This project seeks to improve understanding of past human-environment relationships in Amazonia, over centennial-millennial timescales. Amazonia’s long-term history is of interest to ecologists, archaeologists and climate scientists alike. Once thought to be a virgin wilderness, home to sparse semi-nomadic tribes, recent archaeological and palaeoecological discoveries are revealing complex sedentary societies which domesticated their surroundings and helped shape patterns of rainforest biodiversity we see today. This project focuses on sediment cores collected from two ox-bow lakes (lagunas San Jose and Tumichucua) near the town of Riberalta in Bolivia, SW Amazonia, dating to 9,000 and 6,000 years BP (before present), respectively. They are ideal for examining past human-environment relationships because: a) they are located among the hundreds of geometric earth-works built by the pre-Columbian (pre-1492) “geoglyph” culture (ca. 450 BC and 950 AD) enabling robust correlation between archaeological and sediment core data, b) the surrounding forests were at the epicentre of the late 19th century rubber boom, which may have had significant rainforest impacts, and c) they have unusually high sedimentation rates (10-15 cm/yr) – ideal for capturing rapid climate and land-use changes, and ecological impacts and responses. These sediment cores therefore provide a rare opportunity to robustly cross-correlate palaeo-environmental, archaeological, and historical archive data to investigate past human-environment relationships.
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