In Amazonia (37 page)

44
. For an example of a socio-ecological model of this type, see Philip M.
Fearnside,
Human Carrying Capacity of the Brazilian Rainforest
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).

45
. These Arapiuns varadores are all access routes or shortcuts. At least two other types of anthropogenic channel have been identified near Santarém: (i) pools and backwaters made in upland streams by damming with trees and other debris, and used for soaking bitter manioc, washing clothes, bathing, or fishing (Joe McCann, personal communication, September 1996); (ii) channels known as
carvados
, cut to allow sediment-laden floodwaters slowly to fill in backswamps for agricultural land, pasture, or football pitches (Antoinette M.A.G. WinklerPrins, “Land-Use Decision Making Using Local Soil Knowledge on the Lower Amazon Floodplain,”
Geographical Review
87, no. 1 [1997]: 105–8).

46
. Letter from Santarém to Samuel Stevens, August 18, 1853, “Proceedings of Natural-History Collectors in Foreign Countries,”
Zoologist
12 (1854): 4320.

47
. Leopold H. Myers,
The Clio
(London: Robin Clark, 1990). There actually was a
Clio
caught up in the carnage of the Cabanagem civil war. It was carrying arms for the president of Pará, Bernardo Lobo de Souza, but was captured by rebels and its crew killed. Oddly, this is not the story Myers tells, even though his novel is set during a generic revolution. See John Hemming,
Amazon Frontier: The Defeat of the Brazilian Indians
(London: Macmillan, 1987), 232.

48
. John Berger and Jean Mohr,
A Fortunate Man: The Story of a Country Doctor
(London: Writers and Readers Cooperative Press, 1969), 13. For foundational work on landscape as ideology and text, see Raymond Williams,
The Country and the City
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973); John Berger,
Ways of Seeing
(London: Penguin/BBC, 1972); Stephen Daniels, “Marxism, Culture, and the Duplicity of Landscape,” in
New Models in Geography: The Political-Economy Perspective
, ed. Richard Peet and Nigel Thrift, vol. 1 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 196–220; Denis E. Cosgrove,
Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape
(London: Croom Helm, 1984); Denis E. Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels, eds.,
The Iconography of Landscape: Essays on the Symbolic Representation, Design and Use of Past Environments
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); James S. Duncan,
The City as Text: The Politics of Landscape Interpretation in the Kandyan Kingdom
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Trevor J. Barnes and James S. Duncan, eds.,
Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape
(London: Routledge, 1992).

49
. Mary Poovey,
A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).

50
. Julian H. Steward, ed.,
Handbook of South American Indians
, 6 vols., Bureau of American Ethnology, bulletin no. 143 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946–50). With regard to evolutionary theorizing, the key figure is Steward's associate Leslie White. See, for example, Leslie A. White, “Energy and the Evolution of Culture,”
American Anthropologist
45, no. 3 (1943): 335–56; and Leslie A. White and Beth Dillingham,
The Concept of
Culture
(Minneapolis: Burgess, 1973). Note also the association between cultural-ecological evolutionary models of social development and the rise of modernization theory in the 1960s. See Walter W. Rostow,
The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).

51
. Julian H. Steward and Louis C. Faron,
Native Peoples of South America
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), 291. On Steward, see Robert F. Murphy, “The Anthropological Theories of Julian Steward,” in Julian H. Steward,
Evolution and Ecology: Essays on Social Transformation
, ed. Jane C. Steward and Robert F. Murphy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977); and Robert A. Manners, “Julian Haynes Steward 1902–1972,”
American Anthropologist
75, no. 3 (1973): 886–903.

52
. See the insightful discussion by Peter Hulme,
Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native Caribbean 1492–1797
(New York: Routledge, 1986), 50–61.

53
. See David N. Livingstone,
The Geographical Tradition: Episodes in the History of a Contested Enterprise
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). Also, John H. Zammito,
Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002); Mark Bassin, “Friedrich Ratzel's Travels in the United States: A Study in the Genesis of his Anthropogeography,”
History of Geography Newsletter
4 (1984): 11–22; idem, “Imperialism and the Nation-State in Friedrich Ratzel's Political Geography,”
Progress in Human Geography
11, no. 3 (1987): 473–95.

54
. This preoccupation continued through the 1980s. See, for example, Raymond B. Hames and William T. Vickers, eds.,
Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians
(New York: Academic Press, 1983).

55
. The generative text here was Daniel R. Gross, “Protein Capture and Cultural Development in the Amazon Basin,”
American Anthropologist
77 (1975): 526–49. See also the now-infamous work of Napoleon Chagnon. For an overview of these debates, see Leslie E. Sponsel, “Amazon Ecology and Adaptation,”
Annual Review of Anthropology
15 (1986): 67–97.

