World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492
John L. Sorenson, Carl L. Johannessen. 2009. World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492. iUniverse. ISBN: 978-0-595-52441-9
A book review by Mike Dubrasich
There exists a pernicious myth that American Indians were savages (noble or not) living in roving bands of hunter-gatherers, at one with Nature due to their lack of civilization and technological sophistication.
That myth has been exploded by cutting-edge anthropology, archaeology, and historical landscape geography.
Prior to Columbus’ “discovery” of the “New World”, human beings had lived and thrived in the Americas for 12,000 years or more. They built great cities such as Teotihuacan, which by 700 C.E. had an estimated population of 200,000 and was larger than Paris and London combined four hundred years later!
Pre-Columbian Americans developed writing, mathematics, astronomy, and agriculture. Cropping systems were in use as much as 9,000 years ago [here] and had spread across much of both North and South America by 5,800 years ago [here].
People built incredible earthworks including terraces, raised fields, canals and irrigation systems for agriculture [here]. People modified soils for food cropping across vast territories such as Amazonia [here].
And pre-Columbian people developed food crops such corn (maize), potatoes, tomatoes, peanuts, pumpkins (all edible squashes), sweet potatoes, sunflowers, peppers, pineapples, watermelons, strawberries, and pecans. All edible beans except horse beans and soybeans were developed in the pre-Columbian Americas.
It is widely believed that these food crops, common around the world today, were not known outside the Americas until Columbus and other contemporary explorers brought them to Europe 500 years ago. But if so, how do you explain this?
This wall sculpture from the Hoysala Dynasty Halebid temple at Somnathpur, Karnataka state, India, dates between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Among the numerous representations of maize ears, the shape of the ear, kernels off set in relation to those in adjacent rows, the presence of part of the husk, and other features ensure that no object other than an ear of maize could be represented. The mudra (sacred gesture) made by the figure’s hand underlines the sacred significance of the context and thus of maize. (Photograph by C. Johannessen.)
In World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492 authors John L. Sorenson and Carl L. Johannessen present strong evidence that pre-Columbian Americans engaged in overseas trade:
People moved into America very early across the Bering Strait. By the fifth millennia B.C.E. tropical sailors brought diseases to America and took plants and animals in both directions.
Long before Columbus, tropical sailors carefully selected crops from New World highlands and shorelines, wet and dry climates, and took them to the Old World where they were grown in appropriate environments. Medicinal and psychedelic plants were traded and maintained in Egypt and Peru during separate 1,400-year periods. This implies that maritime trade was continuous.
In this groundbreaking book, learn about:
* 84 plants that were taken from the Americas to the Old World.
* What plants and animals were brought to the Americas.
* Why world trade was essential for transfer of so many.
* Interconnectedness of civilizations had to result from world trade.
* Dating of 18 species by archaeology with radio carbon shows dispersal.
* And much more!Plants, diseases, and animals from America were distributed throughout the world, across the oceans before 1492. It is time for scientists, teachers, and students to reconsider their beliefs about the early history of civilization with World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492.
A 500-year record of fire from a humid coast redwood forest
Steven P. Norman. 2007. A 500-year record of fire from a humid coast redwood forest. A report to Save the Redwoods League.
Full text at Save the Redwoods League [here]
Selected excerpts:
ABSTRACT
California’s coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forests have long been associated with moderately frequent to frequent fire, particularly in the southern and interior portions of the species range. The historical importance of fire in northern coast redwood forests is generally thought to be much less because lightning ignitions are rare, and cool coastal temperatures and summer fog ameliorate the fire hazard. Support for this climate-fire gradient hypothesis has been limited because of insufficient fire history data from the northern coast redwood range. Past efforts to test this hypothesis range-wide are made difficult because of methodological differences among studies and problems with scar preservation in redwood. This research revisits the fire history of an area thought to have experienced fire only a few times per millennium in Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park. I found that fire frequency was substantially more frequent than previously thought. Between 1700 and 1850, mean fire intervals within 0.25 to 1 ha sample areas varied from 11 to 26 years. Fire intervals did not correspond to a latitudinal, coast-interior or a topographically defined moisture gradient. Instead, patterns of fire frequency better fit a cultural burning gradient inferred from the ethnographic and historical record. Areas close to aboriginal villages and camps burned considerably more often than areas that were probably less utilized. Summer season fires, the ones most likely set by the Native Tolowa for resource needs, were 10 years shorter than the mean fire interval of autumn season fires. In the dryer eastern portion of the study area, frequent fire resulted in unimodal or bimodal pulses of Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) establishment suggesting moderate to high fire severity. Near a Tolowa village site, a frequent fire regime before the late 1700s initiated a pulse of Douglas fir establishment that dominated the forest canopy for centuries; long after the village was abandoned, possibly due to epidemic disease. While variability in coastal fog-stratus and drought may also influence fire regimes, these relationships provide a weaker explanation than human ignition history. Variable human and climate influence on old-growth redwood fire regimes suggests that old growth redwood forests are not in equilibrium, but are dynamic due to a long history of variable human influence. Remnant old growth forests are likely to continue to evolve in response to human management. Efforts by managers to restore and sustain these remarkable forests can be enhanced by understanding how complex histories give rise to biodiversity.
