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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Water
Sec. Water Resource Management
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/frwa.2024.1419655
This article is part of the Research Topic Wetlands: Vulnerability and Challenges of their Management under Climate Change View all articles

Culture, Climate and Landscape shape the savanna and wetland mosaic of the Bolivian Amazon

Provisionally accepted
Bronwen Whitney Bronwen Whitney 1*John Walker John Walker 2Neil Duncan Neil Duncan 2Nicholas Loughlin Nicholas Loughlin 3
  • 1 Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
  • 2 University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, United States
  • 3 Natural England, Bristol, England, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Environmental archaeology of the Amazon has conventionally focused on terrestrial spaces, investigating crop domestication and production, agroforestry and anthropogenic soils. Aquatic environments, however, have been given less attention by archaeologists and paleoenvironmental scientists alike. The Llanos de Mojos, a 135,000 km 2 basin of the Amazon and mosaic landscape of savannas, wetlands and forests, has long been recognized for its archaeological record. A variety of anthropogenic earthworks across the region show significant landscape modifications from Pre-Columbian times used for transportation, resource production and control of floodwaters. Here, we investigate the use and management of wetlands, and their interaction in the wider Mojos mosaic landscape, by integrating extensive archaeological, paleoenvironmental and GIS datasets. We demonstrate that past human modifications of the landscape enabled the creation of complex wetland-terrestrial system of resource production, in which wetlands were managed, complementary to terrestrial crop production and agroforestry. Across short distances (40 km), land use strategies were heterogeneous despite being connected in time and space. Additionally, mixed wetlandterrestrial resource production was relatively stable during periods of lower rainfall from 1200 -1500 CE, implying that this strategy provided flexibility under conditions of variable climate. The wetlands of the Llanos de Mojos are the result of millennia of human intervention and recognition of this deep heritage is required to make informed management and conservation decisions to ensure the future of this culturally and biologically diverse region.

    Keywords: Amazon, pre-Columbian archaeology, paleoenvironments, wetlands, savannas, domesticated landscapes

    Received: 18 Apr 2024; Accepted: 25 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Whitney, Walker, Duncan and Loughlin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Bronwen Whitney, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom

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