Timeless Gardens Deep Indigenous History PDF

Exploring Frameworks for
TropicalForest
Conservation
Integrating Natural and Cultural
Diversity for Sustainability,
a Global Perspective
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EDITOR
Nuria Sanz
Exploring Frameworks for
TropicalForest
Conservation
Integrating Natural and Cultural
Diversity for Sustainability. A Global Perspective
Table of Contents
Green World Wide Commitment: International efforts for the safeguarding of tropical
forest biocultural diversity / Nuria Sanz | 6
2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and tropical forests / Nuria Sanz | 20
CHAPTER 1 Natural and Cultural Conservation management in historical perspective
Robin Dennell | 32
Asia in a warmer world: past records and future prospects
Tim Denham | 54
Early Agriculture, Tropical Rainforests and Conservation in Papua New Guinea:
Translating the Past into the Present
Roland Fletcher & Kirrily White | 92

Tropical environments and the trajectories to low-density settlement forms
Patrick Roberts | 116

Late Pleistocene tropical forest forager sustainability and resilience
CHAPTER 2 Traditional knowledge and indigenous practices for sustainable tropical

forest conservation: from past to present
Vernon Scarborough | 138

A Socio-Environmental Assessment of Water and Settlement in the Tropics:
The Engineered Tropical Landscapes of the Ancient Maya and Khmer
Carlos Fausto & Eduardo Neves | 150

Timeless Gardens: deep indigenous history and the making of biodiversity
in the Amazon
Alberto Betancourt | 180

De la conservación “desde arriba” a la conservación “desde abajo”: sabiduría
y aportaciones de de la América profunda a la conservación de bosques tropicales
Candelaria I. Pérez-Martin & Alfonso Larqué-Saavedra | 194
Los arboles de los libros sagrados de los mayas: Popol Vuh y Chilam Balam
Lisa Lucero | 204

Climate Change and Maya Water Management
CHAPTER 3 Future panorama for tropical forest conservation:

integrating natural and cultural diversity for sustainability
Emuobosa Akpo Orijemie | 216

Conserving the tropical rainforests in Nigeria: in whose interest?
Stephen Acabado & Marlon Martin | 228

The Ifugao agroecological system: bridging culture and nature to enhance
tropical biodiversity
Hans Van der Wal | 254

Agrobiodiversidad en huertos familiares y conservación de los bosques
tropicales: el caso del sureste de México
Miguel A. Munguía-Rosas | 266

Diversidad de plantas en un bosque tropical naturalmente fragmentado:
integrando múltiples componentes de la biodiversidad para entender
de forma integral efectos a largo plazo
Kosuke Mizuno & Satomi Shiodera | 280

Tropical peat swamp forest: degradation, conservation and regeneration
Tropical Forest Conservation: the way forward / Nuria Sanz & Robin Dennell | 294
Annex : La Agenda 2030 para el Desarrollo Sostenible y los bosques tropicales / Nuria Sanz | 302
Carlos Fausto
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro
Eduardo G. Neves
Laboratório de Arqueologia dos Trópicos, Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia,
Universidade de São Paulo
Timeless Gardens:
Deep Indigenous
History and
the making of
biodiversity in the
Amazon
150
Abstract
It is accepted that Amazonia was an independent center of plant domestication worldwide. However, archaeological and
ethnographic data on plant cultivation and management shows that it is often difficult to determine what is domestic and
what is not in Amazonia. This paper brings archaeological a ethnographic data to present an alternative perspective to
undertand the long-term relationship between plants and peoples in the Amazon. Instead of “domestication” we propose
the use of the term “familiarization” as a more inclusive denomination to account for the cultural practices related to
plant management there since the middle Holocene until the present.
It is common to consider South America, especially the Andes but also parts
of Amazonia, as a major center of plant domestication in the world (Clem-
ent et al., 2015). When asked about a list of species domesticated in these
regions, specialists will readily mention a number of them such as potatoes
in the Andean highlands and manioc, peanuts, and tobacco from the tropical
lowlands. The standard image conveyed is that, with different temporalities,
the so-called Neolithic revolution happened in different parts of the world in
the same way and under basically similar social circumstances. The existing
differences are attributed either to natural characteristics of the environment
and plant availability, or to the time frame. Given due time all incipient neo-
lithics would converge on the Neolithic. But is this in fact true? Can we say
with confidence that there was ever a Neolithic in the Neotropics?
This question does not stem from any capricious motivation or iconoclastic
tendency on our part but rather builds on two bodies of evidence. First, the
widely acknowledged difficulty of determining what is domestic and what
is not in Amazonia, which has led to a proliferation in the vocabulary used
to discriminate supposedly distinct stages of domestication (Politis, 2007, p.
239). From the simple distinction between cultivated and non-cultivated,
there emerged a three-term classification of wild, managed and domestic,
and more recently a more nuanced distinction between incipiently domes-
ticated, semi-domesticated, and fully domesticated. Clement (2010, p. 73),
for instance, indicates the existence of 52 crops with domestic populations,
41 crops with semi-domestic populations, and 45 crops with incipiently do-
mesticated populations in Amazonia. Interestingly enough, almost 70% of
these crops are tree or wood perennials. Shall we interpret these facts as rep-
resenting different stages of a universal linear process of domestication or as
indexing a different mode of relating to plants and the environment?
151
Timeless Gardens: Deep Indigenous History and the making of biodiversity in the Amazon
The second body of evidence is archaeological. In the early 1980’s, when revisions
of the Amazonian past gained prominence, pointing to greater population densities
and more complex sociopolitical structures existing in the region, archaeologists
anticipated finding evidence for an equivalent intensification of agricultural pro-
duction though maize cultivation (Roosevelt, 1980). This, however, did not prove
true. However, the archaeological data coming from different parts of Amazonia
in this century showed evidence for large-scale landscape management, sometimes
with the presence of maize cultivation (Carneiro, 1995; Iriarte and Dickau, 2012)
but not of agricultural intensification. In most cases, it even seems that the scale
of plant cultivation was less important than it came to be after the introduction
of metal instruments from the 16th century onward (Van den Bel, 2015. Does this
mean that we have to revert the imaginary of environmental limitations and an
empty Amazonia that prevailed though much of the second half twentieth century?
We think that is not case. Rather, we need to re-conceptualize what living in the
Tropical Forest means, particularly in terms of the use of plant resources.
Instead of trying to distinguish between as many stages of domestication as we

