Early New World Monumentality

10. Early Mounds and Monumental Art in Ancient Amazonia: History, Scale, Function, and Social Ecology

10 Early Mounds and Monumental Art in Ancient Amazonia History, Scale, Function, and Social Ecology Anna C. Roosevelt, J. Douglas, B. Bevan, Maura Imazio da Silveira, and L. Brown In twentieth-century schemes of early human cultural evolution, largescale public works were interpreted as characteristic of preindustrial state societies but not of small-scale or egalitarian societies. The idea was that only complex, centralized, stratified, agricultural societies have what it takes to build, maintain, and use monumental architecture and art. We archaeologists have even considered the presence of such works in ancient sites to be sufficient proof of such a society. But evidence is mounting that social organization, subsistence, architecture, and art often have not interacted as described in twentieth-century theory. A new paradigm of social political causality has emerged recently. Called heterarchy, it explores the role of nonstate organizations in monumental public works projects and other complex cultural achievements. In this chapter, we evaluate both these theories with the information available about the history, function, and socioeconomic context of early monumental architecture and art in ancient Amazonia. Two recent Society for American Archaeology sessions on the theory and evidence of monumental constructions in the New World encouraged a review of these issues. In 2006, Dan Sandweiss and Maria Dulce Gaspar organized a session on shell mounds, and Robert Rosenswig and Richard Burger organized a session on monumentality in Latin America. In this second symposium, the organizers began with twentieth-century theory about the social context of monumental constructions and asked participants to Figure 10.1. Map of the Amazon. Early Mounds and Monumental Art in Ancient Amazonia · 257 trace independently the emergence of the elements assumed to be linked causally: large constructions; monumental art; intensive agriculture; large, dense, sedentary settlements; social and economic differentiation; and central rule. Inspired by both these conferences, we will try to characterize the available evidence on early monumental works complexes in Amazonia in light of theory. After briefly reviewing theories about cultural evolution, we will analyze cultures that we have some experience with—Paleoindian rock-painting cultures, the coastal and riverine shell mounds of the Pottery Archaic and Formative in the Lower Amazon, and Formative earth mounds of the Upper Amazon (Figure 10.1)—as well as cultures that we know only from the literature and/or museum collections; for example, the early Llanos de Mojos region cultures of Bolivia and the mound complex of the Faldas de Sangay site in Ecuador. Given the thrust of this book on early prehistoric periods, we will leave out consideration of the Polychrome Horizon earth mounds on Marajo Island at the mouth of the Amazon, Incised and Punctate Horizon mounds at the Tapajos mouth in the Lower Amazon, and the raised field and mound complexes of the Llanos de Mojos and Guianas coasts. We will try to be attentive to evidence of societies’ environmental relations and subsistence, settlement patterns, human health status, demography, degrees of sociocultural and economic differentiation, patterning of arts and crafts, ritual systems and organizational strategies, and the construction, magnitude, and apparent uses of mounds. Theoretical Background Both cultural anthropologists and archaeologists have been very interested in explaining the origin and functioning of early state societies (e.g., Carneiro 1970; Earle 1987; Johnson and Earle 1987; Fried 1967; Meggers 1954; Roosevelt 1980, 1989; Sanders and Price 1968; Service 1975). And whether from the point of view of evolutionary theory or of human organization, the preindustrial state has been a popular focus of this research. Many of us once believed or still believe that only state societies are able to make the great cultural achievements associated with ancient civilization: high art and architecture, writing, intensive agriculture, urban settlements, and, above all, monumental constructions. The belief has been that only largescale , centralized, and hierarchical societies have the administrative means to carry out such achievements and to organize the large settled populations whose labor is required. Such means range from armed coercion 258 · Anna C. Roosevelt, J. Douglas, B. Bevan, Maura Imazio da Silveira, and L. Brown by state-controlled police forces, effective taxation and tribute collection, and central control of technology and production to centralized redistribution of artifacts, raw materials, and food. Grassroots community-based organizations in small-scale societies that can rely only on such means as family relations, persuasion and manipulation of group opinion, gift exchange , and ritual sanctions are thought to be unable to organize and run such large-scale...