56
. Betty J. Meggers, “Environmental Limitations on the Development of Culture,”
American Anthropologist
56 (1954): 801–24. Also, idem, “Environment and Culture in the Amazon Basin: An Appraisal of the Theory of Environmental Determinism,” in Angel Palerm, Eric R. Wolf, Waldo R. Wedel, Betty J. Meggers, Jacques M. May, and Lawrence Krader,
Studies in Human Ecology
(Washington, D.C.: Pan American Union, 1957), 71–89.

57
. Although Meggers' limiting factor architecture anticipates Harris, an even more direct parallel is between Gross' notions of regional protein deficiency and Harris' speculations on Aztec cannibalism. See Marvin Harris,
Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures
(New York: Random House, 1977).

58
. Meggers, “Environmental Limitations,” 803.

59
. Betty J. Meggers and Clifford Evans,
Archaeological Investigations at the Mouth of the Amazon
, Bureau of American Ethnology, bulletin no. 167 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1957).

60
. The diffusionary model is a characteristic of her work, but see, as representative,
Betty J. Meggers,
Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit Paradise
(Chicago: Aldine, 1971), 36–38, 146–48, 165–67; and, more recently, “Pre-Columbian Amazonia,”
National Geographic Research & Exploration
10, no. 4 (1994): 398–421.

61
. For an effective critique of Meggers' devolutionism, see Anna C. Roosevelt,
Parmana: Prehistoric Maize and Manioc Subsistence Along the Amazon and Orinoco
(New York: Academic Press, 1980), 1–56; and idem,
Moundbuilders of the Amazon: Geophysical Archaeology on Marajó Island, Brazil
(New York: Academic Press, 1991), 100–111.

62
. See, for example, William M. Denevan,
The Aboriginal Cultural Geography of the Llanos de Mojos of Bolivia
, Ibero-Americana 48 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966); idem, “Aboriginal Drained-Field Cultivation in the Americas,”
Science
169 (1970): 647–54; and also Denevan's recent overview,
Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes: Triumph Over the Soil
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); James J. Parsons and William M. Denevan, “Pre-Columbian Ridged Fields,”
Scientific American
217, no. 1 (1967): 93–100; Donald Lathrap, “The Antiquity and Importance of Long-Distance Trade Relationships in the Moist Tropics of Pre-Columbian South America,”
World Archaeology
5, no. 2 (1973): 170–86.

63
. A valuable recent collection edited by Balée is explicitly focused on the reconfiguration of these legacies. See particularly William Balée, “Introduction,” in
Advances in Historical Ecology
, ed. William Balée (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 1–10, and Neil L. Whitehead, “Ecological History and Historical Ecology: Diachronic Modeling Versus Historical Explanation,” in Balée,
Advances in Historical Ecology
, 30–41. Other key references are William Balée, “Indigenous Adaptation to Amazonian Palm Forests,”
Principes
32, no. 2 (1988): 47–54; idem, “The Culture of Amazonian Forests,” in Posey and Balée,
Resource Management in Amazonia
, 1–21; idem, “Indigenous Transformation of Amazonian Forests: An Example from Maranhão, Brazil,”
L'Homme
33, nos. 2–4 (1993): 231–54; idem,
Footprints of the Forest: Ka'apor Ethnobotany—The Historical Ecology of Plant Utilization by an Amazonian People
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); William M. Denevan, “Ecological Heterogeneity and Horizontal Zonation of Agriculture in the Amazonian Floodplain,” in
Frontier Expansion in Amazonia
, ed. Marianne Schmink and Charles H. Wood (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1984), 311–36; William M. Denevan and Christine Padoch, eds.,
Swidden-Fallow Agroforestry in the Peruvian Amazon
(New York: New York Botanical Garden, 1987); Darrell A. Posey, “Indigenous Management of Tropical Forest Ecosystems: The Case of the Kayapó Indians of the Brazilian Amazon,”
Agroforestry Systems
3 (1985): 139–58; Susanna B. Hecht and Darrell A. Posey, “Indigenous Soil Management in the Latin American Tropics: Some Implications for the Amazon Basin,” in
Ethnobiology: Implications and Applications
, ed. Darrell A. Posey and William L. Overal, Proceedings of the First International Congress of Ethnobiology, vol. 2 (Belém: Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi, 1990), 73–86; Anna C. Roosevelt, “Chiefdoms in the Amazon and Orinoco,” in
Chiefdoms in the Americas
, ed. Robert D. Drennan and Carlos A. Uribe (Lanham, Md.: University Press of
America, 1987), 153–84; idem, “Natural Resource Management in Amazonia Before the Conquest: Beyond Ethnographic Projection,” in Posey and Balée,
Resource Management in Amazonia
, 30–62; idem, “Lost Civilizations of the Lower Amazon,”
Natural History
95, no. 2 (1989): 74–83; idem, “The Rise and Fall of the Amazon Chiefdoms,”
L'Homme
33, nos. 2–4 (1993): 255–83; idem, “Ancient and Modern Hunter-Gatherers of Lowland South America,” in Balée,
Advances in Historical Ecology
, 190–212; idem,
Parmana
; and idem,
Moundbuilders
. Other recent and sophisticated contributions to this literature include Philippe Descola,
In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology of Amazonia
, trans. Nora Scott (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Laura Rival, “Domestication as a Historical and Symbolic Process: Wild Gardens and Cultivated Forests in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” in Balée,
Advances in Historical Ecology
, 232–50; and David Cleary, “Towards an Environmental History of the Amazon: From Prehistory to the Nineteenth Century,”
Latin American Research Review
36, no. 2 (2001): 65–96. For a prescient statement of the problematic, see Stephen Nugent, “Amazonia: Ecosystem and Social System,”
Man
N.S. 16 (1981): 62–74.

