A geographer from Northumbria University, Newcastle is leading on a £340,000 research project to examine how ancient civilisations in one of the most remote and inhospitable areas of the Amazon farmed their land.
Dr Bronwen Whitney, a senior lecturer in physical geography, is an expert in historic environmental changes, particularly in South and Central America.
In her latest study, jointly funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council and the US National Science Foundation, she is examining farming disciplines in the northern Bolivian region of Llanos de Mojos, before Europeans arrived in the late 15th century.
Dr Whitney is working with archaeologists from the University of Central Florida to examine sediment from lakes and wetlands and excavations from forest habitations and raised fields to reconstruct and analyse the long-term agricultural history of the Llanos de Mojos.
Covering almost 50,000 square miles, the region is larger than Portugal and is crossed by numerous rivers that originate from the Andes mountain range. Unlike many parts of the Amazon that are covered by tropical moist forests, much of the Llanos de Mojos floods seasonally, so it is naturally a wet savannah. This flooding makes it an exceptionally inhospitable area for farming.
However, remains of earthworks found in the area show the innovative ways in which people were able to grow crops many hundreds of years ago. Specifically, they developed raised fields to help improve conditions for growing crops during the seasonal floods. Read more.