can imagine, we should first re-insert the relations to plants within a broader
relational framework, one that includes the relations to animals and humans. In
an essay published in 1962, Haudricourt suggested that the Neolithic revolution
led to a general change in Human-Nature relations, which had also palpable
consequences for interhuman relations. This change, however, would not have
been the same the world over. The existing diversity of animals and plants across
the globe would have generated further diversity in the ways of relating to the
newly domesticated Nature (Haudricourt, 1962, p. 41). Haudricourt conceives of
two extreme poles of domestication: the over domestication of sheep in the Med-
iterranean area (whose relationship mode he called direct positive), and the yam’s
underdomestication in Melanesia (whose mode he called indirect negative). He
specifies that this is not a contrast between one instance of plant and another of
animal domestication, since we could equally compare the yam with “our cereals”
and obtain the same result (Haudricourt, 1962, p. 42). He further suggests that
such differences are co-related to modes of economic production and political
government.
It appears that Haudricourt’s brief essay has had but a limited influence in an-
thropology, though Descola (1994) explicitly draws inspiration from him, and
similar ideas can be found throughout Ingold’s work (2000, chapters 4 and 5).
One of us (Fausto) also drew inspiration from it to develop an Amazonian model
of the relations toward others (humans or not), known as ‘familiarizing preda-
tion’ (Fausto, 2001, 2012). In this paper, we want to suggest that the notion of
familiarization, which was previously applied to kinship, shamanism, warfare,
and pet-keeping, provides us with an alternative model of domestication, one in
which the relation to plants is, to use Haudricourt’s words, indirect negative or, to
avoid a negative definition, is part of a more general concern for “making kin out
of others” (Vilaça, 2002).
152
We will further argue that a key aspect of such mode of production (of kin
out of others) is the promotion of diversity – linguistic, cultural, but also bio-
diversity. Before addressing this argument, let us explain what we understand
by familiarization and how plants fit within this conceptual framework. In
the end we will suggest that concepts such a ‘Neolithic’ of ‘Formative’ have
a limited and certainly not universal application and new concepts should be
devised to explain such distinct non-linear historical trajectories
Plants as pets
It is a well-known fact that Amazonian indigenous people did not practice animal
husbandry before the Conquest, nor did they successfully adopt it in the subse-
quent 500 years, despite the efforts of colonial and national governments for pro-
moting animal breeding among them. There surely are a few exceptions to this
rule. In general, though, European domesticated animals were just incorporated
into indigenous lives, as opposed to being bred by indigenous people. Whoever
strolls around an Amazonian village will notice that chickens run freely without
any care, and that adult dogs are mostly underfed. In many cases, dogs are ob-
tained constantly anew from whites, since they are seldom bred in the villages nor
cared for until they reach maturity. This lack of interest in breeding and raising
domestic animals is coupled with an aversion to eating the very animals that one
has fed (a fact that explain why they never feed chickens, but let them pick their
own food around).
This disinterest in husbandry and controlling the reproduction of animals

presents a striking contrast to the indigenous passion for pet-keeping. Am-
azonian villages abound with wild pets of all kinds, which are normally the
young of animal prey. Amerindians raise dozens of different birds species, as
well as monkeys, rodents, tapirs, peccaries and even jaguars. These animals are
brought by hunters and cared by their wives, who sometimes breastfeed and
adopt them as children. They are almost never eaten, nor do they reproduce
in captivity. All Amazonian languages possess a term to designate such ‘wild
pets,’ which we termed xerimbabos (Fausto 2001), whose reciprocal term is
normally a word that means ‘owner’ or ‘master’.
What is interesting is that these reciprocal pairs (pet/master, sometimes also

child/master) also designate a great number of relationships having nothing
to do with actual pet-keeping. It may apply to the relation between adoptive
parents and adopted children, captors and captives, warriors and their victims,
shamans and their auxiliary spirits, chiefs and followers, and as we shall pro-
pose here, to the relation between cultivators and their plants (Fausto, 2012b).
Although there are obvious differences in all these relationships, they all seem
to be conceived as resulting from two moments: one of appropriation and
another of incorporation. Since the former is usually thought of as a violent
process, we called it ‘predation’, and, as the latter is usually thought of as a pro-
153
cess of ‘making kinship’, we called it familiarization (or adoptive filiation). Bringing
them together into a single expression, we have ‘familiarizing predation’, which
characterizes the process through which alterity is constantly apprehended from
the outside in order to produce the inside – a production which equals to making
and expanding kinship (Fausto, 1999, 2007). Or, again, as Vilaça’s (2002) apt phrase
goes, a way of “making kin out of others”.
Until very recently, we did not apply this concept to plant cultivation. The reason
is that we viewed it from the perspective of an ethnological maxim, according
to which Amazonian Indians were Neolithic people with a Paleolithic mind. But
what if there never a Neolithic in Amazonia? The shinning brilliance of domestic
plants such as manioc, sweet potato, maize, yam, annatto, tobacco, cotton etc. may
have prevented us from thinking of agriculture in Amazonia as an activity quite
similar to pet-keeping and, in more general terms, as a form of familiarization.
Permanent intermediate stages?
For a long time, since Gordon Childe, archaeologists have accepted an almost syn-
chronous occurrence of plant and animal domestication, agriculture, ceramic pro-
duction and the establishment of sedentary life. Loyal to his Marxist influences,
Childe bestowed the term “Neolithic revolution” to characterize this process. More
recently, however, there is a growing reluctance in accepting that the initial do-
mestication of plants and animals was temporarily separated from the subsequent
emergence of agriculture (Smith, 2016, p. 309). In fact, more than 30 years ago,
David Rindos (1984) already argued that plant domestication did not necessarily
lead to the advent of agriculture. Today, these straightforward correlations have
been called into question even for the Levant and Anatolia as the classic cradles of
plant and animal domestication in the Old World. Evidence from southern Anato-
lia demonstrates the presence of monumental architecture without agriculture and
ceramics at the Pre-Pottery Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe (Dietrich et al., 2012),
among other cases. Conversely, it is also becoming clear that early centers of ce-
ramic production developed independently from agriculture in several apparently
“marginal” parts of the Old World (i.e. away from independent centers of plant
domestication), such as Siberia, Japan or Scandinavia (Jordan and Zvelebil, 2011).
An even more striking case can be observed when one compares the trajectories of
the emergence of food production in the Old and New Worlds: whereas in both
regions there were several distinct independent centers of plant domestication as
well as temporal gaps between domestication and the adoption of ceramics and
agriculture, such gaps appear to be much longer in the Americas (Smith, 2001).
In Eastern North America, for instance, the temporal gap between early plant do-
mestication and the adoption of agriculture lasted for almost 4000 years between
3000 cal BCE to CE 900 (Smith, 2001, p. 18). In the Amazon, another almost 4000
old long gap is also seen between the first evidence of plant domestication and the
emergence of sedentary, permanent settlements that can plausibly be associated
154
with agriculturally-based life styles (Neves, 2013). On coastal Ecuador, squash
(Cucurbita sp.) seeds associated with pre-ceramic Las Vegas occupations have
been dated to ca. 10,ooo radiocarbon years before present (Piperno and Sto-
thert 2003), whereas the evidence for agriculture is accepted as being much
later, associated with Valdivia occupations whose initial dates go back to ca.
5500 years BP. In northern coastal Peru, research done in the Ñanchoc Valley
shows as well the presence of Curcubita moschata going back to 9200 BP, and
later of peanuts (Arachis sp.), and cotton (Gossypium barbadense) at least 3000
years before the emergence of sedentary life styles that could be correlated to
agriculture. Conversely, to name other examples, macro-remains of distinct
parts of maize were found associated with pre-ceramic contexts dating up to
cal 7,000 BP at Huaca Prieta and Paredones mounds, also at the northern Pe-
ruvian coast (Grobman et al., 2012).
These “intermediary” strategies have been alternatively denominated mixed

