Start Date
12-9-2023 3:45 PM
End Date
12-9-2023 5:00 PM
Access Type
Open Access
Abstract
The extent to which Indigenous land use and cultural burning practices have altered modern ecosystems is a hotly debated topic in archaeology and paleoecology. To address this issue, an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological, archaeobotany, palaeoecolgoy, and palaeoclimatology is used to investigate climate-human-ecosystem interactions in the Amazon. These data indicate Indigenous Amazonians employed diverse subsistence strategies that combined cultural burning, agroforestry, polyculture, and soil amelioration that maximized subsistence diversity without large-scale land clearing. These data provide evidence of resource diversification, improved food security, and sustainable anthropogenic landscapes during increased climate variability and expanding Indigenous populations during the late Holocene. These data provide an example of long-term anthropogenic landscapes that can inform management and conservation efforts for sustainable futures of tropical ecosystems in the 21st century.
Biography
Dr. Maezumi is a Neotropical paleoecologist specializing in the impact of past human land use, cultural burning, and plant domestication on modern forest ecosystems. She is currently the Group Leader of Palaeoecology at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany.
Additional Links
ORCID
Cultural Legacies in the Amazonian Holocene: A Paleoecological Perspective
The extent to which Indigenous land use and cultural burning practices have altered modern ecosystems is a hotly debated topic in archaeology and paleoecology. To address this issue, an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological, archaeobotany, palaeoecolgoy, and palaeoclimatology is used to investigate climate-human-ecosystem interactions in the Amazon. These data indicate Indigenous Amazonians employed diverse subsistence strategies that combined cultural burning, agroforestry, polyculture, and soil amelioration that maximized subsistence diversity without large-scale land clearing. These data provide evidence of resource diversification, improved food security, and sustainable anthropogenic landscapes during increased climate variability and expanding Indigenous populations during the late Holocene. These data provide an example of long-term anthropogenic landscapes that can inform management and conservation efforts for sustainable futures of tropical ecosystems in the 21st century.