Browsing by Autor "Umberto Lombardo"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Centuries of compounding human influence on Amazonian forests
(National Academy of Sciences, 2025) Crystal N. H. McMichael; Mark B. Bush; Hans ter Steege; Dolores R. Piperno; William D. Gosling; Majoi N. Nascimento; Umberto Lombardo; Luiz de Souza Coêlho; Iêda Leão do Amaral; Francisca Dionízia de Almeida Matos
Recent evidence suggests that the ecological footprints of pre-Columbian Indigenous peoples in Amazonia persist in modern forests. Ecological impacts resulting from European colonization c. 1550 CE and the Amazonian Rubber Boom c. 1850 to 1920 CE are largely unexplored but could be important additive influences on forest structure and tree species composition. Using environmental niche models, we show the highest probabilities of pre-Columbian and colonial occupation sites, and hence human-induced ecological influences, occurred in forests along rivers. In many areas, the predicted pre-Columbian and colonial distributions overlap spatially with the potential for superimposed ecological influences. Environmental gradients are known to structure Amazonian vegetation composition, but they are also strong predictors of past human influence, both spatially and temporally. Our comparisons of model outputs with relative abundances of Amazonian tree species suggest that pre-Columbian and colonial-period ecological legacies are associated with modern forest composition.
Early Holocene crop cultivation and landscape modification in Amazonia
(Nature Portfolio, 2020) Umberto Lombardo; José Iriarte; Lautaro Hilbert; Javier Ruiz-Pérez; José M. Capriles; Heinz Veit
High-altitude adaptation and late Pleistocene foraging in the Bolivian Andes
(Elsevier BV, 2016) José M. Capriles; Juan Albarracín-Jordán; Umberto Lombardo; Daniela Osorio; Blaine Maley; Steven T. Goldstein; Katherine Herrera; Michael D. Glascock; Alejandra I. Domic; Heinz Veit
Landscape changes in the southern Amazonian foreland basin during the Holocene inferred from Lake Ginebra, Beni, Bolivia
(Cambridge University Press, 2019) Katerine Escobar‐Torrez; Marie‐Pierre Ledru; Teresa Ortuño; Umberto Lombardo; Jean‐François Renno
Abstract Our study is located in northern Beni and aims to improve knowledge on regional landscape changes from the last 8600 years, based on pollen and charcoal analyses from a lacustrine sediment core from Lake Ginebra. Our results showed that gallery forest and lacustrine sediment were observed from 8645 until 3360 cal yr BP. After a change from a lacustrine to a swamp environment at 1700 cal yr BP, the Cerrados and the Mauritia swamp became installed 1000 years ago on our study site. The environmental changes we observed over the last 8600 years in the Ginebra record reinforce the evidence of a west–east climatic gradient with the persistence of rain forest throughout the Holocene on the western side and the presence of the Cerrados until the late Holocene on the eastern side. Moreover, the persistence of a wet forest in the early to mid-Holocene in southwestern Amazonia highlighted some local responses to the global trend that could be related to the distance from the Andes; while in the late Holocene, both an increase in insolation and strengthening of the South American summer monsoon system enabled the installation of a seasonal flooded savanna in northern Beni and of the rain forest in eastern Beni.
Localised land-use and maize agriculture by the pre-Columbian Casarabe Culture in Lowland Bolivia
(SAGE Publishing, 2025) Joseph Hirst; Marco F. Raczka; Umberto Lombardo; Ezequiel Chavez; Lorena Becerra‐Valdivia; McKenzie R. Bentley; Christopher Bronk Ramsey; Miros Stavros James Charidemou; Suzanne Maclachlan; Francis E. Mayle
Multiple pre-Columbian (pre-1492 CE) archaeological sites now challenge the traditional portrayal of Amazonia as a ‘pristine wilderness’. This is especially true within the forest-savanna mosaic landscapes of lowland Bolivia, where the pre-Columbian Casarabe Culture constructed hundreds of settlement mounds, integrated with a dense causeway-canal network – one of the most complex, stratified societies yet discovered in Amazonia. Excavations at previous sites indicate that this culture sustained itself by practicing large-scale, maize-based agriculture. However, the Casarabe Culture’s mounds have also been found within the riparian forests abutting major river systems, where their inhabitants could have benefitted from greater access to forest resources and local fish species. To determine whether these differences influenced how the Casarabe Culture utilised the landscape, we conducted palaeoecological analysis on the sediments collected from Laguna Loma Suarez (LLS), an oxbow lake situated adjacent to a monumental habitation mound within these riparian forests. Our analysis reveals that, despite significant differences in natural resource availability, the Casarabe Culture continued to cultivate maize locally around LLS for over a millennium, between 280 BCE and 1130 CE, with anthropogenic fires largely restricted to the open savannas. Our record also suggests that the Casarabe Culture possibly delayed either forest recovery or natural forest encroachment until after the nearby settlement mound was abandoned. These findings, when compared with those of other sites in the region, show that maize was an important crop in pre-Columbian times, irrespective of major differences in natural resource availability across the complex forest-savanna mosaic settings of Amazonian Bolivia.
Long-term man–environment interactions in the Bolivian Amazon: 8000 years of vegetation dynamics
(Elsevier BV, 2015) Sandra O. Brugger; Erika Gobet; Jacqueline F.N. van Leeuwen; Marie‐Pierre Ledru; Danièle Colombaroli; Willem O. van der Knaap; Umberto Lombardo; Katerine Escobar‐Torrez; Walter Finsinger; Leonor Rodrigues
Persistent Early to Middle Holocene tropical foraging in southwestern Amazonia
(American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2019) José M. Capriles; Umberto Lombardo; Blaine Maley; Carlos Zuna; Heinz Veit; Douglas J. Kennett
The Amazon witnessed the emergence of complex societies after 2500 years ago that altered tropical landscapes through intensive agriculture and managed aquatic systems. However, very little is known about the context and conditions that preceded these social and environmental transformations. Here, we demonstrate that forest islands in the Llanos de Moxos of southwestern Amazonia contain human burials and represent the earliest settlements in the region between 10,600 and 4000 years ago. These archaeological sites and their contents represent the earliest evidence of communities that experienced conditions conducive to engaging with food production such as environmental stability, resource disturbance, and increased territoriality in the Amazonian tropical lowlands.
The unique functioning of a pre-Columbian Amazonian floodplain fishery
(Nature Portfolio, 2018) Rumsaïs Blatrix; Bruno Roux; Philippe Béarez; Gabriela Prestes-Carneiro; Marcelo Amaya; José Luis Aramayo; Leonor Rodrigues; Umberto Lombardo; José Iriarte; Jonas Gregório de Souza