Epp-Am investigates two topics in the prehistory of the Neotropics: the social-ecological dynamics of earliest people of SW Amazonia and the role these early Holocene populations played in the domestication of Neotropical plants. This area has a great potential for reconstructing early human-environment interactions in South America and offers a unique opportunity for exploring the domestication of several Amazonian plants and the origin of agriculture in the Neotropical lowlands. About half of the domesticated crops of America seem to have originated in the Amazon Basin. In particular, based on genetic studies that look at the similarities between domesticated plants and their closest wild relatives, SW Amazonia has been proposed as the potential area for the domestication of cassava, peanuts, jack bean, two species of chilli pepper and peach palm. So far, the genetic evidence is not supported by archaeological data, which is difficult to produce as organic remains are poorly preserved in the dry/humid environments of SW Amazonia. A specific innovative aspect of this proposal is the use of plant micro-remains (mostly phytoliths) from recently discovered early and mid-Holocene archaeological sites (shell middens) to study plant exploitation strategies in these difficult preservation environments.
Phytoliths are also used to reconstruct vegetation changes throughout the Holocene in the Llanos de Moxos (LM), where the shell middens are. The Holocene environmental history of most of the LM is largely unknown; there is no paleoecological archive going back to the mid-Holocene. The main reason for this lack of data is that the lacustrine sediments from the lakes that dot the central and southern LM are extremely difficult to core due to their stiff clay sediments and, if cored, provide very shallow sedimentary archives, spanning only a few thousand years. For this reason, this project is based on stratigraphic archives built by past river inundations. These archives contain many phytolith-rich paleosols, which we use for paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic reconstructions.
Epp-Am contributes to thedebate of the origin of domesticated plants in the Amazon and the peopling of Amazonia. The nature of the early occupation in SW Amazonia, including the antiquity, settlements patterns, subsistence strategies, processes of social change and environmental impacts is largely unknown. Understanding the nature of the first human settlements is much-needed to understand the region’s cultural diversity. Moreover, this work will help assess the environmental impact of early Amazonians. This data is key in order to correctly interpret paleoecological archives, in particular lacustrine sediments where pollen and charcoal signals could be the results of human disturbance. This research integrates archaeological evidence from hunter-gatherers/early cultivators with multiproxy environmental and archaeobotanical data. The new data contributes to the understanding of the early Holocene environment, population dynamics and the economy of ancient South Americans, which will be valuable to policy makers at a continental and global level: understanding environmental change and the way it affected different societies in the past is key to inform future planning; traditional ecological knowledge on early uses of domesticated plants can support the work of NGOs and local government to achieve the sustainable exploitation of Amazonia’s natural resources; collected data will improve current environmental modelling.
