Geoarchaeology of a Terra Preta de Índio site in the Central Amazon By Anna Tedesc

281 Pages·2011·5.95 MB·English

by  Anna Browne Ribeiro

Acts, practices, and the creation of place:
Geoarchaeology of a Terra Preta de Índio site in the Central Amazon

By
Anna Tedeschi Browne Ribeiro

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
Anthropology
in the
Graduate Division
of the
University of California, Berkeley

Committee in charge:
Professor Rosemary Joyce, Chair
Professor Patrick Kirch
Professor Ronald Amundson

Spring 2011
© 2011 by ANNA TEDESCHI BROWNE RIBEIRO
All rights reserved
Abstract
Acts, practices, and the creation of place: Geoarchaeology of a Terra Preta de Índio site in the
Central Amazon
by
Anna Tedeschi Browne Ribeiro
Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology
University of California, Berkeley
Professor Rosemary Joyce, Chair
My dissertation investigates inconsistencies in the ways Amazonia has been presented to the public
and within archaeology as a discipline. It does so by bringing methods from the earth sciences to
bear on sites that resist interpretation under widely accepted models for habitation of pre-Columbian
Amazonia. Terra Preta de Índio, a type of Amazonian Dark Earth, is a dark soil produced by
deliberate human action that functions as key evidence for intensive environmental and landscape
remodeling in pre-Columbian Amazonia. Terra preta sites have been recognized in recent decades as
likely resulting from large, permanently settled populations previously believed to be absent from
Amazonia. My dissertation reconstructs patterns of daily life and village organization at a terra preta
site, Antônio Galo, as a means of constructing an alternative narrative about Amazonia’s past.
Prevalent narratives about Amazonia cast the region as homogenous and static, exotic, yet culturally
decadent. These deeply embedded images of Amazonia have roots in early narratives of ‘discovery’
and ‘exploration,’ which are tightly interwoven with colonialist projects. Historically, archaeological
contributions to knowledge about Amazonia, which make use of notions of social complexity that
emerge from colonialist notions about ‘civilization,’ also cast Amazonia as empty and its people as
passive in its development. Through an exploration of place, I examine the construction of these
narratives, and then employ data that speak to Native Amazonians’ active role in constructing the
landscape to propose alternative narratives for Amazonia and its people.
In order to detect material traces of past acts of remodeling embedded in the archaeological soil and
sediment matrix, I developed a geoarchaeological approach to investigating the household scale at
Antônio Galo. I approach the matrix as a particulate body that mediates the relationship between
people and their environments and also serves as the stage upon which lives are enacted. Moving
away from indices of social complexity, which do not adequately address the scale of daily life in
Amazonia, I examine macroscopically visible and invisible traces of the past to reconstruct places
created and inhabited by people in the past. Field observations of landscape and environmental
remodeling are supplemented by chemical, sedimentological, and microartifactual signatures that
help to identify and characterize ancient habitation surfaces and features. Through this nuanced
understanding of the various iterations of activity areas, houses, and villages that existed at Antônio
Galo, I consider village organization, spatial parsing of activities, and the movement of bodies, in an
attempt to recapitulate the lives of people that created and inhabited these places in the past.
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This text is dedicated to all the peoples of Brazil, past, present, and future – may
all of your stories be told, with dignity and respect, and in accordance
with your wishes.
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Narrativizing Amazonia: Past and Present .................................................................... 1
Thinking Amazonia .................................................................................................................... 1
Routes to my investigation .................................................................................................... 1
Notes on vocabulary and usage ............................................................................................. 3
The language of „discovery,‟ (on the avoidance of). ........................................................ 3
The land and the earth: terms for navigating the Brazilian Amazonian ground. .............. 4
A path through dark earths .................................................................................................... 5
Chapter 2. Archaeology in the Amazon Basin.............................................................................. 11
Rough sketch ............................................................................................................................ 11
Setting the Stage: First encounters with Amazonia and its past .............................................. 12
By order of the crown .......................................................................................................... 12
Accidental tourists. ......................................................................................................... 12
Reconnaissance missions and royal commissions. ......................................................... 14
“Tilling the soil” in the name of „civilization‟ ................................................................ 15
The encyclopaedia project ................................................................................................... 16
Scientific research programs .................................................................................................... 18
The state of the art in 1943. ............................................................................................ 18
The Handbook series. ..................................................................................................... 19
The new research paradigms: theorizing Amazonia in deep time. ...................................... 21
Resources and the Law of Environmental Limitation. ................................................... 21
History, complexity, and the Cardiac Model. ................................................................. 24
Two sides of the same coin ................................................................................................. 26
Agriculture and subsistence: the stepping stone. ............................................................ 27
Removing the veil: business as usual. ............................................................................ 29
The landscape and the telescope. .................................................................................... 29
Historicity and Heterogeneity .................................................................................................. 30
Seeking cultural complexity: the objectivity of data and the objectivity of models. .......... 30
Chiefdoms on the Orinoco and at Marajó. ...................................................................... 31
The case of the Xingu: Evidence for a “depopulated” chiefdom. .................................. 31
El Beni: the continuous landscape .................................................................................. 32
Amazonian Dark Earths: from the ground up. ................................................................ 32
Contextual models ............................................................................................................... 33
The Central Amazon Project .................................................................................................... 33
Mapping the Confluence Region: basic building blocks ..................................................... 36
Geoarchaeological research in Amazonia ........................................................................... 37
Sister stories. ................................................................................................................... 38
Chapter 3. Images of Amazonia.................................................................................................... 40
Situated Narrative ..................................................................................................................... 40
Colonized places and the act of narration............................................................................ 40
Narrative, representation, and discourse. ........................................................................ 41
Travel writings as representations. ................................................................................. 43
Placemaking and colonial history ............................................................................................ 44
A note on categories ............................................................................................................ 45
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Mastery over nature ............................................................................................................. 45