Initial formation of an indigenous crop complex in eastern North America at 3800 B.P.
Bruce D. Smith and Richard A. Yarnell. 2009. Initial formation of an indigenous crop complex in eastern North America at 3800 B.P. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106 No. 16 pp 6561–6566.
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts [here]
Abstract
Although geneticists and archaeologists continue to make progress world-wide in documenting the time and place of the initial domestication of a growing number of plants and animals, far less is known regarding the critically important context of coalescence of various species into distinctive sets or complexes of domesticates in each of the world’s 10 or more independent centers of agricultural origin. In this article, the initial emergence of a crop complex is described for one of the best-documented of these independent centers, eastern North America (ENA). Before 4000 B.P. there is no indication of a crop complex in ENA, only isolated evidence for single indigenous domesticate species. By 3800 B.P., however, at least 5 domesticated seed-bearing plants formed a coherent complex in the river valley corridors of ENA. Accelerator mass spectrometer radiocarbon dates and reanalysis of archaeobotanical assemblages from a short occupation of the Riverton Site in Illinois documents the contemporary cultivation at 3800 B.P. of domesticated bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), marshelder (Iva annua var. macrocarpa), sunflower (Helianthus annuus var. macrocarpus), and 2 cultivated varieties of chenopod (Chenopodium berlandieri), as well as the possible cultivation of Cucurbita pepo squash and little barley (Hordeum pusillum). Rather than marking either an abrupt developmental break or a necessary response to population-packing or compressed resource catchments, the coalescence of an initial crop complex in ENA appears to reflect an integrated expansion and enhancement of preexisting hunting and gathering economies that took place within a context of stable long-term adaptation to resource-rich river valley settings.
Introduction
Marking a major evolutionary episode in human history, the transition from hunting and gathering to agricultural economies spanned several millennia and occurred independently in 10 or more different world regions, including eastern North America (ENA) (1) (Fig. 1). In each of these independent centers, this long transition began with the initial domestication of a number of indigenous wild progenitor species. These different domesticates eventually were coalesced to form regionally distinctive complexes of domesticates and low-level food production economies. As a result of parallel and often cross-illuminating efforts by geneticists and archaeologists over the past several decades, we are gaining a much clearer idea of where and when domestication of different individual species of plants and animals occurred (3, 4). Much less is currently known, however, about the equally important process that led to numbers of different species being brought together to form coherent distinctive domesticate complexes in different world regions. When did such domesticate complexes initially develop? What was the identity and relative importance of each complex’s different constituent species? What can be said regarding the environmental and cultural context of coalescence of these early domesticate complexes in different world regions, and what can be said about the societies that developed them? Combining extant information with new data, this article addresses these key questions and provides a clear picture of the initial emergence of a crop complex in one of the world’s best-documented independent centers of domestication — the eastern woodlands of North America.
The Temporal and Spatial Context of Initial Plant Domestication in ENA
Based on several morphological changes associated with the adaptive syndrome of domestication that have been documented in seed specimens recovered from 4 Late Archaic period archaeological sites in the Oak-Savannah and Oak-Hickory forest regions of ENA (i.e., seed size increase and reduction in seed-coat thickness), at least 4 indigenous seed-bearing plants were brought under domestication in the region over a span of ~1,200 years from 5000 to 3800 B.P. These plants include squash (Cucurbita pepo ssp. ovifera), sunflower (Helianthus annuus var. macrocarpus), marshelder (Iva annua var. macrocarpa), and chenopod (Chenopodium berlandieri) (1). Maize (Zea mays), the first Mesoamerican domesticate to reach ENA, did not arrive for another 1,500 years, at ~200 B.C. (see SI Text). In addition to these 4 species that exhibit morphological changes because of domestication, 3 other eastern seed plants that lack such changes have also been identified, based on their abundance in seed assemblages before 2000 B.P., as likely crops and as the subjects of deliberate planting and harvesting of stored seed stock. These plants include erect knotweed (Polygonum erectum), little barley (Hordeum pusillum), and maygrass (Phalaris caroliniana). …
An Asian origin for a 10,000-year-old domesticated plant in the Americas
David L. Erickson, Bruce D. Smith, Andrew C. Clarke, Daniel H. Sandweiss, and Noreen Tuross. 2005. An Asian origin for a 10,000-year-old domesticated plant in the Americas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 102, No. 51.
