{"id":250,"date":"2020-04-22T12:25:30","date_gmt":"2020-04-22T11:25:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/?page_id=250"},"modified":"2020-06-22T16:08:31","modified_gmt":"2020-06-22T15:08:31","slug":"study-areas","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/study-areas\/","title":{"rendered":"Study Areas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong>HERCA focuses on SW Amazonia (the Upper Madeira river basin). The region has unique potential to address our research questions. Firstly, it has the longest sequences of human occupation in Amazonia, spanning most of the Holocene. Secondly, it has remarkably diverse environments that supported some of the most diverse pre-Columbian societies in Amazonia. Thirdly, it is a major centre of domestication of numerous globally important crops, especially manioc (cassava), which today feeds over half a billion people. Finally, it has 1500-year, annually-resolved speleothem palaeoclimate records, which are currently being extended to the entire Holocene by Co-Investigator Francisco da Cruz. This sector of Amazonia is therefore ideally suited for examining relationships between cultural change, land use and environmental conditions across space and time. We focus on three study areas within SW Amazonia which encompass a spectrum of environmental conditions, in terms of forest cover, flooding regime, and soil fertility.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: square;text-align: justify\">\n<li>Study Area 1 &#8212; <strong>Beni Province of Bolivia<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">This study area is located within a vast, seasonally-flooded, savanna-dominated landscape (the Llanos de Moxos, LM) of the Beni province of Bolivia. It contains over 100 earthen monumental habitation mounds (MM), up to 20 m high and 20 ha in area, comprising pyramidal structures atop platforms built on forested palaeo-river levees. Detailed mapping studies show that MM features form a complex spatial network, connected to each other and adjacent rivers and lakes by a sophisticated transportation and communication network of canals and causeways. Detailed excavations of two of these mounds (\u2018lomas\u2019 Salvatierra and Mendoza), reveal continuous occupation from ca. 400 to 1400 CE, based upon a rich ceramic record comprising five distinct cultural horizons, each lasting ca. 150 \u2013 200 years. Robust chronologies are derived from 39 (Salvatierra) and 41 (Mendoza) AMS 14C dates (on plant macrofossils, charcoal, bones) on the stratigraphic contexts of ceramic phases. The evidence for monumentality, complex communication and transport networks, and high-status burials, signify a highly stratified society. Archaeobotanical data also reveal the cultivation of a wide range of crops (maize, manioc, squash, peanut, cotton, yams, and palms) throughout this occupation history. Stable carbon isotopic evidence from abundant human skeletal remains indicates a maize-based agricultural economy from 400 to 1100 CE, succeeded by a mixed subsistence economy. Within the open savanna are hundreds of small, isolated forest islands of diverse origin, a few metres in elevation and 10-20 m diameter, three of which have been excavated and shown to be anthropogenic shell mounds built by hunter-gatherers, dating from ca. 8000 \u2013 2000 BCE, among the oldest evidence of human occupation in Amazonia. Crucially, however, a 2,400 year gap in the archaeological record between 2000 BCE and 400 CE currently precludes understanding of the processes by which the stratified MM societies succeeded the shell-mound societies. Furthermore, despite the robust chronologies for the Salvatierra and Mendoza mounds, it is uncertain whether there was a synchronous or progressive abandonment of habitation mounds across the region and whether the most recent AMS 14C dates of 1400 CE reflect the timing of site abandonment or whether younger occupation layers have eroded.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: square;text-align: justify\">\n<li>Study Area 2 &#8212; <strong>Bolivian-Brazilian border<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">Study area 2 spans the Bolivian-Brazilian border, encompassing the geologically-controlled forest-savanna mosaic of the easternmost LM, clear-water (nutrient-poor) rivers, and interfluvial terra firme rainforest of the Pre-Cambrian Shield (PCS). A 200 km2 LiDAR survey has revealed 20 circular or elliptical trench systems (\u2018ring ditches\u2019), some of which cover 200 ha, hidden beneath rainforest. The high density and monumental scale of these earthworks suggest a stratified society. Initial excavations of several ring ditches reveal a complex spatial-temporal pattern of discrete single occupation layers that together attest to human occupation from ca. 300 to 1500 CE. This spatially shifting pattern of late Holocene occupation contrasts with Study Area 1, as well as the Monte Castelo (MC) shell mound (6 m high, 1.5 ha in area) in the river Guapor\u00e9 savanna flood-plain of this study area. At MC, recent test excavations reveal a continuous &gt;8,000 year occupation sequence. Evidence from seeds, starch grains and phytoliths demonstrates cultivation of maize, manioc, sweet potato, rice, squash and beans as early as 2500 BCE, while ceramics dating to 3,200 BCE are among the oldest in the Americas. Deeper deposits have yielded lithic remains, hearths and other cultural materials\/structures which, based upon preliminary work in the 1980s, likely pre-date 6,000 BCE. The MC site contains abundant human bones in mortuary contexts extending to 2,500 BCE, providing excellent potential to determine, through stable isotope analyses, how the contribution of maize to the diet may have changed through time \u2013 in particular, whether maize was consumed as part of a mixed subsistence diet or became the main agricultural staple.<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><!--nextpage--><\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: square\">\n<li>Study Area 3\u00a0&#8212; <strong>Teotonio<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This location is covered by rainforest. The open-air site (\u2018Teotonio\u2019) 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 &gt; 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 \u2013 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: justify\"><\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HERCA focuses on SW Amazonia (the Upper Madeira river basin). The region has unique potential to address our research questions. Firstly, it has the longest sequences of human occupation in&#8230;<a class=\"read-more\" href=\"&#104;&#116;&#116;&#112;&#115;&#58;&#47;&#47;&#114;&#101;&#115;&#101;&#97;&#114;&#99;&#104;&#46;&#114;&#101;&#97;&#100;&#105;&#110;&#103;&#46;&#97;&#99;&#46;&#117;&#107;&#47;&#104;&#101;&#114;&#99;&#97;&#47;&#115;&#116;&#117;&#100;&#121;&#45;&#97;&#114;&#101;&#97;&#115;&#47;\">Read More ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":321,"featured_media":315,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","footnotes":""},"coauthors":[9],"class_list":["post-250","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.8.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Study Areas - HERCA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/study-areas\/\" \/>\n<link rel=\"next\" href=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/study-areas\/2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Study Areas - HERCA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"HERCA focuses on SW Amazonia (the Upper Madeira river basin). The region has unique potential to address our research questions. Firstly, it has the longest sequences of human occupation in...Read More &gt;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/study-areas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"HERCA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-06-22T15:08:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/160\/Unorganized\/DSC03045-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1707\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"Marco Raczka\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/study-areas\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/study-areas\/\",\"name\":\"Study Areas - HERCA\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-04-22T11:25:30+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-06-22T15:08:31+00:00\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/study-areas\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/\",\"name\":\"HERCA\",\"description\":\"Human-Environment Relationships in pre-Columbian Amazonia\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/#\/schema\/person\/84dd244980e72342a515d9f5b56c7e85\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":[\"Person\",\"Organization\"],\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/#\/schema\/person\/84dd244980e72342a515d9f5b56c7e85\",\"name\":\"Marco Raczka\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cf56d37cbe151bb6b255e954717526a476febd38ead51f2d17487c5da168757f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cf56d37cbe151bb6b255e954717526a476febd38ead51f2d17487c5da168757f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Marco Raczka\"},\"logo\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Study Areas - HERCA","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/study-areas\/","next":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/herca\/study-areas\/2\/","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"Study Areas - HERCA","og_description":"HERCA focuses on SW Amazonia (the Upper Madeira river basin). 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