Imagining Amazonia ................................................................................................................ 47
Four Images ......................................................................................................................... 48
Savagery, sin, and survival in the jungle: Mapping the unknown. ................................. 48
Land of plenty: Rubber, spice, and the search for El Dorado. ........................................ 49
Ecosystem: scientific narratives and eco-activism. ........................................................ 50
Paradise: Noble savage, pristine parkland, and eco-tourism. ......................................... 52
Science with a capital „S‟? .................................................................................................. 53
Narratives in archaeology. .............................................................................................. 53
Archaeology, science, and travel writings as evidence. ................................................. 54
Interrogating early accounts. .......................................................................................... 55
Grand Narratives Revisited ...................................................................................................... 58
Re-mixing the past ............................................................................................................... 59
Chapter 4. From Chiefdom to House ............................................................................................ 60
Understanding Amazonia: a bottom-up approach .................................................................... 60
Naming and Framing – the Amazonia of Archaeological Thought .................................... 61
In all the wrong places... .......................................................................................................... 62
Complexity is a foreign country .......................................................................................... 64
Evolution and Civilization: brothers in arms. ................................................................. 64
Think locally, act globally. ............................................................................................. 66
The Civilizing Mission: Not seeing is believing. ........................................................... 69
The TFC: neo-evolutionism in action. ............................................................................ 71
Grounding Meggers' Environmental Typology. ............................................................. 72
The search for social complexity in Amazonia ................................................................... 73
Presence-absence: evolutionary trait lists. ...................................................................... 74
Space and Place ........................................................................................................................ 77
Landscape, place, and space. ............................................................................................... 78
Landscapes and spaces. .................................................................................................. 79
Conceptualizing Place. ................................................................................................... 82
People, places and deeds. .................................................................................................... 83
Acts and practices: tracking the subject-agent. ............................................................... 83
From the ground up – to build a house .................................................................................... 84
Chapter 5. The Potentials of the Archaeological Matrix .............................................................. 86
Soils and Sediments: An Introduction ...................................................................................... 86
History and applications of soils and sediments research in archaeology........................... 88
Soil or sediment? ................................................................................................................. 89
Soils in Archaeology ................................................................................................................ 91
Pedological concepts ........................................................................................................... 91
Methods and Methodological Considerations. .................................................................... 92
Stratigraphy and the study of profiles. ............................................................................ 93
Laboratory analyses. ....................................................................................................... 94
Dating. ............................................................................................................................ 94
Magnetic Susceptibility. ................................................................................................. 95
Applied Research................................................................................................................. 95
Site formation processes. ................................................................................................ 95
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Landscape reconstruction. .............................................................................................. 96
Site Prediction. ................................................................................................................ 97
Landscape and environmental modification. .................................................................. 97
Human adaptive strategies. ............................................................................................. 99
Sediments in Archaeological Research .................................................................................. 100
Methods and methodological considerations. ................................................................... 100
Laboratory methods. ..................................................................................................... 101
Lithostratigraphy. .......................................................................................................... 102
Organic sedimentary particles. ..................................................................................... 103
Archaeo/paleomagnetic dating. .................................................................................... 103
Other sediment dating techniques. ................................................................................ 104
Combining soil science and sedimentological approaches ............................................... 105
Micromorphology. ........................................................................................................ 105
Organic Matter in Soils and Sediments. ....................................................................... 106
Anthropic/anthropogenic deposits, anthrosols, and the study of terra preta. .................... 107
Plaggen soils. ................................................................................................................ 108
Made soils. .................................................................................................................... 109
Urban soils as anthrosols. ............................................................................................. 110
Other anthrosols. ........................................................................................................... 110
Terra Preta de Índio: discovery and origin theories .......................................................... 112
Terra Preta as a subject of research. ............................................................................. 113
Terra Preta as artifact: Building a method ......................................................................... 114
Total (elemental) chemistry. ......................................................................................... 116
Soil pH and Soil Fertility Chemistry. ........................................................................... 117
Porosity and soil compaction. ....................................................................................... 117
Particle size analysis. .................................................................................................... 118
Sedimentology. ............................................................................................................. 119
Soil Carbon. .................................................................................................................. 119
Chapter 6. Archaeology of Terra Preta (ATP) ............................................................................ 121
Creating an archaeology of Terra Preta: invisible archaeologies ........................................... 121
Research design ...................................................................................................................... 121
Principal research questions .............................................................................................. 123