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
Abstract
New genetic and archaeological approaches have substantially improved our understanding of the transition to agriculture, a major turning point in human history that began 10,000–5,000 years ago with the independent domestication of plants and animals in eight world regions. In the Americas, however, understanding the initial domestication of New World species has long been complicated by the early presence of an African enigma, the bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria). Indigenous to Africa, it reached East Asia by 9,000–8,000 before present (B.P.) and had a broad New World distribution by 8,000 B.P. Here we integrate genetic and archaeological approaches to address a set of long-standing core questions regarding the introduction of the bottle gourd into the Americas. Did it reach the New World directly from Africa or through Asia? Was it transported by humans or ocean currents? Was it wild or domesticated upon arrival? Fruit rind thickness values and accelerator mass spectrometer radiocarbon dating of archaeological specimens indicate that the bottle gourd was present in the Americas as a domesticated plant by 10,000 B.P., placing it among the earliest domesticates in the New World. Ancient DNA sequence analysis of archaeological bottle gourd specimens and comparison with modern Asian and African landraces identify Asia as the source of its introduction. We suggest that the bottle gourd and the dog, two “utility” species, were domesticated long before any food crops or livestock species, and that both were brought to the Americas by Paleoindian populations as they colonized the New World.
Introduction
Innovative approaches in genetics and archaeology continue to provide substantial new information regarding the origins of agriculture and the independent domestication of different species of plants and animals between 10,000 and 5,000 years ago in at least eight separate regions of the world (1–4). Not surprisingly, as they come into clearer focus, the developmental histories of each of these independent centers of domestication are turning out to be far more complex and nuanced than previously thought. Here we consider one of these imbedded complexities, the consistent occurrence of the bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria), an Old World plant, in close association with the earliest indigenous New World domesticates. In the process of answering basic questions regarding the early presence of this African plant in the Americas, we reach a number of unexpected conclusions regarding the cultural, environmental, and temporal contexts of initial human domestication of plants and animals.
The bottle gourd has been grown worldwide for thousands of years, usually not as a food source, but for the value of its strong, hard-shelled, and buoyant fruits, which have long been prized as containers, musical instruments, and fishing floats (5). This lightweight “container crop” would have been of particular importance to human societies before the advent of pottery and settled village life. Along with the five wild perennial species that also belong to the genus Lagenaria, the bottle gourd has long been recognized as being indigenous to Africa (5, 6). …
Origins and antiquity of the island fox (Urocyon littoralis) on California’s Channel Islands
Torben C. Rick, Jon M. Erlandson, René L. Vellanoweth, Todd J. Braje, Paul W. Collins, Daniel A. Guthrie, and Thomas W. Stafford Jr. 2009. Origins and antiquity of the island fox (Urocyon littoralis) on California’s Channel Islands. Quaternary Research 71 (2009) 93–98.
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
Abstract
The island fox (Urocyon littoralis) is one of few reportedly endemic terrestrial mammals on California’s Channel Islands. Questions remain about how and when foxes first colonized the islands, with researchers speculating on a natural, human-assisted, or combined dispersal during the late Pleistocene and/or Holocene. A natural dispersal of foxes to the northern Channel Islands has been supported by reports of a few fox bones from late Pleistocene paleontological localities. Direct AMS 14C dating of these “fossil” fox bones produced dates ranging from ~6400 to 200 cal yr BP, however, postdating human colonization of the islands by several millennia. Although one of these specimens is the earliest securely dated fox from the islands, these new data support the hypothesis that Native Americans introduced foxes to all the Channel Islands in the early to middle Holocene. However, a natural dispersal for the original island colonization cannot be ruled out until further paleontological, archaeological, and genetic studies (especially aDNA [ancient DNA]) are conducted.
Introduction
The endangered island fox (Urocyon littoralis), a diminutive relative of the gray fox (U. cinereoargenteus), has been an important apex predator on California’s Channel Islands for millennia (Collins, 1993; Moore and Collins, 1995; Roemer et al., 2004). While a great deal is known about island fox ecology, biogeography, and conservation, questions remain about when and how these animals first colonized the Channel Islands (Johnson, 1975, 1983;Wenner and Johnson, 1980; Collins, 1991a; Vellanoweth, 1998; Agenbroad, 2002a). Most researchers agree that Native Americans introduced the island fox to the southern Channel Islands, probably during the middle to late Holocene (Collins, 1991a,b; Vellanoweth, 1998; Shelley, 2001). Based partly on reports of fox remains from late Pleistocene sediments of the Upper Tecolote Formation on Santa Rosa Island, however, foxes were thought to have reached the northern Channel Islands naturally during the late Pleistocene by rafting across a Santa Barbara Channel narrowed by lower sea levels (Wenner and Johnson, 1980; Collins, 1991a,b, 1993).
Sea otters, shellfish, and humans: 10,000 years of ecological interaction on San Miguel Island, California
Erlandson, Jon M., Torben C. Rick, Michael Graham, James Estes, Todd Braje, and René Vellanoweth. 2005. Sea otters, shellfish, and humans: 10,000 years of ecological interaction on San Miguel Island, California. Proceedings of the Sixth California Islands Symposium, edited by D.K. Garcelon and C.A. Schwemm, pp. 58-69. Arcata: Institute for Wildlife Studies and National Park Service.
