anthropogenic Amazonian dark earths (Terra Preta)

[Jacky Foo]

On Aug 13, 8:08 am, Jacky Foo <jacky....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I found the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta
> >...the origins of the Amazonian dark earths were not
> >immediately clear and several theories were considered.
> >One idea was that they resulted from ashfall from volcanoes
> >in the Andes, since they occur more frequently on the brows
> >of higher terraces. Another theory considered formation as
> >a result of sedimentation in Tertiary lakes or in recent
> >ponds.
>
> Since "Terra Preta consists of low temperature charcoal, pottery
> shards, plant residues, animal faeces, fish bones,...." I think it is
> from the wastedump of the Kayapo village or homes.
>
> I welcome comments ?

I found another interesting document at http://www.georgiaitp.org/carbon/PDF%20Files/BDenevan.pdf by William M. Denevan and William I. Woods who wrote in "DISCOVERY AND AWARENESS OF ANTHROPOGENIC AMAZONIAN DARK EARTHS (TERRA PRETA)" :
WD/WW>....The black terra preta is associated with long-enduring, Indian village
>sites, and is filled with ceramics, animal and fish bones, and other
>cultural debris. The brown terra mulata, on the other hand, is much
>more extensive, generally surrounds the black midden soils, contains
>few artifacts, and apparently is the result of semi-intensive
>cultivation over long periods.
...
>.....The carbon in terra preta comes from kitchen fires and village
>refuse burning, and in terra mulata probably from in-field burning of
>organic debris (weeds, crop residues, thatch, branches from
>adjacent forest, etc.). Low intensity "cool" burning, what has
>been called "slash and char," resulting in incomplete combustion,
>can produce carbon in high quantity which can persist in soil for
>thousands of years. Dated carbon in terra preta is as old as 450 B.C.
>(Petersen et al, 2001).

Many dump sites in developing countries today still do slow burning which could look like "slash and char". I add 2 pictures from Western Samoa to show the effects. The 2nd pic shows a background of unburned white area while the foreground shows lots of remaining tin cans in a dark area. The Amazonian villages probably had villages where there were hundreds of people and had dump sites too.

WD/WW>One of the most detailed descriptions is from Herbert Smith
>(1879....), who wrote that this was "the best [soil] on the Amazons...
>a fine, dark loam, a foot, and often two feet, thick..[which] owes
>its richness to the refuse of a thousand kitchens for maybe
>a thousand years... [in one stretch] it forms almost a continuous
>line...thirty miles long... and strewn over it everywhere we find
>fragments of Indian pottery so abundant in some places they
>almost cover the ground

for further reading go to :
http://www.georgiaitp.org/carbon/orals.htm

regards
jacky

[Mel Landers]

Jacky Foo wrote: the origins of the Amazonian dark earths were not immediately clear and several theories were considered.

I finally found Suzanna Hecht's research report on the Kayao. I have too many documents stored on line!   This is long, but well worth reading for anyone interested in the dark earth soils.   mel

 

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[Liaqat Hayat]

Dear Mel

Can you provide details for downloading of Suzanna Hecht's research report. Thanks

 

Liaqat Hayat

 

[Mel Landers]

I have imbedded the article into this E-mail

Susanna B. Hecht, University of California

Indigenous Soil Management and the Creation of Amazonian Dark   Earths:  Implications of Kayapo Practices

In: Johannes Lehman: Amazonian Dark Earths: Origin, Properties and Management of Fertile Soils in the Humid Tropics 

Abstract

 

Large areas of Amazonian vegetation are now widely recognized as the outcome of human manipulation. Recent research has explored the extent to which large scale earthworks and fluvial formations also reflect human agency. In Amazonia, past research has typically relegated the role of people in changing soil properties to a story of resource degradation that reflects the expansion of unsustainable land uses in the last 30 years. Large areas of Terra Preta and Terra Mulata associated with  archaeological sites imply that high fertility soils are the outcome of long term human interventions. Using an analysis of soil management by the Gorotirê Kayapó, this paper documents land and soil management techniques that suggest that soils, one of the most malleable properties of ecosystems , can be improved. This paper outlines means and mechanisms through which the anthropic pedogenesis of Terra Preta and Terras Mulatas might have occurred. 

I. Introduction: Man as a Geomorphic Force in Amazonia   

The idea of the Amazon  forests as primeval landscapes may still animate the imagination of romantics and conservationists, but a large, scientifically rigorous literature increasingly suggests that the Amazon landscapes are profoundly cultural, the outcome of both large- and small-scale manipulations that have defined local and regional habitats. The antiquity of human occupation, the large size of native populations in pre-Columbian times and the sheer array of types of activities require a rethinking of the nature of human impacts in these regions.

There are essentially three large classes of human activities that have shaped Amazonian landscapes:

·         Large-scale earthworks: ridged fields, causeways, canals, mounds, palisades. Some of these structures are agricultural such as  ridged fields, mounds and causeways that were developed in seasonally flooded zones. Other  recent research also emphasizes the importance of palisades, and large scale landscape management for defense and fisheries management. (Cf Denevan 2001,Erickson 2000, Heckenberger 1996, Roosevelt 1991). Gravity terraces in the Andean foothills also form part of this more general process of geomorphological transformations in the creation of "anthropogenic" landscapes.

·         Fluvial management and floodplain soil manipulation is also a critical dimension of human transformation of Amazon ecosystems. Channel excavation, causeway development, damming, levee construction, weirs and other riparian modifications were used to create flat agricultural lands, to improve local soils, to provide access to extractive resources, and to facilitate movement from one watershed to another.(Raffles, 2002, Raffles and Winkleprinz forthcoming; Sternberg 1998). These processes occur today, but no doubt also reflect a long history of floodplain and terrace management under a broad array of social regimes. Ancillary impacts would have included shifts in vegetation, fisheries and wildlife resources.

