Managing environmental diversity in the eastern foothills of the Andes : pre-Columbian agrarian landscapes in the El Alto-Ancasti mountain range

Abstract

In this paper we review the growing evidence of anthropogenic landscapespresent in the semi-deciduous neotropical forest biomes of eastern NW Argentina,which have remained relatively neglected in favour of arid to semi-arid western Andean regions. The evidence gathered in de El Alto-Ancasti provides animportant case study where multidisciplinary methodologies have beenapplied to sites that document the emergence and variability in food productionstrategies across the eastern Andean forests and grasslands of NWArgentina. We discuss evidence offarming structures from archaeological surveys, plant management from phy-tolith analysis, and the tempo and nature of settlement from archaeological excavations undertaken at a variety of sites in the El Alto Ancasti mountainrange. We suggest that the communities that inhabited this region during thefirst millennium AD (ca. 1500–1000 BP) established a strategy of ‘overlappingpatchworks’ of food production that were able to contend with considerableseasonal variability. We argue that, through the use of cross-channelling, low river areas, erosion control techniques and the establishment of mesothermal crops,including maize, legumes, and tubers, throughout the region, these societies adopted flexible strategies to adapt to life in a region prone to climatic change