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A widespread concern among ethnobiologists is the rapid process of erosion of indigenous environmental knowledge observed worldwide. This paper examines the ongoing transformations of knowledge about natural remedies in the Quechua-speaking Andes. Freelisting exercises and interviews were conducted with 36 households at Bolivian and Peruvian study sites. (Generalized) linear mixed-effects models were used to analyze the effects of age on knowledge about medicinal plants, animals, minerals, and their uses. Our study demonstrates that younger participants knew as much about natural remedies as their elders. However, proportional knowledge about some medicinal use categories of natural remedies varied with age. We conclude that knowledge about natural remedies is generally not being lost at the study sites. Nevertheless, it is undergoing transformations in terms of specific medicinal uses. A careful understanding of these complex transformation processes is needed to better orient initiatives for the conservation of biocultural diversity in the Andes and elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the material, discursive, and biophysical dimensions of fuelscapes, or energy landscapes. Ethnographic and ecological fieldwork was conducted in the Machu Picchu Historic Sanctuary, Peru. Andean land use studies have focused on agricultural patterns such as vertical production zones. Fuelscapes are an important, energy-based means of producing and representing landscape. They show how uncultivated lands fit into livelihood strategies and reflect historic sedimentation of landscape. Fuelscapes are shaped by ecological characteristics, historic settlement patterns and property rights, gendered and intergenerational divisions in household labor, and state conservation policies. Conservation policies delimit fuelscapes to privilege live trees, but the resultant denudation of dead wood may carry implications for ecosystem health. This study elucidates how official policies intersect with household and communal resource use strategies to produce Andean fuelscapes. It provides insight into how uncultivated ecosystems fit into land use politics, practices, and representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Palaeodietary isotope studies have long assumed C signals in South American archaeological populations to be due to the consumption of maize ( Zea mays), which in turn, underlie interpretations important social processes. We presents δC data from wild plants ( n = 89) from the south coast of Peru, which may have been significant in the diets of humans and animals in the past. A combination of these with previously published results from domesticates of the Andean region ( n = 144) brings the proportion of C species likely to have contributed to the human dietary isotopic signal, whether directly or indirectly, to almost one third. This undermines the widespread assumption that maize is the only plant to contribute a C signal to diets. By considering both direct and indirect routes whereby C plants may have contributed to the human isotopic signal we show the need for a reassessment of how palaeodietary studies are interpreted in the Andes, and perhaps elsewhere in the Americas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, indigenous communities in the Viceroyalty of Peru suffered forced resettlement, introduced disease, and onerous colonial tribute levies. These produced an onslaught of petitions for new tribute counts, as their diminished populations were obliged to pay the head taxes set by earlier censuses. The resulting visitas (administrative surveys) provide a wealth of information on the demography and agricultural systems of colonial Andean communities. However, comparatively little quantitative research exists on the distribution of agricultural resources and the nutritional demands of households. We model agricultural production and nutritional demand using household demographic and landholding declarations in the visitas from the Colca Valley of southern highland Peru, combined with ethnographically-derived estimates of agricultural production and nutritional demand. The results indicate that despite surplus agricultural production in the aggregate, there were significant differences in intra- and inter-community land wealth and production sufficiency ratios, leaving about 30% of households with caloric shortfalls. In contrast to regional-scale carrying capacity-type models, this simulation characterizes agricultural inequality within colonial Andean communities, and thus accounts for the hardship evidenced by tributary recount petitions, even in a breadbasket province from which much surplus production was extracted to fill colonial coffers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]