Full text [here]
Selected Excerpts:
Abstract
We use data from San Miguel Island shell middens spanning much of the past 10,000 years in a preliminary exploration of long-term ecological relationships between humans, sea otters (Enhydra lutris), shellfish, and kelp forests. At Daisy Cave, human use of marine habitats begins almost 11,500 years ago, with the earliest evidence for shellfish harvesting (11,500 cal BP), intensive kelp bed fishing (ca. 10,000-8500 cal BP), and Sea Otter hunting (ca. 8900 cal BP) from the Pacific Coast of North America. On San Miguel Island, Native Americans appear to have coexisted with sea otters and productive shellfish populations for over 9,000 years, but the emphasis of shellfish harvesting changed over time. Knowledge of modern sea otter behavior and ecology suggests that shell middens dominated by large red abalone shells-relatively common on San Miguel between about 7,300 and 3,300 years ago-are only likely to have formed in areas where sea otter populations had been reduced by Native hunting or other causes. Preliminary analysis of sea urchin lenses, in which the remains of urchins are unusually abundant, may also signal an increasing impact of Island Chumash populations on kelp forest and other near shore habitats during the late Holocene. Such impacts were probably relatively limited, however, when compared to the rapid and severe disruption caused by commercial exploitation under the Spanish, Mexican, and American regimes of historic times.
Introduction
In recent decades, the expansion of sea otter (Enhydra lutris) populations along the central California Coast has devastated once productive abalone and sea urchin fisheries that developed in this predator’s absence, creating tensions between resource managers, fishermen, and environmentalists over the protection and management of sea otter populations. Archaeological data from San Miguel Island suggest, however, that Native Americans, sea otters, and productive shellfish populations coexisted on the northern Channel Islands for thousands of years (Walker 1982). These apparently contradictory data sets raise fundamental questions about the nature of “pristine” prehistoric sea otter and shellfish populations, how Native American harvests were sustained over the millennia, the possible ecological effects of sea otter hunting prior to European contact, and the management of modern sea otter populations and healthy marine ecosystems along the California Coast. …
The jam post and plain wire fence: An insight into York’s agricultural, ecological and economic history
Roger Underwood. 2005. The jam post and plain wire fence: An insight into York’s agricultural, ecological and economic history. Barladong (5) 2005: 16-27 (Barladong is the journal of the York Historical Society in Western Australia).
A jam post and plain wire fence (with one run of barb) in the Avon Valley – probably built in the 1920s, photographed in 2004
Full text:
ONE OF THE MOST ubiquitous features of our agricultural districts until a few years ago was the jam post and plain wire fence. Until replaced by modern fences made with manufactured link mesh wire and steel pickets or treated pine posts, jam post and plain wire fences extended over thousands of kilometers throughout the Avon Valley and beyond. They demarcated paddocks and property boundaries and river, road and railway reserves. Many of the jam post and plain wire fences constructed during the early 20th century still stand and perform a useful function today (although usually with a run of ringlock added, and a few steel pickets as supports). Others were over 100 years old at the time they were replaced. These old fences are not only a testimony to the durability and simplicity of the structure, but to the skill and hard work of the people who built them. They also provide insights into the regional economy and ecology and its social history.
One of the finest remnants of early fencing is still to be seen along sections of the York-Greenhills railway reserve, where the original jam posts, heavy gauge wire and cast iron windlass strainers can still be observed. This fence would have been constructed in 1898 when the railway was built (Tilley, 1998).
I am interested in the use of natural resources, especially timber, and I have always been fascinated by the jam wattle (Acacia acuminata) tree and its (mostly unsung) contribution to the development of the farming industry in the Avon districts and beyond. To get a sample of the extent of this contribution, I recently estimated the distance of boundary fencing which followed the subdivision of the Gwambygine Estate. This estate had resulted from the 1890s breakup into farms and homestead blocks of one of the original pastoral leases on the Avon River, south of York. I measured boundary fencing alone and the distance amounted to over 550 kilometers for this single subdivision.
When this figure is extrapolated to subsequent farm development in the York area and along the Avon Valley, together with the knowledge that one kilometer of fencing required 300 posts, 5 (and often 6) kilometers of wire, and strainer posts at every corner and every few hundred metres along the fence, it gives some idea of the extent of the task involved in fence construction, and of the vast resources of timber which were used.
Fences are so much a part of the rural landscape, that they largely go un-noticed. Nor is their history appreciated, or the way in which the development of fencing and the use of timber posts is interconnected with social, ecological and economic history. In reflecting on these issues, it is necessary to go back to the earliest days of settlement.
Impacts Of Earthquake Tsunamis On Oregon Coastal Populations
Leland Gilsen. 2002. Impacts Of Earthquake Tsunamis On Oregon Coastal Populations. Association of Oregon Archaeologists Occasional Papers No. 7, 2002.
Leland Glisen was the State Archaeologist for Oregon from 1978 to 2002 within the State Historic Preservation Office of Oregon State Parks. He has a Ph.D. in Anthropology with a specialization in Archaeology from the University of Arizona. This paper was downloaded and reposted with permission from Dr. Glisen’s excellent website, Oregon-Archaeology [here].
