Amazonian Dark Earths William Balee Tulane University, [email protected]

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America ISSN: 2572-3626 (online) Volume 8 | Issue 1 Article 3 June 2010 Amazonian Dark Earths William Balee Tulane University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti Part of the Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Balee, William (2010). "Amazonian Dark Earths," Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America: Vol. 8: Iss. 1, Article 3. Available at: http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol8/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Commons @ Trinity. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ Trinity. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Amazonian Dark Earths Amazonian Dark Earths: Origins, Properties, Management. Johannes Lehmann, Dirse C. Kern, Bruno Glaser, William I. Woods, eds. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003. 505 pp., $279.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-4020-1839-8 [http://www.springer.com/]. Amazonian Dark Earths: Explorations in Space and Time. Bruno Glaser and William I. Woods, eds. Berlin: Springer-Verlag., 2004. 216 pp., $189 (cloth). ISBN 978-3-54000754-8 [http://www.springer.com/]. Amazonian Dark Earths: Wim Sombroek’s Vision. William I. Woods, Wenceslau G. Teixeira, Johannes Lehmann, Christoph Steiner, Antoinette M.G.A. WinklerPrins, and Lilian Rebellato, eds. New York: Springer Science and Business Media B.V., 2009. 502 pp., $249 (cloth). ISBN 978-1-4020-9030-1 [http://www.springer.com/]. WILLIAM BALÉE Tulane University [email protected] LEGACIES IN THE SOIL: A REVIEW ESSAY These volumes [1], consisting of sixty-six chapters in about 1,223 pages, constitute a monumental contribution to research on anthropogenic soils of the Amazon basin. Contribution is rendered here in the singular out of deference to the fact that each of the three volumes exhibits the same title, the differences of content, or at least as it is perceived by the editors, who vary somewhat from volume to volume, being indicated only by distinctive subtitles. This contribution refutes, in essence, the adaptationist view of Amazonian indigenous societies, of intrinsic importance to Tipití readers, though such an intention was probably far from the thinking of most of the authors at the time they wrote their chapters. It is intriguing that this refutation takes place in light of what constitutes less than 1% of the forested part of the region’s surface soils (Woods and Denevan 3.1:1). That small fraction, nevertheless, like the difference in DNA between humans and chimpanzees, takes on profound significance in terms of understanding not only agriculture, population, and settlement in the prehistory of the region, but also the potential applications of Amazonian anthropogenic soils to carbon sequestration, Published by Digital Commons @ Trinity, 2010 1 Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America climate change, protection of diversity, and human welfare more generally on planet Earth, present and future. The adaptationist view of Amazonian archaeology and ethnology had placed Amazonian soils, especially those of the tropical forest, long ago within a framework of environmental limitation. For the most part, Amazonian soils, as with tropical soils in general, are fragile and depauperate of nutrients. A perhaps typical statement on the soils of the tropical forest, and their relationship to indigenous society, made by the founder of cultural ecology, reads at mid-twentieth century as follows: “Soil exhaustion periodically required that it [i.e., the village] be moved to the site of a new plantation” (Steward 1963:699). The key term here is the verb “required.” The adaptationist view is now perhaps more commonly called the standard model (Viveiros de Castro 1996; Stahl 2002); it refers to the environmental determinism of egalitarian societies in Greater Amazonia and the Atlantic Coastal Forest. It may seem interesting that the standard model has been partly laid to rest by soil scientists, beginning with the late Wim Sombroek, to whom each of the three volumes is dedicated, three separate times. If studied closely, soil scientists perhaps have more in common with archaeologists than they do with other students of the land, such as geologists, since they deal with the often anthropogenic A and B horizons; in contrast, geologists obviously may examine strata having no human-mediated disturbance at all (such as volcanic interiors and levels inside the Earth’s mantle). In this regard, editor William Woods’ distinction between soils and sediments (1.1) is a good place to begin the entire discussion. Although Sombroek was not the first to identify the charcoal-black terra preta soils, which always contain potsherds from pre-Columbian peoples, and which he called “kitchen middens,” as anthropogenic, he was the first to distinguish these operationally from terra mulata, which are grayish- brown soils on the Belterra Plateau near Santarém, of which he wrote: “It seems likely that this soil has obtained its specific properties from long- lasting cultivation. The gardens around the former Indian villages were probably situated here” (Sombroek 1966:175). These soils typically lack ceramics. The idea is that they represent a sort of compost, taken from within the village to the fields, to support what has since been called semi-intensive cultivation (Denevan 2.10; Denevan 2006). Anthropogenic soils are swathed in a plethora of acronyms (see Table 1). The authors generally agree on calling them Amazonian Dark Earths (the term from Woods and McCann 1999), which cover a broad variety, in fact, of soils. There is a basic distinction, first recognized by Sombroek (1966:175-176), between his kitchen midden black soils, the terra preta or TP, with its potsherds, and the grayish-brown soils lacking in ceramics, the terra mulata or TM. The TM has since been found http://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/tipiti/vol8/iss1/3 2 Amazonian Dark Earths Table 1. Meaning of Acronyms of Anthropogenic Soils Employed in the Amazonian Dark Earths Volumes acronym term synonyms comment ADE Amazon Dark Relic anthrosols includes all Earth (Lehman et al. 2.8) anthrosols of Amazonia ABE Archaeologica same as above same l Black Earth (e.g., Woods and Glaser 2.1; Ruivo et al. 2.7) TP terra preta or “kitchen charcoal black A terra preta do midden”(Sombroek horizon soils with índio 1966); cultic archaeo potsherds and lots anthrosol (Neves et al. of soil organic 1.3); tierra negra in matter Colombia (Mora 1.11) TM terra mulata gray-brown garden soil “transitional” soils (Sombroek 1966); also (Kern et al. 1.4) ; archaeo anthrosol i.e., some authors (Neves et al. 1.3 ; see these as Tropische transitional Plaggenböden (Kämpf between TP and et al. 1.5); tierra parda TC (terra comum) in Colombia (Kern et al. [not an anthrosol] 1.4) TPN terra preta “New Black Earth” made from nova experimental anthrosol biochar=pyrogenic carbon=charcoal outside the Belterra Plateau, such as in the Central Amazon (Neves et al. 1.3), so Sombroek’s initial discovery was not isolated, and it has led to a revolutionary new debate about origins and management, if any, of these soils. Debate essentially hinges on intentionality (German 2003; Kämpf et al. 1.5; Myers 2.6; Erickson 1.23): did people purposefully make dark earths for agricultural purposes or not? The evidence is tantalizingly Published by Digital Commons @ Trinity, 2010 3 Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America inconclusive, or perhaps it is empirically too rich, to answer the question simply one way or the other. Some of the chapters in volumes one and especially three are exceedingly technical. It would certainly help one to have a PhD degree in organic chemistry to understand them—add to that advanced training in GIS, nuclear magnetic resonance, plant genetics, DNA fingerprinting using clone libraries, fluorescence microscopy, and somewhat more than cursory acquaintance with current trends in the more mundane fields of experimental field biology, electromagnetics, and molecular and soil biology, and one will have reasonably good background for comprehension of several chapters. Even so, it is perhaps not overly taxing for most anthropologists, even social and cultural ones like the present reviewer, to recognize that soils can indicate human activity on the landscape, or as Lehmann et al. (1.6) call it, the soilscape. Anthrosols in Amazonia, or Amazon Dark Earths (ADE) [Woods and McCann 1999], which are soils made consciously or not by human activity, are simply good ground for agriculture. Compared to primeval soils around and under them, ADE are sandy loams, high in nutrients, low in acidity, and more or less dark to charcoal-black in color. The key indicator of human activity, when looking at the ground, is elevated levels of phosphorus (P), which has been known as an indicator-element of human activity since at least the early twentieth century (Woods 1.1), and which is found in ADE mostly in its compound form as phosphate [P2 O5] (Kern et al. 1.4, Kern et al. 2.3, Van Hofwegen et al. 3.22, German 2.4, Coomes 2.5, Lehmann et al. 2.8, Falcão et al. 3.11). Some but not all the writers think this P derives from bone, specifically human bone from burial inside ancient houses; others think most of the P is coming from ceramics (see below). ADE also show high levels of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and calcium (Ca) (Woods 1.1, Kern et al. 1.4, 2.3, Falcão et al. 3.11, Sombroek et al. 1.7). Also found in high levels are Magnesium (Mg) (Kern et al. 1.4, Kern et al.

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