subsistence (Killion, 2013) or low level food production systems (Smith,
2001, p. 33). In this paper we want to push such discussion a little further
and present cases of societies that apparently maintained these kinds of mixed
productive strategies all the way from the early Holocene to the present or
to the recent past. Perhaps no-one has addressed this question in a more in-
teresting way than Bruce Smith. Back in 2001, referring to these long and
supposedly intermediary stages between hunting and gathering and agricul-
ture, he wrote:
these vast and largely uncharted regions are not just uninhabited ter-
ritory crossed on the way to an anticipated agricultural destination by
evolutionary interstates without exits. They are, to the contrary, regions
occupied by diverse, vibrant, and successful human societies that have
developed stable, long-term economic solutions that combine low-level
reliance on domesticates with continued use and management of wild
species. Given the considerable temporal and developmental breadth
of such territories and their great uncharted diversity, both within and
between different world areas, one should not expect to always find the
same standard boilerplate route to agriculture (Smith, 2001, p. 24).
In this paper, we follow Smith’s insightful threads into the Amazon, an area
where we have first-hand ethnographical and archaeological research experi-
ence. First, though, let us take a look at the relative lack of importance of early
cultivation in the New World as a whole.
Early cultivation in the New World
Together with the chronological disentanglement of the evidence for early plant
domestication, on the one hand, and the emergence of agriculture, on the other,
there is another set of data from New World archaeological contexts: the fact
that even for the cases of so-called complex societies, agriculture was relatively
155
less important than previously assumed. Perhaps the best case is that of the early Ol-
mec, one of the classic “mother cultures” of Mesoamerica, whose rise has traditionally
been correlated with the development of intensive maize agriculture. However, the
lack of substantive evidence in support of this hypothesis has led to the formulation
of an alternate one, which proposes that mixed productive economies combining
hunting, fishing, and gardening in lowland contexts began quite early, were adopted
widely, and persisted in the Gulf Coast lowlands (Killion, 2013, p. 572).
The example of maize is illustrative: while in some cases, such as among Missis-
sippian societies, its introduction was clearly related to population growth and the
emergence of urban life and social inequality (Pauketat, 2009), in many other plac-
es, the introduction of maize did not have a noticeable demographic or political
impact at all. Maize was domesticated for almost 9,000 years in the tropical Balsas
river area of southern Mesoamerica. From this initial homeland it spread widely
through South America, arriving in Ecuador around 6,000 years ago, coastal north-
ern Peru (Huaca Prieta and Paredones sites) and all the way to coastal Uruguay,
near the mouth of the Plata river, 4,500 years ago (Grobman et al., 2012,). How-
ever, the mere presence of maize – or other domesticated plant remains - in the
archaeological record does not justify describing them as early farmers, but rather
‘generalist groups’ that had diversified economies based on the management and
cultivation of wild, domesticated and familiarized resources. This is exactly the kind
of strategy that Bruce Smith (2001) has in mind, when he proposes the expression
“low-level food production”
Early centers of plant domestication in South America, such as coastal Ecuador and
northern Colombia, also provide evidence that these early cultivators were societies
with diversified economies based on hunting, fishing, gathering and some plant
management, whose life styles were maintained across millennia (Piperno 2011).
Moreover, at least in northern South America, there is no evidence for scarcity
or environmental crises that could have worked as triggers for the adoption of
agriculture as an alternative adaptive strategy (Aceituno and Loaiza, 2014; Smith,
2016). Once more, no discernible immediate outcome such as population growth,
the establishment of sedentary life and pottery production followed these early de-
velopments (see Piperno, 2011, p. 462 for an opposite view of this). Hence, in the
tropical New World, the incorporation of a domesticated plant into the diet of a
given population seems to have been above all a process of choice and not the result
of an adaptive imperative (Hastorf, 2006). Accordingly, there were no adaptive
pressures for a rapid adoption of agriculture, in the same way that there are few
pressures for animal domestication (Stahl, 2014).
In the Amazon, one of the accepted independent centers of plant domestication

in the Americas (Clement et al., 2010), the transition from plant domestication to
agriculture may never have been fully realized (Moraes, 2015; Neves 2013). Not
by chance, in the anthropological literature, it is more common to use “horticul-
ture” than “agriculture” to characterize Amazonian indigenous cultivation, since
the activity seems more akin to tending a garden than to cultivating a tract of land.
156
This is a minor terminological issue, but there is another one that we need to
address before proceeding. We feel that the expression “low level food pro-
duction” does not do justice neither to Smith’s brilliant insights, nor to Ama-
zonian productive strategies, which are based not only on the cultivation of a
number of domesticated and non-domesticated root and seed crops, but also
on the intense management of long-living non-domesticated tree species that
produce high energy fruits, together with animal management, hunting and
fishing. Although clearly based on mixed strategies, we suggest that Amazoni-
an agroforestry systems worked beyond the subsistence level, generating stable
long-lasting productive economies. Moreover, although we agree that these
societies were qualitatively different from the pre-Holocene hunter–gatherers
on the one hand and agriculturalists on the other (Smith, 2001, p. 33), we fear
that labeling them “low level” or “middle-ground” may mask not only their
sophisticated knowledge and consummate skills, but also their productive ca-
pacity (Killion, 2013, p. 600).
Although originally defined for the eastern woodlands of North Ameri-

ca, Ford’s “4Ts” categories of plant management work well to describe the
range of activities characteristic of these mixed strategies (Ford, 1985, pp. 4-5):
“tending”, or the encouragement of plant growth together with weeding to
control competition; “tilling”, or deliberate soil disturbance to encourage ger-
mination; “tillage”, or the expansion of the natural size of stands before typical
seed dispersion; and, finally, “transplanting”, or the actual transplantation of
plants from one place to another to facilitate access. We cannot over empha-
size how such strategies, are not mutually exclusive in practice. Lathrap (1977)
already pointed to the importance of house gardens comprising transplanted
plants as settings for management, selection and eventual domestication where
all such four activities could be performed. However, Lathrap restricted it to
the domain of the house, not accounting for the fact that Amazonian diver-
sified productive strategies can also include a much larger area of managed
agroforestry. We therefore propose to change the focus from the realm of the
house (the “domus” of domestication) to the kinship realm of “familiarization”.
Non-domestication cultivation and its landscape legacies
The management of trees as sources of food and resources is one example of

