Archaeological studies in South America and, specifically, Amazonia have frequently focused on the effects of the environment on human society. Particularly due to preservation in the coastal deserts, the great antiquity of plant domestication in South America is well documented. The agricultural earthworks, savannas and forests of Mojos are examples of a separate but related phenomenon, the domestication of landscape.
Domestication of the landscape means the use of tools such as fire and the control of water to change distributions of plants and animals (Erickson 2006). This makes the environment much more useful, with fruits more easily harvested, animals more easily hunted, fish more easily caught, and distances more easily traversed. This depends more on the creation of desirable attributes in the environment, and less on the manipulation of genetic material to push species across the boundary between “wild” and “domesticated.” Mojos is one of many places where this process has taken place, and three examples demonstrate how the landscape was domesticated.
First, the modem Siriono people of southeastern Mojos use a wealth of knowledge of forest species, modifying the distribution of economically useful trees (Erickson and Balee 2006). Concentrations of peach palm trees show that much of the “pristine” forest in eastern Bolivia is, in fact, the result of generations of modification. Peach palms have many economic uses, from consumption of their high-fat fruits to the making of palm wine. Because the life cycle of trees is long, genetic modification of tree crops is unlikely.
Instead, the imprint of human activity takes the form of the location of trees within the forest. Balee estimates that a considerable portion of the forests of the Amazon basin may have been modified in this way.
Second, the construction of causeways in the flooded savanna modifies the environment in several ways. It makes low-lying areas easier to traverse on foot, and could make higher areas easier to pass in a canoe, using the canal alongside the causeway. In the wet season, when large areas are inundated, causeways can change flows of water over many square kilometers. A well-maintained causeway only two meters high, if it crosses between the levees of two rivers, can impound many square kilometers of water, maintaining inundation and harvesting rainfall for agricultural uses.
Third, the built environment may have made hunting and fishing easier. In the wet season, floods force prey animals onto scarce dry land. Modern inhabitants keep prey “on the hoof’ in such situations, and hunt them at leisure (as long as the flooding conditions persist).
In the north, for example, there is a strong correlation between dry forest and human settlement and it might have been feasible to use the landscape to predict the movements of prey animals (Walker 2004). To a much greater extent, the builders of “zig-zag” causeways in the northeast could have used their flooded savannas to harvest fish (Erickson 1996).
The canals in raised fields also create environments in which frogs, snails and insects flourish, attracting waterfowl as well. Finally, raised field crops themselves would attract animals, which in many cases could be resources rather than pests.
The modification of the savanna makes Mojos a clear example of how native Ama-zonians modified their environment to make landscapes. Domestication of the landscape is not unique to Mojos by any means, but this case highlights the importance of processes that change the availability of resources, without necessarily changing the genetic code of plants and animals.
World History