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
Introduction
What were the impacts to human populations from great subduction earthquakes and resulting tsunamis? This key question has not been addressed by archaeologists. What happens to population growth curves along the northern California, Oregon, and southern Washington coasts when, on an average of every 572 years, a great-subduction earthquake (between 8 and 9+ on the Richter scale with up to 10 hours of tsunami waves) hits prehistoric settlements?
First, there must have been significant loss of life among the prehistoric populations. Second plant and animal resources would have been disturbed or destroyed to some degree. Third, communication and travel would have been disrupted. Fourth, water transport (canoes) on estuaries and along the coast would have been lost or destroyed. Fifth, shelters (housing) would have been lost or damaged.
If in mid-winter and at night, like the quake of 1700, people would have been in coastal winter villages. They must have faced massive damage when weather conditions were poor. Stored foods may have been lost or damaged. Sites on cliff edges (including winter houses) may have crashed into the sea.
Physical Evidence
Adams (1992) summarized research into quakes in the Seattle area and found local tsunamis in the narrow channels, rock avalanches in the Olympic Mountains that dammed streams to produce lakes, and block landslides in Lake Washington. Atwater and Moore (1992) verified the local Puget Sound tsunamis north of Seattle. Karlin and Abella (1992) found steep basin landslides in Lake Washington in at least three locations that included large block slides that submerged forest habitats. Schuster et al. (1992) suggested that eleven rock avalanches in the southeastern Olympics were the result of quakes. “The rock avalanches that formed Jefferson, Lower Dry Bed, and Spider Lakes, and perhaps Lena Lake, provide evidence that strong shaking accompanied abrupt tectonic displacement in western Washington” (Schuster et al. 1992:1621). Logan and Walsh (1995) documented two drowned forests in lake Sammamish as evidence for one or two large block landslides into the lake as the result of a major earthquake.
So the physical damage from such events must have been massive. But the cultural and social damage must have been just as great. The loss of life in a small scale society would have a disproportionate effect on population growth curves, flattening them out, and modifying the region’s demography. This in turn, would have long term effects on human ecology or population adaptation. With the overall population being hit by periodic episodes of catastrophic death and destruction, there simply was a slower change in carrying capacity and a reduced need for changes in any of the key economic technological systems (production, distribution, consumption, or storage) or political systems (access to, and control over, important resources in the physical, biotic of cultural environmental context). …
Fire, Flogging, Measles and Grass: the influence of early York settlers on bushfire policy in Western Australia
David Ward and Roger Underwood. 2003. Fire, Flogging, Measles and Grass: the influence of early York settlers on bushfire policy in Western Australia. Barladong (4) 2003: 16-27 (Barladong is the journal of the York Historical Society in Western Australia).
Note — this paper is a revision of an earlier paper:
David Ward. 1998. Fire, Flogging, Measles and Grass: Nineteenth Century Land Use Conflict in Southwestern Australia. Dept. of Conservation and Land Management, Western Australia.
Full text of the 1998 paper, which includes references and reprints of colonial correspondence, is [here] (3.6 MB)
Full text of the 2003 paper:
*****
“Nearly fifty-five miles east of Guildford is the new town of York, laid out on locations of fifty acres each, round the base of a conical hill called Mount Bakewell (which is covered with poa-grass)…” — Nathaniel Ogle, “The Colony of Western Australia: A Manual for Emigrants”, 1839
Conflict over land management is common today. Some of our most contentious political and economic issues are between interest groups promoting different, and often conflicting, land uses such as farming, nature conservation, recreation, urban development, forestry, and water catchment. In this paper we examine a particular conflict in the 1840s, especially in the York district, over the traditional use of bushfire by Noongar people. The historical perspective is relevant to present day conflict over fire management.
Before Europeans settled in south-western Australia, the indigenous Noongar people used the land for hunting and gathering. As with other hunter-gatherers in Africa, India, and the Americas, Noongars used fire as a management tool, and had probably done so for tens of thousands of years. The arrival of Europeans whose homesteads, sheds, stock, crops, pastures and haystacks were vulnerable to fire led to immediate conflict: a fire-vulnerable society was seeking to establish itself in an environment in which fire occurred frequently, and was the dominant land management practice.