non-domestication cultivation, or NDC (Piperno, 2011, p. 463), traditionally
recognized as an important strategy for food production in tropical settings
(Harris, 1989). As with house gardens, these categories fall within Ford’s “4Ts”
general scheme, actually including the four operations of tending, tilling, till-
age and transplantation. In the case of lowland South American tropical for-
ests, non-domestication cultivation includes the management of a number of
important tree crops, such as Bertholletia excelsa or the Brazil nut (Thomas et
al., 2015; Shepard and Ramirez, 2011; Neves, 2017), a number of palm spe-
cies including Euterpe oleracea and Euterpe precatoria or açaí (Morcote-Rios and
157
Bernal, 2001), Caryocar brasilense, or pequi (Smith and Fausto, 2016). At this point,
it is important to recall the deep difference between, on the one hand, tree crop
cultivation, which happens in woods or even within villages, and, at the other,
annual grain (including grasses and legumes) and tuber cultivations, which may
transpire within garden contexts, though not exclusively. Annual cultivars, as the
name correctly implies, have short cycles, but even tubers such as manioc (Manihot
esculenta) that may spend a few years being stored naturally in gardens can be con-
sidered short cycle plants. Tree crops, on the other hand, have much longer cycles.
Despite taking more than 10 years to start producing, a Brazil nut stand, normally
composed of several dozen individuals, can easily remain productive for 500 years
(Thomas et al., 2015; Scoles and Gribel, 2011; Shepard and Ramirez, 2011). Like-
wise, although with a shorter life span, a pequi stand, once planted will produce
fruits for 50-70 years or more (Smith and Fausto, 2016).
The Brazil nut and the pequi, are examples of megafaunal fruits (Janzen and Martin,
1982, Guimarães et al., 2008), that is, species whose dispersal patterns, fruit traits and
phenologies can be explained by interactions with extinct animals. Few extant fauna
in the Neotropics would be large enough to act as fruit dispersers. In the case of low-
land tropical South America, the best way to explain some of their characteristic traits,
such as the presence of large fleshy fruits, would be through selection for dispersal
by large mammals that have been extinct since the Pleistocene/Holocene transition.
South America lost more genera in the Quaternary megafaunal extinction than any
other continent and a range of natural and human-related causes (perhaps in combi-
nation) have been proposed to account for the process of megafaunal extinction (Bar-
nosky and Lindsay, 201o). Likewise, it has been proposed that megafaunal extinctions
in the Amazon may have been responsible for the depletion of nutrients in its typically
poor soils (Doughty et al., 2013). We propose that in places such as the Amazon,
where tree crops comprise more than 2/3 of the roster of cultivated crops (Clement et
al., 2010), several of them being trees with traits of megafaunal fruits (Guimarães et al.,
2008), that a long history of prior megafaunal behavior may have had an important
role in selecting for such traits as increase in seed, endocarp or mesocarp size.
Megafaunal activity in the Pleistocene may have already selected for the develop-
ment of traits that rendered such species amenable for human consumption, but it
was only during the Holocene that a range of systematic tree management strate-
gies practiced by Indigenous societies would play a vital role in promoting further
major changes in the whole structure of Amazonian environments (Levis et al.,
2017). Sedentary occupations along rivers and on hinterlands created patches of
fertile and stable dark soils, or “terras pretas”, which are sought after by famers
today (Glaser and Birk, 2011; Neves et al., 2003; Schmidt et al., 2014). A recent
compilation of stem density and species abundance data from 1170 tree inventory
plots across the Amazon showed that, despite harboring 3.9 × 1011 individual trees
and ca. 16,000 tree species, only 227 “hyperdominant” species (1.4% of the total)
account for half of all trees (Ter Steege et al., 2013). An examination of the list of
the 20 more hyperdominant species shows that more than half of them are useful
plants that are systematicaly managed and exploited today.
158
Among the hypderdominant species, six out of the ten most are palms, in-
cluding Euterpe precatoria (popular name in Portuguese ‘açaí-do-mato’), Iri-
artea deltoidea (popular name in Portuguese ‘paxiúbão’), Euterpe oleracea (pop-
ular name in Portuguese ‘açaí-do-Pará’), Oenocarpus bataua (popular name in
Portuguese ‘patauá’), Socratea exhorhiza (popular name in Portuguese ‘paxiú-
ba’) and Astrocaryum murumuru (popular name in Portuguese ‘murumuru’).
According to the authors, one of the potential factors that could explain such
hyperdominance could be widespread pre-colonial cultivation by indige-
nous societies. Indeed, all of those six species are of great economic and sym-
bolic importance for indigenous and other local populations of the Amazon,
providing important sources of food and raw material for the construction
of houses and tools. One of them, Euterpe oleracea, or Açaí-do-Pará, has be-
come a cash crop (Brondízio, 2008), like the Brazil nut. None of these plants
has been, technically speaking, domesticated, perhaps with the exception of
peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) (Clement, 1988; Clement, Rival and Cole 2009).
More than any other palm, it is planted in gardens about to be abandoned,
forming orchards, pretty much like pequi trees in the Upper Xingu (see be-
low). But even in this case (and without questioning the appropriateness of
the term domestication here), there is a great variety of managing practices
of peach palm across Amazonia, which include Ford’s 4Ts.
Like the Brazil nut again, the management and consumption of palm fruits go
back to the beginning of human occupation of the Amazon. An extensive re-
view of palm remains in archaeological sites in the Americas shows their wide-
spread presence from c. 9,000 years BP onwards, particularly species from the
genera Acrocomia, Attalea, Astrocaryum, Bactris, Syagrus, Elaeis and Oenocarpus
(Morcote-Ríos and Bernal, 2001), and this lends support to the hypothesis that
ancient indigenous societies were partially responsible for the dispersal of palm
species across the Neotropics from the early Holocene onwards. Such patterns
are not restricted to the Amazon. In Australia, the constant use of controlled
fires by Aboriginal societies contributed to increase plant biodiversity in arid
zones (Bleige Bird et al., 2008).
These findings from the natural sciences add to the anthropological literature
showing that native Amazonians systematically modify their surroundings
both intentionally and unintentionally and that contemporary Amerindians
explore and rely on previously managed areas composed of secondary for-
ests (Balée, 1994; Politis, 2007; Riva,l 2002). More importantly, these studies
consistently show that such systematic low-level interference in the envi-
ronment tends to result in more biodiversity rather than homogeneity. The
hyperdominance of palms may give a false impression that the overall long-
term effect of indigenous human occupation in the Amazon led to a decrease
in biodiversity. In fact, human activity seems to have resulted in a regime of
micro-variation. In other words, it seems to be the case that indigenous pro-
ductive strategies are geared towards producing minimal differences while
exploring a similar pattern (in this case, species of plants). To better explain
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this idea, we will discuss contemporary evidences concerning three garden prod-
ucts: manioc, sweet potato and peanut. However, before going into this, we must
first address the impact of the Conquest on Indigenous productive systems.
The tropical forest pattern as a modern system
The concept of tropical forest culture was proposed by Robert Lowie in the Hand-
book of South American Indians (1948) and since then this became an influential point
of reference for the study of economic patterns in tropical lowland South America.
According to Lowie’s (1948, p. 1) original formulation, “the Tropical Forest com-
plex is marked off from the higher Andean civilizations by lacking architectural
and metallurgical refinements, yet outranks cultures with the hunting gathering
economy of the Botocudo or with the moderate horticulture of the Apinayé (Gê
stock). At the core of the area the diagnostic features are: the cultivation of tropical
root crops, especially bitter manioc; effective river craft; the use of hammocks as
beds; and the manufacture of pottery”. Among the features proposed by Lowie,
maybe bitter manioc cultivation is the one that persisted successfully over the years
and become most strongly associated with tropical forest cultures (Lathrap, 1970;
Meggers, 1996). Manioc (Manihot esculenta) is indeed a remarkable plant that has a
number of traits that render it an ideal cultivar under tropical equatorial conditions:
it thrives in the normally nutrient-poor soils of the tropics, it is extremely adaptable
and can be cultivated in cycles varying from several weeks to a few years, it can
be naturally stored in gardens for months or years before harvesting, and it yields
products ranging from flour and bread to porridges, sauces and beer. However
these advantages come at a price: manioc is rich in starch but poor in proteins and
a diet based on manioc as the staple needs to be complemented by sources of pro-
tein. Slash-and-burn manioc cultivation is currently so widespread in the Amazon
that it seems natural to assume that it goes back to pre-colonial times. Genetic data
shows that it is a local domesticate (Olsen and Schaal, 1999), and it is known that
by ca. 7000 years BP it was already grown outside the Amazon, in the Porce valley
of Northern Colombia (Castillo and Aceituno, 2006).
However, the evidence for widespread manioc cultivation in ‘deep time’ in the
archaeological record for the Amazon is surprisingly scanty. This could result from
the well-known poor archaeological visibility related to the preservation of man-
ioc remains. Manioc processing may involve all or most of the following steps:
soaking, grating, squeezing, baking and boiling the roots. Such operations greatly
reduce the possibility of identifying macro-remains. Manioc is a shrub and most of
its planting is made with stalks, although contemporary farmers also cultivate va-
rieties that sprout spontaneously in gardens (see below). Hence, there are few hard
parts that could be preserved. Starch grains, a potential micro-remain proxy, may
become amorphous above certain temperatures during processing and phytolith
analyses have not yet been established as a secure proxy for manioc. These caveats
notwithstanding, starch grain analyzes done with grating stones in the Venezuelan
Amazonia (Perry, 2005, p. 417) have confirmed the presence of starch grains of
other root crops such as Dioscorea trifida, Maranta arundinacea and Myrosma can-
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nifolia, but not of manioc. The best evidence for manioc so far comes from
contexts placed along ecotones between closed forests and grasslands either in
SW Amazonia in the llanos de Mojos area of Bolivia (Dickau et al., 2011) and
the French Guiana coast (Iriarte et al., 2010).
Hence, it is possible that the tropical forest pattern described in the literature may
result, at least in part, from changes brought about by European colonization.
For example, the introduction of metal axes has certainly influenced slash and
burn agriculture, making it more itinerant, due to the relative ease of opening
new gardens with metal versus stone axes (Denevan, 1992). The same goes for
the regular, well-defined configurations of contemporary gardens. It is likely that
ancient gardens were more irregular and would have their shapes conditioned by
events such as tree falls. In Coastal French Guiana, the archaeological evidence
shows a change of cultivation patterns with the replacement of maize by mani-
oc after the sixteenth century AD (Van den Bel, 2015). Based on this evidence,
together with historical data and Indigenous oral traditions, it has been proposed
that current “traditional” ethnographic manioc graters made on wooden boards
began to be produced in the seventeenth century onwards as copies of metal grat-
ers introduced by the Dutch in the Guiana coast (Van den Bel, 2015, p. 114). In
the same way the stress on native populations caused by the European conquest,
leading do decimation and dislocation, may have selected for the emergence of
robust crop systems based on the itinerant slash-and-burn manioc cultivation.
Being extensive, and based on a plant that has as one of its attributes the capacity
of storage in the ground for months or even years, manioc cultivation does not
require the same care and attention of more intensive systems, being adapted to
contexts of disruption such as those typical of the colonial period.
Summing up, the apparently traditional pattern of extensive manioc farming

