Abstract
Over the last five years, debates surrounding the extent to which pre-colonial societies were involved in shaping Amazonian forests have intensified to sit once again at the forefront of discussions within the archaeological and ecological disciplines, while also winning public interest. Despite the advances in empirical data that are being gained, there are two key issues, which are currently holding back a more nuanced understanding of Amazonian landscape histories. The first is the tendency for palaeoecological studies to project findings across extremely large, culturally unrelated areas of the Amazon basin, much of which remains to be explored archaeologically -in other words, a problem of representativeness. The second issue is the lack of in-depth, closely-combined archaeological and palaeoecological research programmes that allow us to reconstruct the historical-ecological trajectories of specific places within Amazônia and verify the time depth of anthropogenic forests. Without local case studies, we will never be able to reconstruct the bigger picture, nor use our data constructively to inform modern-day environmental debates. To this end, this Jovem Pesquisador Project aims to shed light on the deep and complex relationships between peoples, plants and landscapes at four very different archaeological sites situated within four very different Amazonian environments. The methodological focus of the project is upon microarchaeology, mainly microbotanical and micromorphological analyses, and we include within the budget plans to extend LabMicro at MAE/USP by constructing a new, state-of-the-art, laboratory for sample processing and expanding current microscope facilities. The laboratory will provide a much-needed resource in an ever-growing field of research within which the museum should be at the forefront. (AU)
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