The importance of frequent fire in the land use and culture of the Noongars has been set out by West Australian scholars such as Associate Professor Sylvia Hallam [1] and Dr. Neville Green [2]. Amongst a wealth of historical references, Sylvia Hallam noted Lt. Bunbury’s [3] estimate of two to three years between bushfires in the parts of the south-west that he had visited in the 1830s. She also noted Major Mitchell’s [4] perceptive comment of 1848, based on observations in other parts of Australia, that
Fire, grass, kangaroos, and human inhabitants, seem all dependent on each other for existence…
Reconstructing Historic Ecotones Using the Public Land Survey: The Lost Prairies of Redwood National Park
Joy A. Fritschle. 2008. Reconstructing Historic Ecotones Using the Public Land Survey: The Lost Prairies of Redwood National Park. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 98:1, 24-39
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
Abstract
Restoration of natural systems depends, in part, on reconstructing historic landscapes to serve as reference ecosystems. The most effective historic landscape reconstruction relies on multiple lines of evidence at different temporal and spatial scales. This study analyzes original Public Land Survey (PLS) records and compares the results with previous work that relied on dendroecology and aerial photograph evidence of vegetation change. Notations in the land survey regarding the location of prairie-woody vegetation ecotones in the Bald Hills of Redwood National Park were transcribed into a geographic information system. Sugihara and Reed (1987) measured the degree of coniferous forest encroachment into prairies and oak woodlands, estimating a 29 percent loss in the spatial extent between 1850 and 1983. The location of 1875–1882 land survey records of ecotones provides evidence that transects across the prairies might have narrowed by as much as 44 percent. Furthermore, this study found evidence of both oak woodland and coniferous forest encroachment into prairies, and that the diminishment of prairies further inland might result primarily from the expansion of oak woodland. A reconstruction of the historic landscape that relies on both field and archival evidence is the best approach to defining reference ecosystems.
Environmentally biased fragmentation of oak savanna habitat on southeastern Vancouver Island, Canada
Mark Vellend, Anne D. Bjorkman, Alan McConchie. 2008. Environmentally biased fragmentation of oak savanna habitat on southeastern Vancouver Island, Canada. Biological Conservation 141(2008) 2576-2584.
Selected Excerpts:
Abstract
Quantifying the degree to which natural or protected areas are representative of a specified baseline provides critical information to conservation prioritization schemes. We report results on southeastern Vancouver Island, Canada, where we compared environmental conditions represented across the entire landscape, in oak savanna habitats prior to European settlement (<1850), and in both protected and unprotected oak savannas in the present-day. In this region, oak savannas represent a rare habitat type, harboring many threatened species. Before European settlement, oak savannas occurred in a distinctly different subset of environmental conditions than they do today. Compared to the entire landscape, oak savannas were historically found predominantly in warm, dry, flat, and low-lying areas, but habitat destruction has left oak savannas in largely the exact opposite set of conditions at present. Thus, the range of conditions in both protected and unprotected oak savannas at present are highly unrepresentative of historical conditions. It appears that fire management by indigenous peoples maintained oak savannas historically across large areas of flat low-lying conditions with deep soils, where succession otherwise produces closed coniferous forest. These areas have since been almost entirely converted to agricultural and urban areas, leaving remnant oak savannas largely on steep, rocky hilltops, where the habitat is maintained by shallow soils. Our results provide quantitative guidance for setting conservation priorities for oak savannas in this region, while highlighting the important general issue of the major role traditional land-use practices can play in shaping landscapes, and therefore in influencing the baselines used to set conservation priorities.
Cultivated Landscapes Cultural Landscapes Fire History Native Cultures
by admin
leave a comment
Evaluating the Purpose, Extent, and Ecological Restoration Applications of Indigenous Burning Practices in Southwestern Washington
Linda Storm and Daniela Shebitz. 2006. Evaluating the Purpose, Extent, and Ecological Restoration Applications of Indigenous Burning Practices in Southwestern Washington. Ecological Restoration, Vol. 24, No. 4, 2006.
Selected excerpts:
Abstract
Understanding the historic fire regime is essential before restoring fire to an ecosystem. Historical ecology provides a means to use both quantitative and qualitative data from different disciplines to address questions about how the traditional ecological management (TEM) practices of indigenous peoples influenced prairie and savanna ecosystems in the past. In this article, we evaluated paleoecological, archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnobotanical information about the Upper Chehalis River basin prairies of southwestern Washington to better understand the extent to which TEM influenced prairie distribution, composition, and availability of wild plant food resources. We also surveyed areas that had been burned at differing frequencies to test whether frequent fires increase camas (Camassia quamash) productivity. Preliminary results support the hypothesis that camas productivity increases with fire-return intervals of one to two years.
Introduction
A number of anthropologists, ethnobotanists, and ecologists now believe that indigenous peoples contributed to the long-term maintenance and distribution of prairie and savanna ecosystems in pre-European western Washington through traditional management techniques, such as burning (Norton 1979a, 1979b; Kruckeberg 1991; Agee 1993; Dunn and Ewing 1997; Boyd 1999a; Leopold and Boyd 1999; Wray and Anderson 2003). Following the decline of indigenous cultures and the subsequent absence of low-intensity, high-frequency fires, areas in western Washington that were once prairies and savannas have naturally succeeded to conifer-dominated forests (Lang 1961).
Today, there are efforts underway to restore the fire-dependent prairies and savannas of western Washington and the many now rare, threatened, and endangered species that continue to exist in those degraded ecosystems (Dunn and Ewing 1997, Chappell and others 2001, Peter and Shebitz 2006).