using slash-and-burn agriculture may in fact be an adaptation to the techno-
logical, demographic and political changes brought about by the European
conquest. This does not mean, however, that there was a technological rev-
olution, but rather a change in the importance of certain crops in relation to
others, in such a way that we can imagine the past as even more diversified, in
terms of productive strategies, than the present. Now let us take a look at some
contemporary cultivation practices in gardens. As we noted earlier, we will
discuss three case, beginning with manioc.
Garden lives today
Manioc and its owner
We start with the Wayãpi, a Tupi-Guarani people whose territory lies within
the modern state of Amapá in Brazil and the French Guyana, drawing on Cabral
de Oliveira’s (2006, 2012)excellent work. The Wayãpi live a very typical Ama-
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zonian life. They are good horticulturalists, cultivating a huge number of manioc va-
rieties alongside many other products (sweet potato, yam, banana, squash, pineapple,
peach palm, cotton, tobacco etc.). They are also quite mobile combining agricultural
work with trekking and hunting in the forest. Men are responsible for clearing and
deforesting new plots, whereas cultivation and tending is the work of women, who
are referred to as the garden’s ‘owners’ (-jarã) (Oliveira, 2006, p. 70). The opening
of a garden is a dangerous act. It requires the appropriation of a domain that has its
own other-than-human owners, and its subsequent transference to human owners.
It therefore creates a human place out of the forest domain (Oliveira, 2006, pp. 73-
76), which is repeated every year. As Descola (1986, p. 170) states, slash-and-burn
agriculture implies a recurring predation of the forest.
Nevertheless, the frontier between the garden and the forest is still fluid, and the
Wayãpi try to control this dangerous permeability by strongly distinguishing be-
tween plants that are planted by them and plants that are not planted by them (and
thus may be the culture of other-than-human beings). The distinction here is not
between domestic and non-domestic, as Balée (1994) suggests for the Ka’apor, but
between that which is planted by a human, and that which stems from the inten-
tionality of other-than-human persons or originate without any purposeful action.
However, even the species reproduced in the gardens – those the Wayãpi actually
plant – are not exclusively owned by them, but fall also within the domain of a
spirit-owner. This is why, for instance, a mother with a new-born child does not
go into a garden, lest the ‘manioc owner’ (mani’ojarã) attack and harm the baby
(Oliveira, 2006, p. 80). Thus there is a tension between the spirit-owner and the
human-owner: if the latter does not take the necessary precautions or does not
treat the plants well, the former will prey either on her or her child. After all, the
cultivator is appropriating the offspring of the spirit-owner (the manioc roots) in
order to produce human kinship by means of food production (Fausto, 2007). This
competition to determine who produces kinship out of whom is most strikingly
conveyed by the Achuar, who state that, if babies were taken to the gardens, man-
ioc plants would suck their blood (Descola, 1986, pp. 253-254).
Though cultivars are often said to be the offspring of their spirit-master, they are
also the children of those that cultivated them. As we saw, this co-parenthood is
not without risks and tensions. The spirit-owner cares for their offspring, being
watchful of the treatment given to them by humans. To guarantee that manioc will
thrive, the Wayãpi grow another plant in their gardens, named ‘manioc’s mother’
(manio’o’y), which makes the plants happy (Oliveira, 2006, p. 187). This idea of
‘cheering up’ the cultivated plants is a recurring theme. The Kuikuro used to plant
a variety of manioc, called akúla, in the center of the garden, deeming it to be a
song-master capable of enlivening the manioc plants. In Enawene-Nawe mythol-
ogy, the first manioc sprouted from the body of a girl, who asked her mother to
bury her (Santos, 2006, p. 188). Today, after planting the first stems, the Enawene
tie smoked fish to them and pour beverage on top of the mounds, in order to feed
the manioc-girl (Santos, 2006, p. 190).
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As Emperaire (2005) indicates manioc stems are “raised rather than cultivat-
ed or planted”, pretty much in the same way as children and pets. The focal
relation here is that between a mother and her children. In fact, we seem to
have a series of mother-offspring relations translated one into the other until
manioc roots sufficiently grow to be dug up and transported to a human vil-
lage, where they will serve to feed people and produce kinship. From an initial
male act of predation (the clearing of a garden), which transforms a forest place
into a human domain, there follows a female act of familiarization in which a
spirit-plant relation translates into a maternal bond between the horticulturist
and her plants. Manioc roots are cared for by their owners (both the spirit
and the woman) until they are fully grown and ready to be extracted from
underground and made available as food to humans. When the whole process
is completed, the garden starts to transform itself into a fallow, which, in due
time, becomes forest again.
Sweet Potato: the garden as a family
Let us now briefly review a second example, which comes from Morim de
Lima’s (2016) recent thesis on horticulture and ritual among the Ge-speaking
Krahô, who inhabit the northeast Brazilian central plateau. Here the vegeta-
tion is the typical Brazilian savannah (cerrado), interspersed with gallery forests,
where the gardens are opened. The sexual division of work varies according
to the species planted: women plant sweet potato, men plant maize, and man-
ioc is planted by both together (men digging the holes, and women placing
the stems underground) (Morim de Lima, 2016, p. 208). The act of planting
triggers a liminal state, so that cultivators (especially women) have to follow a
series of interdictions afterwards, such as not having sex, and avoiding certain
animals and vegetables. According to a Krahô woman, the reason for abstain-
ing from certain acts and foods is that “we consider our gardens as family”
(Morim de Lima, 2016, p. 87).
The Krahô state unequivocally that cultivars are ‘persons’, although not hu-
mans: they think and talk, and this is why they can be dangerous to humans.
Cultivators must be careful, especially when planting and harvesting crops,
since the plant (or its chief, pahi) can turn against them – or, if the proper
behavior is followed, favors them. Morim de Lima narrates a number of cases
in which a man or a woman fall ill due to an aggression by Potato or Manioc,
with whom he or she dreams about thereafter. These are typical cases of sha-
manic initiation, where the auxiliary-spirit-to-be is a cultivar. If the initiation
is completed, the plant becomes a nephew-nominee of the human person qua
shaman. It is quite interesting to note that, in the Krahô case, domestic plants
play a role which is usually reserved for animals in Amazonian shamanism.
The Krahô do not have a unique word for the ‘owner-master’ function, such
as the suffix -jarã among the Wayãpi. The spirit-masters of plants and animals
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who appear in human form to shamans are usually called ‘chief’ (pahi) (MO, 2016,
p. 237). As we have argued elsewhere, a chief is the singular image of a multiplic-
ity, it is a body that contains all his people (Fausto, 2008). This definition applies
well to Potato (with a capital letter), since the multiple tubers growing along its
branches are deemed to be its children by the Krahô. Women who abstain from sex
and certain foods after planting sweet potato are thus co-producing these tubers.
Morim de Oliveira (2016, p. 150) calls the Potato, ‘the genetrix,’ and the cultivator,
the ‘raising-mother,’ pointing to the same entanglement of motherhood relations
we have observed in the Wayãpi case. This is why the horticulturist has to prove
that she is a good mother to them (i.e. the tubers), lest they go to someone else’s
garden and grow up there. If they are family, family they are, but only inasmuch as
they are treated as kin.
Peanuts: the old lady’s babies
We would like to offer another example, this time of a domestic plant cultivat-
ed from seeds: peanut. It constitutes the core cultivar of the Kayabi (Kawaiweté),
a Tupi-Guarani speaking people who originally inhabited the Teles Pires river,
and whose population partially moved to the Xingu basin between the 1950’s and
1970’s. They are known for their diversified horticulture, and their sophisticated
cuisine, of which the peanut is undoubtedly their specialty. According to Geraldo
da Silva (2009), from whom we draw the data presented in this section, by the
mid-2000’s, they were cultivating 20 different varieties of peanuts. This plant has
an important characteristic for our discussion here: self-pollination is its dominant
breeding behavior, with a low rate of cross-pollination (between 0.25-6%) (Silva,
2009, p. 206). This means that varieties are pretty stable, especially if the seeds are
kept separated during harvesting, storage and sowing. This is exactly what the
Kayabi do: they do not mix seeds of different varieties and plant them separated by
rows of manioc, maize, cotton, and nowadays banana (Silva, 2009, p. 200). How
then do new varieties emerge from within the system?
The Kayabi are very attentive to the appearance of off-types resulting from cross-pol-
lination. Although allogamous reproduction occurs in low rates, it plays a crucial role
in making variation possible. But this depends on the women’s proficient knowledge
for identifying them: “During shelling, expert farmers are able to identify off-types of
regular varieties, which are considered by most Kaiabi to be new varieties, and might
be separated for sowing in a small plot for observation and seed multiplication.” (Sil-
va, 2009, p. 207). The Kayabi do not explain variation in terms of cross-pollination.
They say that the ‘owner of the cultivars’, an old lady named Kupeirup, is responsible
for giving them the new varieties, a gift that depends both on the proper behavior
of the horticulturists, and on the shamans’ mediatory role. In recent decades, a father
and his son Tuiarajup ‘specialized’ in agricultural shamanism, establishing a produc-
tive and direct relationship with Kupeirup, which allowed a NGO’s project for the
conservation of Kayabi peanut diversity to take off (Silva, 2009, p. 230-2).
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Kupeirup is the owner of cultivars because they all came from parts of her
incinerated body. She was concerned with the fact that her sons only had wild
fruits to eat, especially palm fruits that they planted as their crop. But these
trees took too long to grow and produce fruits. So she decided to sacrifice
herself in order for her sons to have abundant and fast-growing food. She
told them to open a big garden and burn her there. As in other Amazonian
agricultural myths, fire promotes a transformation, and from her body all the
cultivars appeared (Silva, 2009, p. 448-9). What is striking about this myth is
that it essentially tells us the same story we narrate today, when explaining the
emergence of food production in the Amazon.
Kayabi peanut cultivation opens to variation through a careful exploration of

