[Go to Parent Session] [Previous Page] [SEARCH] [DAILY OUTLINES]

Invisible archaeologies: houses, paths and places in the central Amazon

Anna Browne Ribeiro (University of California, Berkeley)
Burcu Tung (İstanbul Technical University, UC Berkeley)

Abstract

As the archaeology of terra preta (Amazonian Dark Earths) matures, archaeologists are asking increasingly sophisticated questions. As a counterpoint to regional-scale questions of political scale, contact and migrations, community- and household-scale investigations of terra preta are gaining currency. At the same time, pedological research is providing crucial insights into terra preta formation processes and intra- and inter-site variability. Household scale investigations around the world have demonstrated the efficacy of geoarchaeological methods in the identification of activity areas, paths and features invisible to the naked eye. Building on this work, and taking as its principal consideration the question of place (e.g. house, village) as lived-in and experienced, this paper proposes the application of a combination of methods from pedology and sedimentology toward deciphering the relationship of surface and sub-surface features to precolumbian households, and to the invisible or microscopic material traces of precolumbian people in the Central Amazon.