Establishing chronologies: sequence and contemporaneity. ........................................ 125
Spatial organization: structures and activities. ............................................................. 126
Mobility and site remodeling. ....................................................................................... 127
Field research design: changing strategies ........................................................................ 128
Survey methodologies: a hybrid approach. .................................................................. 130
Excavation protocol: on-the-go sampling. .................................................................... 136
Interpretation and sampling of pedo-stratigraphic profile. ........................................... 137
Field processing of material recovered .............................................................................. 140
Processing of soil and sediment samples. ..................................................................... 141
On-site flotation. ........................................................................................................... 141
Field research narrative .......................................................................................................... 142
Proceedings of auger and core sample collection.............................................................. 143
Village precinct cross-section. ...................................................................................... 143
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Core N990 E450 – Off-site sample. ............................................................................. 146
Investigating anomalous surface features. .................................................................... 147
Excavation units. ............................................................................................................... 150
Unit N924 E516 – Mound 18. ...................................................................................... 153
Unit N915 E437 – Mound 17. ...................................................................................... 155
Unit N932 E452 – Mound 16. ...................................................................................... 157
Unit N854 E468 – Mound 12 ....................................................................................... 158
Unit N895 E509 – Mound 15 ....................................................................................... 160
Unit N941 E452 – behind Mound 16. .......................................................................... 161
Unit N915 E491 – northwest portion of plaza. ............................................................. 162
Sondage N992 E452 – Off-site sample. ....................................................................... 163
Acts and practices: interpreting site pedo-stratigraphy .......................................................... 164
The background signal ...................................................................................................... 165
Off-site Unit. ................................................................................................................. 166
Interpreting the mounds ..................................................................................................... 166
Mound 18. ..................................................................................................................... 167
Mound 17. ..................................................................................................................... 168
Mound 16. ..................................................................................................................... 169
Mound 15. ..................................................................................................................... 170
Mound 12. ..................................................................................................................... 172
Places within places – beyond the mounds. ...................................................................... 174
The plaza – looking inward. ......................................................................................... 175
The precinct: a sense of place ................................................................................................ 177
Chapter 7. Examining the geoarchaeological evidence ............................................................. 181
Re-framing laboratory research .............................................................................................. 181
The matrix as artifact ......................................................................................................... 182
The matrix as repository of data ........................................................................................ 182
The interstices of social and natural systems .................................................................... 183
Methods .................................................................................................................................. 185
Laboratory analyses completed ......................................................................................... 185
Bulk Density. ................................................................................................................ 186
Soil pH and soil fertility chemistry. .............................................................................. 187
Particle size analysis. .................................................................................................... 188
Sedimentology: micro-artifact analysis. ....................................................................... 188
Macrobotanical analyses. .............................................................................................. 192
The dimensions of the project ................................................................................................ 192
Indices of Anthropization .................................................................................................. 193
Fractional gains and losses. .......................................................................................... 193
Quantifying anthropization. .......................................................................................... 194
How the matrix tracks our inputs. ..................................................................................... 199
Geoarchaeological signatures at Antônio Galo ...................................................................... 200
Stratigraphic resilience: landscape and environmental remodeling .................................. 201
Chemical signatures. ..................................................................................................... 201
Granulometric signatures .............................................................................................. 202
Micro-artifactual signatures. ......................................................................................... 205
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Applications: re-reading stratigraphy. .......................................................................... 209
Spatial signals: localized deposition .................................................................................. 215
The neighborhood. ........................................................................................................ 215
About the house. ........................................................................................................... 221
Investigating features: function and context. ................................................................ 223
Chapter 8. Lived-in places: a life-history of the North Precinct ................................................. 227
Places at Antônio Galo ........................................................................................................... 227
From where we now sit ..................................................................................................... 227
The view from the Amazonian house ................................................................................ 229
The circle of houses. ..................................................................................................... 229
The inner circle. ............................................................................................................ 230
The house itself. ............................................................................................................ 232
Looking ahead ........................................................................................................................ 234
A work in progress ............................................................................................................ 234
Total (elemental) chemistry. ......................................................................................... 234
Sedimentology: analysis of sand grains. ....................................................................... 235
References Cited ......................................................................................................................... 236