cross-pollination, which is part of a larger cosmological framework. It also
opens to novelties through the circulation of seeds between villages and be-
tween ethnic groups, although with a very careful evaluation of their benefits
and dangers. Like manioc for the Wayãpi and sweet potato for the Krahô,
peanut is considered a dangerous and strong-smelling food, associated with
blood, and cannot be eaten during liminal states. Some varieties are riskier
than others, and in some cases, even walking alongside a peanut field can pose
danger to the incautious person (Silva, 2009, pp. 196-7). Be that as it may, the
Kayabi continue to take the risk of experimenting with new varieties. As some
Wayãpi women explained to Cabral de Oliveira why they were so eager to
obtain new tyes of manioc during their trips outside the reservation: because
‘it’s different’ (Cabral de Oliveira 2006, p. 225).
According to the shaman Tuiarajup, in the past, a great horticulturist used

to hang in his/her house “a small piece of cotton cord, to which other pieces
containing knots were attached. Each secondary cord corresponded to a year,
and each knot represented one new peanut variety the farmer had identified.
Upon requesting it, visitors received explanations about peanut diversity the
host was holding, and an opportunity to exchange ideas and seeds opened up.”
(Silva, 2009, p. 212). This is a quite common memory device in so-called oral
societies, which we can find in some areas of the Amazon, normally employed
for the recalling of extensive musical repertoires (Fausto et al., 2011). What is
interesting here is the fact that these oral repertoires are based on a parallelistic
mode of enunciation, the main mechanism of which is the variation of mini-
mal difference, exactly as seems to occur in the cultivation of plants, where one
finds a combination between stability and difference.
The breach: Slowing entropy down
At this point, we hope to have given enough ethnographic substance to our

initial proposition that plant cultivation in Amazonia should be understood
as part of a general movement of appropriation and familiarization. Now, we
would like to ask: what does this have to do with diversity, and particularly
165
agro-biodiversity? The question can be addressed at two different levels. In a more