64
. Rather than a thoroughgoing break with its logic, Roosevelt's critique of Meggers has rested on a re-evaluation of the resource potential of the várzea; that is, on a finer-grained appreciation of the “carrying capacity” of particular sites. See Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, “Images of Nature and Society in Amazonian Ethnology,”
Annual Review of Anthropology
25 (1996): 179–200; and Balée, “The Culture of Amazonian Forests.” Roosevelt's key precursor was Donald Lathrap, see his
The Upper Amazon
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1970). For a description of large-scale settlement in the upland forest, see Michael J. Heckenberger,
War and Peace in the Shadow of Empire: Sociopolitical Change in the Upper Xingu of Southeastern Amazonia, A.D. 1250–2000
(unpbd. Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, 1996).

65
. Roosevelt, “Resource Management in Amazonia.”

66
. A. C. Roosevelt, M. Lima da Costa, C. Lopes Machado, M. Michab, N. Mercier, H. Valladas, J. Feathers, W. Barnett, M. Imazio da Silveira, A. Henderson, J. Sliva, B. Chernoff, D. S. Reese, J. A. Holma, N. Toth, and K. Schick, “Paleoindian Cave Dwellers in the Amazon: The Peopling of the Americas,”
Science
272 (1996): 373–84; and Richard E. Reanier, William P. Barse, Anna C. Roosevelt, Marconales Lima de Costa, Linda J. Brown, John E. Douglas, Matthew O'Donnell, Ellen Quinn, Judy Kemp, Christiane Lopes Machado, Maura Imazio da Silveira, James Feathers, and Andrew Henderson, “Dating a Paleoindian Site in the Amazon in Comparison with Clovis Culture,”
Science
275 (1997): 1948–52. Roosevelt's excavations also suggest that pottery-making began up to 2,000 years earlier in Amazonia than elsewhere in the hemisphere; see, A. C. Roosevelt, R. A. Housley, M. Imazio da Silveira, S. Maranca, and R. Johnson, “Eighth Millennium Pottery from a Prehistoric Shell Midden in the Brazilian Amazon,”
Science
254 (1991): 1621–24. Other sites have produced evidence of early Amazon maize domestication: M. B. Bush, D. R. Piperno, and P. A. Colinvaux, “A 6,000 Year History of Amazonian Maize Cultivation,”
Nature
340 (1989): 303–5.

67
.
Posey, “Indigenous Management of Tropical Forest Ecosystems.” For other work on the material construction of microenvironments, see Hecht and Posey, “Indigenous Soil Management”; Dominique Irvine, “Succession Management and Resource Distribution in an Amazonian Rain Forest,” in Posey and Balée,
Resource Management in Amazonia
, 223–37; Chernela, “Managing Rivers of Hunger”; Christine Padoch and Miguel Pinedo-Vásquez, “Farming Above the Flood in the Várzea of Amapá,” in
Várzea: Diversity, Development, and Conservation of Amazonia's Whitewater Floodplains
, ed. Christine Padoch, J. Márcio Ayres, Miguel Pinedo-Vásquez, and Anthony Henderson (New York: New York Botanical Garden, 1999), 345–54; and Hugh Raffles, “Exploring the Anthropogenic Amazon: Estuarine Landscape Transformations in Amapá, Brazil,” in Padoch et al.,
Várzea
, 355–70.