Early Agriculture and Landscape Domestication along the Middle Berbice River, Guyana

该项目建立在圭亚那伯比斯河中段(美国国家科学基金会国际规划赠款，OISE#0923703)沿线的初步研究基础上，该研究揭示了跨越五千年的定居农业占领的极长序列。主要目标是描述最初定居的农业职业(距今约5200-4700年)，其中包括美洲最早的陶瓷业之一。这些职业提供了来自南美洲热带林区(亚马逊)的最早的高度改良的“黑土”或“亚马逊黑土”(ADE)土壤，通常与半集约土地管理有关。另一个目标是完善农业占领的区域年表，包括早期农业丘陵(公元前2000-1500年)和早期历史文件(公元前1540年及以后)中报告的大型定居点的早期建筑群。该项目是一项为期多年的跨学科研究的初始阶段，涉及在30x10公里研究区域内的几个占领地点和相关农业土方工程的考古调查和挖掘，以及研究区域内的古民族植物学、土壤研究、生物地理学和民族史的相关研究。在过去的几年里，关于亚马逊热带森林的考古学观点发生了巨大的变化。长期被描绘为相对原始的热带森林，最近的考古表明了早期驯化、农业和半集约化资源管理的新途径，包括大面积的占领地点、农业和村庄土方工程以及基本上人类改良的土壤(ADE)。然而，关于最早的农业人口的遗址，地区专家认为可能出现在大约5000到4000年前，几乎是未知的。该项目为亚马逊地区从初期农业经济和土地利用向更集约化农业经济和土地利用的过渡提供了一个重要案例。它有助于将该地区置于更广泛的考古学讨论中，涉及世界其他地区的农业发展、定居社区生活和景观变化。该项目还将完善亚马逊北部这一鲜为人知的地区的农业职业年表，特别是包括与建造人工农丘有关的农业集约化时期，以及史前晚期和史前时期职业之间的过渡时期。该项目有助于更广泛地讨论热带森林地区自然-人类耦合系统的长期变化，特别是早期农业人口对热带生态的影响。来自不同学科的研究人员一致认为，规划、保护以及地方、区域和全球生态建模必须考虑到长期变化的人类维度。因此，这项研究的结果将对该地区的保护、可持续发展、生物多样性和生态完整性等当代问题产生重要影响。该项目融合了考古学、历史人类学和生态学，将加强国际合作，并为当地社区和圭亚那学生提供多样化的机会，包括与美洲印第安人后裔社区的合作。

This project builds on preliminary research along the middle Berbice River, Guyana (NSF International Planning Grant, OISE #0923703), which revealed an extremely long sequence of settled agricultural occupations, spanning five millennia. The primary objective is to characterize initial settled agricultural occupations (ca. 5200-4700 year before present), which include one of the earliest ceramic industries in the Americas. These occupations provide the earliest examples of heavily modified 'black earth' or 'Amazonian dark earth'(ADE) soils from tropical forest regions of South America (Amazonia), typically associated semi-intensive land management. A further objective is to refine the regional chronology of agricultural occupations, including an early complex of agricultural mounds (ca. 2000-1500 BP) and large settlements reported in early historical documents (ca. 1540 and later). The project, designed as the initial phase of a multi-year, interdisciplinary study, involves archaeological survey and excavations at several occupation sites and associated agricultural earthworks within a 30 x 10 km study area, as well as related studies on paleoethnobotany, soils studies, biogeography, and ethnohistory within the study area. Archaeological perspectives on Amazonian tropical forests have changed dramatically in the past few years. Long portrayed as relatively pristine tropical forest, recent archaeology suggests novel pathways of early domestication, agriculture, and semi-intensive resource management, including large occupations sites, agricultural and village earthworks, and substantially human-modified soils (ADE). However, sites that pertain to the earliest agricultural populations, which regional specialists suggest may have appeared ca. 5,000 to 4,000 BP, are virtually unknown. This project provides an important case for the transition from incipient to more intensive agro-economies and land-use in Amazonia. It helps situate the region in broader archaeological discussions regarding the development of agriculture, settled community life, and landscape transformation in other parts of the world. The project will also refine the chronology of agricultural occupations in this little known portion of northern Amazonia, notably including periods of agricultural intensification associated with the construction of artificial farming mounds and the transitional period between late prehistoric and historic period occupations. The project contributes to broader discussions of long-term change in coupled natural-human systems in tropical forest regions, notably the effects of early agricultural populations on tropical ecology. Researchers from varied disciplines agree that planning, conservation, and local, regional, and global ecological modeling must account for the human dimensions of long term change. The findings of this study will therefore have critical implications for contemporary questions of conservation, sustainable development, biodiversity, and ecological integrity in the region. The project, which integrates archaeology, historical anthropology, and ecology, will strengthen international collaboration and provides diverse opportunities for local communities and Guyanese students, including collaboration with descendant Amerindian communities.