abstract one, it relates to what Lévi-Strauss (1991) called ‘the openness to the other,’
i.e., a general orientation of Amerindian societies toward alterity, founded on a sort
of ontological heteronomy. Numerous authors have addressed such heteronomy
and described its tangible expressions in Amerindian social life. Ontological heter-
onomy depends on a recurrent outside-inside movement, in which life is created
through the incorporation of difference, without ever dissolving it into identity.
Carneiro da Cunha (2015) translate this idea in terms of the laws of thermodynam-
ics, suggesting that this ‘openess to the other’ slows entropy down by constantly
reinstating difference into the system.
In a more concrete level, and specifically in the case of plant cultivation, we could
say that to generate diversity out of cultivation there must always be an opening,
a fissure allowing communication and exchange with the outside. Let us try to
make this more tangible by taking into consideration the well-known paradox of
cloning and variation in manioc cultivation: how can there be so many varieties of
manioc in Amazonia when manioc is cloned? A number of authors have consist-
ently shown that although Amazonian people privilege manioc’s vegetative repro-
duction, they do not control or inhibit sexual reproduction. To the contrary, they
seem to favor it, experimenting in new varieties that spontaneously emerge from
cross-pollination. Some of these varieties sprout up in old fallows, as the result of a
series of translation acts involving seeds, ants and fire.
In our own field research among the Kuikuro, we listed 35 varieties of manioc,
of which half were present in the gardens as of 2014. The two dominant varieties
were somewhat recent acquisitions. In the mid-seventies, the Kuikuro founded a
new village at a site that had been previously occupied. After burning a plot, a man
noticed that a manioc plant had sprouted up spontaneously. He had never seen this
variety, and decided to clone it. Since the roots produced lots of starch, the most
valued sub-product of manioc, his wife approved it. He then continued cloning
the new variety, and further ahead he gave it to another man, who did the same
thing and so on. As for the second variety, it was found later on in an old fallow by
the lake Tafununu, where some Kuikuro families used to build summer houses and
clear home gardens. The man who found it also decided to test it: he planted the
stems, evaluated its quality, and then circulated it among his kinsfolk.
Amazonian manioc cultivation is geared toward reproducing identical landraces as

much as introducing new ones. This is made possible by both exploring vegetative
propagation and not controlling sexual reproduction. There is always an opening,
a breach, where fallows play a central part. Instead of a marked discontinuity be-
tween cultivated land and forest, we have a continuous succession caused by human
‘creative disturbances’ that result in further diversity (Balée, 1989; Balée and Gély,
1989; Zent and Zent, 2012). Let us now address yet another example, in which a
further element appears in forest succession.
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The pequi tree and the mixed seeds
Among the Kuikuro, many old swiddens do not become fallows, but orchards
of pequi trees (Caryocar sp). Typically, the garden owner plants the orchard
for his children or grandchildren in the following way: he draws a caiman
on the ground and digs it, placing a number of seeds within the hole. He
covers them, and waits until they sprout, planting the seedlings in the manioc
garden at a regular distance. After abandoning the garden, the owner and his
family continues to clean the plot until the trees are tall enough. After 5 to 7
years, the trees start to bear fruit, which is collected during the pequi season,
from mid-October to early December. As happens with manioc cultivation,
pequi culture also ‘comes with’ a highly sophisticated technology and gener-
ates different products: fruit (imbe), jelly (tuma), oil (ngukau), nut (minga) and
a beverage (imbene) that is consumed until about six months after the end of
the pequi season. The Kuikuro keep the cooked pulp in a hermetically closed
basket stored under the water.
The Kuikuro distinguish between the wild pequi from the cultivated ones,
though both fall under the general category imbe and possibly belong to the
same species (Caryocar brasiliense). When called to elicit the category’s inter-
nal difference, they use hekugu (‘true’, ‘proper’) to qualify the cultivated pequi
trees. Among these, they recognize some 16 different ‘types,’ but it is difficult
to know if all of them amount to varieties in the biological sense. Pequi is
an allogamous species, and its individuals can live for many decades. Unlike
manioc, it is thus much more difficult to stabilize pequi landraces. Even so, out
of 16 ‘types,’ half of them seem to be biological varieties, including a spineless
fruit, which has recently interested Embrapa Cerrado for its potential econom-
ic value. While the Brazilian agency, created following the model of ex-situ
conservation, tries to ‘ameliorate’ the spineless pequi, making its growth pre-
dictable and homogenous, the Kuikuro have no interest in planting an orchard
with a single variety. They mix different seeds within the caiman’s body, and
do not even care to know which kind of pequi will germinate from the seed-
lings. They just want to have a good variety of fruits: the ones that are good
to eat raw, those that produce good oil, the sweet ones that make good jelly,
and so on.
Pequi orchards are productive for many decades, and some trees can even sur-
vive for a century. Like peach palm in Western Amazonia, they are important
indexes of previous human occupation, and the Kuikuro know who planted
them and to whom they were given. As we said, they are always gifts for
succeeding generations. The orchards are not, however, an exclusive human
space, since human ownership is enmeshed in other-than-human mastery.
The pequi has its other owners, among which the most prominent is the hum-
mingbird, who is a zealous and jealous master. It can cause illness to a hu-
man, which is the most productive mechanism of cross-species familiarization
among the Kuikuro. If cured from this illness, the patient becomes the master
167
of the hummingbird, who will be treated as his/her pet. S/he will feed it, together
with other birds, for years to come, and will promote its ritual, called Hugagü, in
which these birds are depicted by wooden sculptures.
Was there ever a Neolithic in Tropical Lowland South America?
Located near the modern city of Santarém in the lower Amazon, the Taperinha flu-
vial shellmound has yielded what are considered to be the oldest ceramics produced
in the New World, dating back to 7,000 years (Roosevelt et al., 1991). The findings
of Taperinha are important because they add to a roster of evidence that attest to
the role of the humid tropics as an important setting for cultural development in the
New World including plant domestication and early ceramic production. In the
early sixteenth century AD, when Europeans arrived in South America, they were
confronted in the Andean highlands with centralized and hierarchical societies such
as the Inka Empire. The evidence of monumental architecture, also abundant in
the Andes and in the desert coast of the Pacific Ocean, was likewise employed to
establish a picture of the cultural history of South American Indians that still per-
sists: the notion that the arid coast and the highlands were cradles for civilization,
whereas the tropical lowlands had a peripheral role in the human occupation of the
continent. Such new evidence shows that the Amazon was also a cradle for early
cultural developments but that its ancient societies had different histories from their
Andean counterparts.
There is a clear pattern showing that all centers for early ceramic production in
South America are located in tropical lowland contexts in proximity to the sea,
estuaries and large rivers. Together with Taperinha, which sits at the edge of the
floodplain of the Amazon, the other sites or regions where early ceramics are found
are located along an arc spanning the north of the continent. On the Pacific coast
in Santa Elena, Ecuador, Valdivia sites have ceramics dating from ca. 5,500 BP
(Marcos, 2015). On the Caribbean coast of Colombia, sites such as Puerto Hormi-
ga and San Jacinto (Oyuela-Caycedo, 1995; Oyuela-Caycedo and Bonzani, 2005)
have ceramics dating back to 6,000 BP in the latter. On coastal Guiana, Alaka shell
mounds have ceramics dating back to 6,000 years BP (Roosevelt, 1995; Williams,
1997). Finally, at the mouth of the Amazon, Mina phase shellmounds and open air
sites have dates going back to 5,500 BP (Roosevelt, 1995; Silveira et al., 2011).
Except for coastal Ecuador, these sites or regions lie far from the early centers of
plant domestication in South America. In all these other places, there is no sys-
tematic archaeobotanical research done with such early contexts, except for San
Jacinto (Oyuela-Caycedo and Bonzani, 2005) where the data shows that there is
no correlation with early ceramic production and food processing and that early
ceramic production use was related to activities other than food processing (Oyu-
ela-Caycedo, 1995).
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In the Amazon, the widespread association between ceramic production and
food processing happened much later and may have been associated with the
formation of anthropic dark earths (ADEs) and correlated to occupations of the
Pocó-Açutuba archaeological culture starting around 2,500 BP (Neves et al.,
2014). Once more one sees a large chronological gap of more than 3,000 years,
between the dates for early pottery production at Taperinha at ca. 7,000 years
BP (Roosevelt et al., 1991) and the establishment of such sedentary life styles.
Such transformations have been associated with an “Amazonian formative” stage
(Arroyo-Kalin, 2011) but we are not so confident about the value of such a con-
cept to Amazonian contexts.
In fact, the formulation of a stage known as Formative Period is due to Gordon

