Overview

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.

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9781598746358

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Reviews

In this insightful book, Rostain (director of research, CNRS, France) provides a new contribution with a rich perspective on how American Indians modified their landscape to increase food production and maintain high populations in the Guiana region. He presents an extensive review of different forms of earthworks in the New World and other parts of the world with an innovative taxonomy and detailed description of all the known types of earth modifications. This is clearly a synthesis of 25 years of fieldwork that is not only archaeological, but truly multidisciplinary research including ethnological, ecological, botanical, historical, and geological information. The author also provides an ethnoecological analysis and critical interpretation of these anthropogenic landscapes, shading many misconceptions about the Guianan and Amazonian Indians. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. --CHOICE

Author Information

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 .

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