In this paper, we use a historical ecology methodology to evaluate both the reasons why indigenous peoples in the Upper Chehalis River basin managed prairie and savanna ecosystems and the extent of those practices through time and space. …
Cultivated Landscapes Cultural Landscapes Fire History Native Cultures The Wilderness Myth
by admin
Comments Off
Amazonian Dark Earths: Wim Sombroek’s Vision
William I. Woods (Editor), Wenceslau G. Teixeira (Editor), Johannes Lehmann (Editor), Christoph Steiner (Editor), Antoinette M.G.A. WinklerPrins (Editor), Lilian Rebellato (Editor). 2009. Amazonian Dark Earths: Wim Sombroek’s Vision. Springer; 1st edition (December 1, 2008). 504 pages.
Amazon.com listing [here].
Review by Mike Dubrasich
A landmark book has been published on terra preta, Amazonian dark earths, the carbon-rich soils developed by ancient civilizations in what was once thought to be a pristine wilderness. Dedicated to Dutch soil scientist Wim Sombroek (1934-2003) who was the first modern investigator of terra preta, Amazonian Dark Earths: Wim Sombroek’s Vision is a compilation of the latest, cutting-edge studies in this fascinating and important multi-disciplinary field.
Amazonian soils are predominantly laterites [here], deeply weathered red clays lacking in most soil nutrients. Millions of years of rainfall have leached out everything but iron (hence the red color), silica, and aluminum. Essential plant nutrients such as calcium, phosphorus, and potassium are nearly missing. Amazon vegetation subsists on itself, the thin humus of decaying plant matter being the only source of key metallic oxides.
Except where there is terra preta, or it’s close cousin terra mulata. Terra preta is deep, rich, fertile, black soil that occurs in patches on bluffs along the Amazon and its tributaries. Terra preta is filled with charcoal, ash, mulch, bones, and pottery shards! It is potting soil made from organic matter transported to the sites in pots! These anomalous soils are anthropogenic: people made them.
[Dr. William] Denevan (2001:116–119) has argued that in pre-Columbian times the use of stone axes made long-fallow shifting cultivation very inefficient, and as result probably uncommon until the European introduction of metal axes. Previously, soil fertility must have been maintained and improved by frequent composting, mulching, and in-field burning, making semi-permanent cultivation possible with only brief fallowing. Over time these activities could have produced fertile, self-sustaining dark earths.
Dark earths may occupy 0.1% to 0.3%, or 6,000 to 18,000 km2, of forested lowland Amazonia (Sombroek and Carvalho 2002:130). Because their densities vary greatly within subregions and almost no systematic survey has been accomplished within Amazonia, variations in density projections of an order of magnitude are to be expected. The dark earths occur in a variety of climatic, geologic, and topographic situations, both along river bluffs and in the interior, with depths sometimes exceeding 2.0 m. Individual patches range from 1 ha or so to several hundred hectares. — from Chapter 1, Amazonian Dark Earths: The First Century of Reports by William I. Woods and William M. Denevan
Rather than a pristine, untrammeled, unoccupied wilderness, Amazonia has been home to people for thousands of years. The indigenous residents were agriculturalists who modified soils in order to grow corn (maize), squash, beans, fruiting palms, gourds, pineapples, cotton, arrowroot, and many other cultivated fruits, nuts, tubers, and fibers.
Terra mulata is brownish soil that generally surrounds patches of terra preta. It is not quite as rich and has fewer artifacts, and is even more widespread than terra preta. In theory, terra mulata is the accidentally improved soil adjacent to the deliberately improved soils, or else it is terra preta in the making. In either case, anthropogenically altered soils are in strong contrast to the unaltered laterites, and cover a combined area the size of France.
One of the key elements of terra preta is charcoal, lately termed “biochar”.
Vegetation actively withdraws carbon from the atmosphere and stores it as organic matter. Biochar is created when organic matter is heated without oxygen and it contains twice the carbon content of ordinary biomass (Lehmann 2007). Biochar is much more resistant to decay and can store carbon for centennial timescales (Lehmann et al. 2006). The addition of biochar to the soil was part of the creation of ADE [Amazon dark earths] (Neves et al. 2003). This has lead some to speculate on the viability of a biochar carbon sequestration industry which would reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases (Marris 2006; Sombroek et al. 2002) and improve soil fertility (Lehmann et al. 2003; Glaser and Woods 2004). — from Chapter 14, Locating Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) Using Satellite Remote Sensing – A Possible Approach by J Thayn, KP Price, and WI Woods.
Biochar is touted as a “solution” to the global warming “problem.” I demure. But biochar is definitely a valuable soil amendment because carbon binds to and stores the metallic oxide nutrients essential to plant growth. The addition of charcoal as well as organic detritus helped to create and sustain terra preta over centuries.
Amazonian Dark Earths: Wim Sombroek’s Vision is a wonderful account of the history and science of anthropogenic soils. The book is as rich as terra preta in literary as well as scientific writing.
