Agriculturization: the alquimia of a Kañari pre-columbian landscape in the upper basin of the Chanchán River, Andes of Ecuador

Abstract

Although the importance of agriculture as a key factor in the economic development of Andean peoples and territories has been widely recognized worldwide, there have been few attempts to assess its historical importance in the construction of pre-Columbian agricultural landscapes in the Andes of Ecuador. This article presents the first results of the analysis of the Kañari agrarian landscapes in the upper Chanchán basin, showing a long historical trajectory that spanned almost 2000 years from the Late Formative Period (543-381 cal BC) to the final phase of the Integration Period (1386-1438 cal AD). Extensive and intensive farming systems (permanent fields and terraces) acted as a transforming agent of the space, imprinting an agrosacralized cultural signature with the configuration of three types of landscapes: Domestic, Social and Sacred. The agriculturization of these landscapes shows how the intensification of agriculture under a unilinear progression model does not generally mean a natural retreat of ecosystem processes, due to human intervention for the production of its crops The elasticity of the pre-Hispanic Kañaris agroecosystems could be sustained in the face of the historical processes of agriculturization throughout its historical trajectory.