The construction of the pre-Hispanic agricultural landscape in the Colombian Andes: The case of the Sabana de Bogotá

Abstract

Summary: The Hydraulic System of Raised Fields of Cultivation or Camellones, built for over 2500 years by the pre-Hispanic groups of the Sabana de Bogotá, Colombia, is the central theme of this article. The analysis is focused on the relationship established between these groups and water, to determine how the interaction between the two led to a particular form of construction of the agricultural landscape, resource utilization and land occupation during the Late Muisca period (1000 - 1550 AD). Based on the concepts of landscape archeology, on archaeological and paleo-environmental data, photointerpretation and colonial documentation, we were able to establish that the system of camellones was the result of man-environment interaction, in which men created a way of living in a floodable environment by making water the axis and the network of connection between channels, cultivation platforms, settlements, hunting, fishing and mitigation areas.