Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes (review)

This book by William Denevan on Amazonia and the Andes is one of a series of three volumes on the cultivated landscapes of the Americas; the others are on Middle America and North America. The authors of all three volumes are geographers and, to differing degrees, they belong to a common intellectual tradition that developed under Carl O. Sauer in the Department of Geography at Berkeley. The tradition focused on the landscape whose morphology was explained through an examination of the interactions of humans with their environments, either in the past or today, and for which evidence was obtained primarily through fieldwork. This approach is exemplified in Denevan's book that focuses on the cultivated landscape in 1492, though it draws on evidence extending from prehistory to the present day. It does not discuss crops and their origins, another interest of the Berkeley School of Geography, but rather concentrates on the character of fields and agricultural technology.

The book begins with the classification of 30 types of fields according to their morphology and function, many of which have only been brought to scientific attention within the last 40 years. Indeed, it was Denevan himself along with James Parsons who in the 1960s first reported on the existence of raised fields. The classification is followed by a brief account of the use of crops (including a useful appendix giving the common and scientific names of cultivated plants), tools and what he calls "soft" technology, which includes such things as fertilizers, fire, and forms of pest and weed control. This section is largely descriptive, but it provides a useful framework for the substantive discussions in the three main parts of the book that deal with Amazonian cultivation, Andean irrigation and terracing, and raised and drained fields. Each of these three major parts is divided into several chapters that first describes the form and function of the fields for the whole region, drawing on evidence from fieldwork and archaeological research, before reviewing the early colonial evidence for them and the manner in which they are used today. These general surveys are followed by more detailed studies of specific field systems in which the author himself was directly involved, namely for Amazonia the fields of the Mojo, Campa, Bora, Shipibo and Karinya, for the Andes, the Colca Valley, and for drained fields those found in the Mojos and Lake Titicaca regions. Finally, Denevan addresses some of the controversies that have emerged in recent years and discusses their implications for current agricultural practice.

Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes clearly dispels any idea of a "pristine" landscape when Europeans arrived. It also reveals the extraordinary variety and complexity of agricultural systems within both Amazonia and the Andes. Anyone who thinks that Amazonia was characterised by shifting cultivation and the Andes by terracing and irrigation systems, needs to read this book. The compilation of evidence for these different field types is an achievement in itself, but the book goes on to explore questions of theoretical and practical concern. Of major interest to scholars is the extent to which the practices observed today or in the colonial period can be deemed to be representative of the prehistoric past. This has been central to debates over the size of native populations in the Amazon Basin in 1492. Denevan's speculation in this book that shifting cultivation may not have been practiced in the forests of Amazonia in prehistoric times because of the absence of metal axes to clear the forest and the presence of anthropogenic black soils called terra preta that are indicative of permanent settlement is likely to attract considerable attention.

Denevan clearly believes, and shows, that much traditional agriculture has been productive and capable of supporting large populations and as such may provide models for modern...