- Study Area 3 — Teotonio
This location is covered by rainforest. The open-air site (‘Teotonio’) is located on a high bluff adjacent to the white-water (silt-laden) Madeira river near Porto Velho. As with MC (Study Area 2), preliminary work and ongoing excavations point to a continuous history of human occupation extending to > 6,000 BCE, as well as the oldest terras pretas (anthropogenic black-earth soils) in the Amazon, dating to ca. 4,500 BCE. Macrobotanical, phytolith and starch grain analyses are revealing similar cultigens to those found in study areas 1 and 2 – maize, manioc, sweet potato, squash etc. Late Holocene, ceramic-rich earthmounds (3 m thick) have been discovered at this site, indicative of sedentary populations. However, in contrast to study areas 1 and 2, no evidence for social stratification has yet been found.