The legacy of cultural landscapes in the Brazilian Amazon: implications for biodiversity
Michael J. Heckenberger, J. Christian Russell, Joshua R. Toney, and Morgan J. Schmidt. 2007. The legacy of cultural landscapes in the Brazilian Amazon: implications for biodiversity. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B (2007) 362, 197–208
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts:
Abstract
For centuries Amazonia has held the Western scientific and popular imagination as a primordial forest, only minimally impacted by small, simple and dispersed groups that inhabit the region. Studies in historical ecology refute this view. Rather than pristine tropical forest, some areas are better viewed as constructed or ‘domesticated’ landscapes, dramatically altered by indigenous groups in the past. This paper reviews recent archaeological research in several areas along the Amazon River with evidence of large pre-European (ca 400–500 calendar years before the present) occupations and large-scale transformations of forest and wetland environments. Research from the southern margins of closed tropical forest, in the headwaters of the Xingu River, are highlighted as an example of constructed nature in the Amazon. In all cases, human influences dramatically altered the distribution, frequency and configurations of biological communities and ecological settings. Findings of historical change and cultural variability, including diverse small to medium-sized complex societies, have clear implications for questions of conservation and sustainability and, specifically, what constitutes ‘hotspots’ of bio-historical diversity in the Amazon region.
INTRODUCTION
The preservation of tropical forests in the Amazon is central to current debates about environmental and climate change across the globe. Greater Amazonia, which refers to the largely forested Orinoco and Amazon river basins, preserves nearly one half of the world’s remaining tropical forests. It contains nearly a quarter of the world’s fresh water and produces roughly one-third of the world’s oxygen, over an area larger than Europe (nearly one-third of South America). According to The Nature Conservancy (TNC website: www.nature.org; consulted 2December 2006), Amazonia is also home to over one-third of the Earth’s known species, and as such is one of the most critical reservoirs of biodiversity on the planet. Not surprisingly, concerns over biological conservation and the future of the region as a critical ‘tipping point’ in the Earth’s climate and ecology are widespread.
The discovery of remarkable variability within Amazonia over the past few decades has overturned popular characterizations of the region as a fairly uniform, impenetrable lowland jungle strangled with plants and teeming with exotic fauna of all kinds. Recent research coupled with the immense power and widespread availability of satellite imagery reveals that, although generally flat and green, there is astonishing biological and ecological variability. …
The documentation of immense biological variation has done little to change stereotypes of the indigenous occupants of the region—as traditionally small-scale and dispersed villages of ’stone-age primitives’ hidden away in forest clearings. The majority opinion still holds that natural forces and processes, little impacted by human actions until recently, are responsible for the current composition of the region. However, appearances are deceiving and, in this case, the present composition of the region as closed forest often masks an environmental history much more complex.
In-depth studies in ethnohistory and archaeology, i.e. studies with sufficient time-depth to evaluate long-term patterns, clearly document that some areas were home to fairly densely settled, highly productive and powerful regional polities in the past. These small to medium-sized complex societies converted many forests into patchy, managed landscapes, which included fairly large-scale transformations of soils, forest plants and animals, and wetlands.
Of Fates, Forests, and Futures: Myths, Epistemes, and Policy in Tropical Conservation
Susanna B. Hecht. 1993. Of Fates, Forests, and Futures: Myths, Epistemes, and Policy in Tropical Conservation. Horace Marden Albright Lecturer in Conservation. UC Berkeley College of Natural Resources
Full text [here]
Selected excerpts
Introduction
In spite of increasingly strident international censure, the global rates of deforestation in the tropical world have more than doubled during the last decade (Myers 1990). This destructive pattern is well advanced in the Western Amazon. In 1980, less than 8,000 km of Rondonia’s forests had fallen. Acre’s forests were largely intact. By the end of the decade some 60,000 km, or 17% of the state of Rondonia had been cleared. In Acre - more distant, fewer roads and more politically organized - by the mid-1990s, some 5% of the lands had been deforested (FUNTAC 1990). Spurred by government colonization programs, fiscal distortions, land speculation, timber concessions, dubious land titles and the migration of almost a million peasants from southern Brazil (World Bank, 1989), forests relentlessly fell. Degraded pastures and abandoned farms soon replaced rich woodlands. Weed invasion, declines in soil fertility, and frontier economics all took their toll as colonists and ranchers pressed ever forward. …
Rapid deforestation and resource degradation are related to the ecological instability and economic peculiarities of the forms of land occupation expressed by current regional development efforts. But why such forms of land use have come to dominate the landscape leads us further to questions that lie at the heart of deforestation: how we understand it, and how we hope to halt it.
What I will do in this article is to explore some of the deeper epistemological issues that inform our models and environmental sciences of how the world unfolds in these regions. While the scientific literature, airwaves and popular culture barrage us with “explanations,” these competing, largely unexamined paradigms have policy and real-world outcomes. I will examine first two broad overarching approaches that have been instrumental in defining resources debates in the first world, how these have articulated with the scientific frameworks that have been significant in interpreting tropical forests and populations as well as their peoples. I will also discuss the emerging counter view. These will then be linked to explanations of deforestation, and their policy consequences.
The Amazon has always been a mirror to the vibrant fantasies of its observers. Any review of its history is always tremendously disconcerting because there are so many disparate versions of Amazonia, in part because the region is so enormous. But as much as it is a forest of trees, it is also in Turner’s phrase “a forest of symbols.” …