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List of Figures

Figure II. 1: Map of CAP research area: Lago de Limão circled in red.
Figure VI.1: Antonio Galo site map-- mounds surveyed in 2005.
Figure VI.2: Antonio Galo North Precinct: new topographic map.
Figure VI.3: Digital elevation model of North precinct, showing locations of cores and
augers.
Figure VI.4: Sample profile drawings: a) Unit N895 E509, east profile; b) Unit N854 E
468 east profile, showing proposed Features A (yellow) and B (green).
Figure VI.5: Antonio Galo site map showing units excavated and units intensively
sampled.
Figure VII.1: Organiza Carbon profiles for mound contexts plotted against off-site unit
N992 E452
Figure VII.2: Calcium and available P.
Figure VII.3: Unit N992 E452, changes in particle size with depth.
Figure VII.4: Units N992 E452 and N941 E452; sand distribution across layers, by size
class.
Figure VII.5: Units N915 E437 and N932 E452; sand distribution across layers, by size
class.
Figure VII.6: Charred botanical remains and fauna from N924 E516.
Figure VII.7: Unit N924 E516, ceramic micro-artifacts.
Figure VII.8: Units N895 E509: Organic C; available P; Na.
Figure VII.9: Chemical properties of N854 E468, against off-site unit N992 E468.
Figure VII.10: Micro-artifact patterning in Layer IIIA. Fired clay and Charred botanical
remains, 2-4 and 4-8 mm.
Figure VII.11: Micro-artifact patterning in Layer IIIA. Fired clay and Charred botanical
remains, 1-2 mm.
Figure VII.12: Ca concentrations for all mound and behind-mounds contexts tested.
Figure VII.13: Fractional gains in pH and Ca with respect to off-site sample N992 E452.
Figure VII.14: Fractional gains in concentrations of Zn, Mn, and Cu, with respect to off-
site sample N992 E452.
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