Willey and Philip Phillips (1958) as an attempt to define developmental schemes
for the Americas comparable to those of the Old World, such as Neolithic or
Paleolithic. Later on, James Ford’s impressive survey of Formative Cultures in
the Americas (1969) defined Formative as “the 3,000 years (or less in some re-
gions) during which the elements of ceramics, ground stone tools, handmade
figurines, and manioc and maize agriculture were being diffused and welded
into the socioeconomic life of the people living in the region extending from
Peru to the eastern United States”. Despite Ford’s herculean effort, we believe
that application of concepts such as Formative or Neolithic to Amazonian con-
texts does not actually help us to understand the cultural histories of the region.
We need another and radically different heuristic strategy in order to fully grasp
the range of complex interactions between humans and plants in Amazonia.
Concluding remarks
At the end of an inspiring article on the paradox of manioc clonal reproduction

and varietal diversity, Rival and McKey (2008, p. 1124) ask us if manioc can be
incorporated into the model of ontological animism (Descola, 2005), and be
considered as an Other, pretty much as animals are. Our answer is: definitely
yes. Cultivation in Amazonia (and elsewhere as well) is not a simple technical
activity, but presupposes social skills for engaging in an extended network of re-
lations with human and other-than-human persons. It implies the entanglement
of different agents, crosscutting the nature-culture divide, and making it a risky
cross-species enterprise of appropriation and familiarization. This is why we ar-
gue for the necessity of reinserting it within a broader framework including the
relations to animals and humans, as well as proposed the notion of familiarization
as an alternative concept to domestication, one in which there is a constant effort
of ‘making kin out of others’ (Vilaça, 2002). We further argue that a key aspect
of such mode of production is the generation of diversity by means of a principle
that promotes difference at a minimal distance. This principle applies to many
aspects of Amazonian indigenous lives, and can also be inferred from the great
diversity of language families and isolated languages found in an area without
major geographical barriers such as the Amazon.
169
In this article we also brought together a range of evidence from archaeology and
ethnology in order to illuminate each other and to help re-conceptualize a number
of issues. We propose that the evidence for the lack of agricultural intensification in
Amazonia must be understood not as some kind of deficiency, but in fact pointing
to another different and very complex form of food production. This combines
different strategies based on a deep ecological knowledge, and an extensive and
sophisticated interaction with and management of a varied mosaic of landscapes
and ecosystems. There is no convincing reason to suppose that Amazonian cul-
tural history should replicate (albeit at a slower pace) what happened in the ‘classic
cradles’ for plant and animal domestication in the Old World. What we argue for
here is the need to completely rethink the many cherished assumptions embed-
ded in outmoded stage-wise developmental models and to reassess human relations
with the tropical forest environment in ways that really do justice to indigenous
achievements.
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Exploring Frameworks for

Conception, Edition and General Coordination of the project:

Graphic and cover design:

Exploring Frameworks for

CHAPTER 1 Natural and Cultural Conservation management in historical perspective

Roland Fletcher & Kirrily White | 92

Patrick Roberts | 116

CHAPTER 2 Traditional knowledge and indigenous practices for sustainable tropical

Vernon Scarborough | 138

Carlos Fausto & Eduardo Neves | 150

Alberto Betancourt | 180

Lisa Lucero | 204

CHAPTER 3 Future panorama for tropical forest conservation:

Emuobosa Akpo Orijemie | 216

Stephen Acabado & Marlon Martin | 228

Hans Van der Wal | 254

Miguel A. Munguía-Rosas | 266

Kosuke Mizuno & Satomi Shiodera | 280

Instead of trying to distinguish between as many stages of domestication as we

This disinterest in husbandry and controlling the reproduction of animals

What is interesting is that these reciprocal pairs (pet/master, sometimes also

Permanent intermediate stages?

These “intermediary” strategies have been alternatively denominated mixed

Early cultivation in the New World

In the Amazon, one of the accepted independent centers of plant domestication

Although originally defined for the eastern woodlands of North Ameri-

Non-domestication cultivation and its landscape legacies

The management of trees as sources of food and resources is one example of

The tropical forest pattern as a modern system

Summing up, the apparently traditional pattern of extensive manioc farming

Garden lives today

Manioc and its owner

Sweet Potato: the garden as a family

Peanuts: the old lady’s babies

Kayabi peanut cultivation opens to variation through a careful exploration of

According to the shaman Tuiarajup, in the past, a great horticulturist used

The breach: Slowing entropy down

At this point, we hope to have given enough ethnographic substance to our

agro-biodiversity? The question can be addressed at two different levels. In a more

Amazonian manioc cultivation is geared toward reproducing identical landraces as

Was there ever a Neolithic in Tropical Lowland South America?

In fact, the formulation of a stage known as Formative Period is due to Gordon

At the end of an inspiring article on the paradox of manioc clonal reproduction

Arroyo-Kalin, M. 2010. The Amazonian Formative: Crop Domestication and

Arroyo-Kalin, M. 2012. Slash-burn-and-churn: Landscape history and crop culti-

Balée, W. 1994. Peoples of the fallow: a historical ecology of foraging in lowland

Balée, W. Gély, A. 1989. Managed Forest Succession in Amazonia: The Ka’apor

Carneiro, R. 1995. The history of ecological interpretations of Amazonia: Does

Carneiro da Cunha, M. 2015. Traditional people, collectors of diversity.

Castillo Espitia, N. & Aceituno Bocanegra, F.B. 2006. El Bosque Domestica-

Clement, C.R., de Cristo-Araújo, M., Coppens d’Eeckenbrugge, G., Alves

Coelho de Souza, M. & Fausto, C. 2004. Reconquistando o campo perdido: o

Denevan, W. 1992. Stone vs metal axes: the ambiguity of shifting cultivation

Denham, T. & Vrydaghs, L. 2007. “Rethinking agriculture: Introductory

Descola, Ph. 1994b. Homeostasis as a cultural system. A. C. Roosevelt

Descola, Ph. 2005. Par-delà nature et culture. Gallimard, Paris.

Emperaire, L., Pinton, F. & Second, G. 1998. Gestion dynamique de la di-

Emperaire, L. 2005. A biodiversidade agrícola na Amazônia brasileira: recurso e

Fausto, C. 2007. Feasting on people: Cannibalism and commensality in Amazonia.

Fausto, C. 2012a. Warfare and shamanism in Amazonia. Cambridge Latin American

Harris, D. R. 1989. An evolutionary continuum of people-plant interaction.

Haudricourt, A. 1962. Domestication des animaux, culture des plantes et trait-

Howard, C. 2001. Wrought identities: The Waiwai expeditions in search of the