A professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois Chicago, Anna Roosevelt has been dubbed the “matriarch” of archaeology in the Amazon River Basin. In a career spanning some 40 years, she has authored more than a hundred scientific articles and a dozen books, which helped accomplish a radical shift in the way we perceive the past of the human presence in the Amazon. Known as environmental determinism, the dominant view for decades was that the tropical rainforest was too hostile, too wet, too infertile to bring forth any complex culture. Additionally, the human presence in the Amazon was thought to be a relatively recent phenomenon, consisting mainly of small bands of hunters and gatherers and simple gardeners. Having worked from the Orinoco floodplains to the Monte Alegre caves and from Marajó Island to the tropical forests of the Congo River Basin, Roosevelt smashed the pillars upon which the “false faith” was built. Today, thanks to archaeologists like her, almost everything regarding the human past of the Amazon is the exact opposite of what was taught in academia only 50 years ago. Erudite and witty, Roosevelt is the first to acknowledge that she did not do it alone. Too many before her remained ignored for far too long. “From an ecological point of view, the significance of the [archaeological] sequence is that the Amazonians have always very much managed the rainforest and rivers,” she said. “They didn’t deforest, but further developed and enriched the natural diversity.” Despite the many existential…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post A short walk through Amazon time: Interview with archaeologist Anna Roosevelt appeared first on EnviroLink Network.