the Amazon grew in population numbers and social complexity (i. e., to a chiefdom level) in a relatively short period of time. They are thought to be the physical and intellectual ancestors of the Indians who settled in the middle Orinoco and the lower Amazon from where they influenced and populated surrounding areas, such as the Suriname coast.
Use of the varzea techniques was one of the basic strategies of these people, but it was only applied in areas with suitable soil and hydrology and only when conditions made this laborious system possible. This Amazonian technology arrived in Suriname via the Casiquiare Canal and the Orinoco. And, indeed, we also find mound sites in between, in the Venezuelan Llanos, in combination with raised fields (see Chapter 23 in this volume).
We saw above that cheniers were the preferred settling location in other parts of coastal Suriname, but that these are lacking in the west (Figure 17.1). The reasons for building the mounds in that chenier-poor part of Suriname’s coastal plain is that optimal conditions for raised-field agriculture occur precisely there. But village locations had to be built in the swamps as there was no naturally elevated terrain.
Thus the coastal Indians constructed raised agricultural fields in optimal landscape conditions, but where they also had to build clay mounds 100-150 m across so as to create dry locations for settlements.
World History
