Slash-burn-and-churn: Landscape history and crop cultivation in pre-Columbian Amazonia

Abstract: Palaeoecologists argue that the vegetation of Amazonia has changed markedly since the late Pleistocene and show that forest fires have been increasingly more common since the beginning of the Holocene. Because these occurrences coincide with the onset of human colonisation of the region, students of Amazonia discuss the extent to which it''s Holocene fire record reflects climatically-related and/or anthropogenic causes. One factor that complicates inferences is the overall heterogeneity of the basin’s vegetation: during drier moments of the Holocene and/or within less humid sub-regions of the basin, it is difficult to conclude whether fire signals reflect more frequent natural fires or more intense burning by human communities. Another factor is that pre-Columbian livelihoods were not homogenously distributed throughout the region and changed over the course of the Holocene. This paper seeks to help establish an ‘anthropogenic baseline’ against which Holocene evidence for burning can be assessed. To this end, it reviews the role that slash-and-burn cultivation has had in discussions about pre-Columbian Amazonia, discusses how this account has been modified by recent research on pre-Columbian anthropogenic soils, and queries the extent to which the regionally-heterogeneous timing of crop domestication and cultivation may have influenced the fire history of pre-Columbian Amazonia. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]