Steps towards an ecology of landscape: The pedo-stratigraphy of anthropogenic dark earths

Abstract

A posthumous festschrift to a bold mind is an apposite context to celebrate the role that research into pre-Columbian anthropogenic dark earths has played in a momentous paradigm shift in Amazonian scholarship. This shift- imprinted in the reciprocal intersections, synergies, and oppositions of a long history of intellectual contributions- calls for caution in addressing past and present environments exclusively as self-regulating and equilibrium-seeking systems to which individuals or cultures adapt or adapted to. Instead it encourages a consideration of the biotic and abiotic components of landscapes inhabited by human communities as historically contingent outcomes of niche-building, past and present. From an archaeological standpoint, it invites a sharpening of focus to behold' past environments' as open-ended and non-deterministic evolutionary trajectories of material transformation within which the emergent surrounding-worlds that have structured the lifeways of past human communities have been crafted step by step. Some of these steps are evident to the learned eye, others remain to be unveiled by future research, and yet others, it is argued below, can be ascertained in subtle material signatures that exist in anthropogenic dark earths. © Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009.