Perspectives on Early Amazonian Agriculture from Guyana and Venezuela

Debates about prehistoric Amazonian subsistence, social organization, and landscape use have ranged from ethnographically based characterizations of relatively mobile foragers to archaeological evidence that suggests sedentary agriculturalists. Recently, great antiquity of settled agriculture and complex social organization has been asserted for portions of the northern Amazon. However, the role of theory and inferences drawn from habitat diversity have receded in these debates. This paper synthesizes the current literature regarding long-term evolutionary changes in Amazon Basin societies with an archaeological case study from mound-building sites of Guyana and ethnoarchaeological data from Venezuelan forager–gardeners to develop a hypothesis regarding the critical role of habitat, aquatic resources, and seasonality in the transition from intensified foraging to cultivation.