A01=Stephen Rostain
Agricultural Beds
ancient Amazonian environmental engineering
Andean Piedmont
anthropogenic soils
Author_Stephen Rostain
C3 Plant
Casiquiare Canal
Category=JHM
Category=NKD
Category=WNP
cayenne
coastal
Coastal Savannas
Creole Settlements
De Cayenne
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eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
fields
french
French Guiana
guiana
Habitation Mounds
indigenous land management
Lesser Antilles
Lower Amazon
Middle Amazon
Middle Orinoco
Mound Complexes
Natural Engineers
paleoecology
Pedra Pintada
period
Peripheral Ditches
Polychrome Tradition
pre-columbian
pre-Columbian Period
pretas
raised
Raised Field Agriculture
Sand Ridges
Settlement Mounds
settlement patterns analysis
Stereoscopic Interpretation
terra
Terra Preta
tropical agriculture history
Venezuelan Llanos
wetland archaeology
Product details
- ISBN 9781598746358
- Weight: 453g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Apr 2014
- Publisher: Left Coast Press Inc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Stéphen Rostain’s book is a culmination of 25 years of research on the extensive human modification of the wetlands environment of Guiana and how it reshapes our thinking of ancient settlement in lowland South America and other tropical zones. Rostain demonstrates that populations were capable of developing intensive raised-field agriculture, which supported significant human density, and construct causeways, habitation mounds, canals, and reservoirs to meet their needs. The work is comparative in every sense, drawing on ethnology, ethnohistory, ecology, and geography; contrasting island Guiana with other wetland regions around the world; and examining millennia of pre-Columbian settlement and colonial occupation alike. Rostain’s work demands a radical rethinking of conventional wisdom about settlement in tropical lowlands and landscape management by its inhabitants over the course of millennia.
Stephen Rostain is Director of Investigation at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France. He received his Ph.D. on the archaeology of French Guiana in 1994 from the Sorbonne University in Paris. He has conducted archaeological excavations in France, Mexico, Guatemala, Aruba and Brazil, but his main investigations have been conducted in Amazonia, especially in the Guianas and in Ecuador. Rostain has published more than 100 articles, book chapters and books. In 2008, he received in Paris the Clio award for archaeological projects in foreign countries. The distinguished anthropologist Philippe Descola is chair of anthropology of nature at the College de France and author of numerous books, including In the Society of Nature and The Spears of Twilight .