·         Manipulation of vegetation through domestication, "semi" domestication, varietal selections, propagation of wild plants through direct planting, or creation of conditions for propagating them, management of successional processes, weeding, and long distance transport, planting domesticates or semi-domesticates in wild settings are among the array of possibilities of landscape change. An increasingly detailed literature has outlined the various intensity and complexity of these diverse processes (Cf. Balee, 1998: Denevan, 2001; Irvine, 1989: Padoch et al. 1999).

 

Perhaps the most widespread impact on vegetation comes in the form of fire. These include large- scale, landscape level conflagrations like some of the burning of the cerrado and seasonally dry forests; fires associated with shifting cultivation landscapes, and most of the current forest clearing. Recent burning is associated with large scale clearing for soybeans,  sugarcane and ranching, and smaller scale colonist activities. Absent from most of these recent discussions of the use of fire in landscapes are its uses as a highly targeted indigenous land management technique, such as that of "in field" burning from the Kayapó.

 

Each of these forms of landscape transformation has important implications for pedogenisis and for anthropogenic modification of soils. The total area of soils partially or largely anthropic probably approaches 10% of Amazonia when the extensive areas of  "geomorphic" manipulation (ridged fields, palisades, mound agriculture gravity terraces), fluvial modification restinga in-fills, other varzea manipulations, and the pyrogenic Amazonian Dark Earths, Terra preta and Terra Mulata are included in the calculus (cf Deneven, 2001; Pinedo-Vasquez 1999; Sombroek et al; this volume; Raffles and Winkleprinz, forthcoming; Winkleprinz 1999).

 

         This paper examines the practices of one native Amazonian group, the Gorotirê  Kayapó, and the suite of activities that have contributed to the development of anthropogenic soils in an upland area within the Xingu River watershed. The paper presents data and practices of the Kayapó in both "proto"urban and agricultural activities that may provide insights into the dynamics of pedogenesis of both Terra Preta and Terra Mulata---Amazon Dark Earths or ADEs, at least among the Kayapo.  The paper presents data collected as part of the Kayapó Project that was carried out in Gorotirê  from 1982-1995 during which scientists from several disciplines were paired with Kayapó specialists to better understand Kayapó Ethnoscience--- that is, to quantify (when possible), describe and translate their understandings of natural history, resource use  and the indigenous conceptual frameworks that underlie them[1] in ways that are intelligible to our culture. The research project focused on documenting all forms of Kayapó soil management as widely as possible in all the ecosystems they manipulated and describes the impact of many of their production and management techniques on soil properties. The results presented here address their impacts on both settlement and agricultural soils.

 

II.Origins of Anthropic Dark earths in Kayapo production systems

II-1 Terra Preta

Terra Preta, or Indian black earths (Terra Preta de Índio), are characterized by an extremely high density of artifacts and potsheds, very dark colors and exceptionally high levels of organic matter, and high levels of other soil nutrients (See Woods and McCann 1999; Kampf et al. this volume). Most researchers now view Terra Preta as the outcome of human activities, reflecting sedentary occupation and intensive agriculture for  significant lengths of time. A growing consensus suggests Terra Preta is an "urban" or "proto" urban phenomenon, the outcome of chemical and biotic transformations in middens or ceremonial sites that received large inputs of organic matter and charcoal (cf. Falcao et al. this volume; Neves et al., this volume; Petersen et al 2001).

Fire appears to be central in the formation of ADEs. The characteristic feature of ADEs, as demonstrated by Glaser and his colleagues (1999, 2000 and this volume), is pyrogenic carbon. Incompletely burned residues from plant materials form stable high molecular weight and fused aromatic ring structures in ADEs rather than the more easily degraded polysaccarides that result from normal decomposition of plant matter. McCann et al. (1999) suggest that fire is the most important factor in the development of Terra Preta, but that these soils also reflect the addition of domestic residues. The creation of a unique microbial biota, they argue, maintains the soil over time. What is clear is that ADEs are widespread, they are associated with archeological sites (Petersen et al. 2001), they are found throughout Amazonia (Kaempf et al, this volume) and they are still widely used today (cf. German 2000, and this volume, Hiraoka et al. this volume). What still remains a mystery is how they were created. Heckenberger et al. (1999) hypothesize that "prehistoric Amazonian urbanism revolved around a central plaza, and that large mounded middens overlooking the central plaza...[were] linked to communal ritual and public affairs." Heckenberger's (1996) Xingu site documents a central plaza with extensive Terra Preta development around it, an outcome of extensive and continuous occupation. In this section of the paper, we present data on soil transects in the Kayapó village of Gorotirê  that may shed light on Terra Preta formation.

 

II-2 Kayapó Landscapes

              The Kayapó are a Gê speaking group who inhabit the southern Para and Northern Mato Grosso in Brazil, and who historically occupied widespread areas of the upper Araguaia and Xingu watersheds. The Gorotirê Kayapo reside on the margins of the Rio Fresco, a tributary of the Xingu. The area is very heterogeneous in terms of vegetation types as a function of relief, forest-savanna dynamics, micro-climates and burning,  and in its geology. This complexity is reflected both in the indigenous classification systems of local vegetation types  that include eight forest types, eight cerrado types, the naming of specific transitions between them, as well as classification systems for various montane and outcrop vegetation and soils. Kayapo soil classification systems are also quite complex, and include soil elements based on color, texture and imputed fertility, features like faunal associations such as armadillos and termites, and indicator vegetation within their classification frameworks .

 

 

The Gorotirê  Reserve is located in the Grand Carajas formation that includes acid basement, as well as basaltic parent materials. The complex local geomorphology reflects Precambrian shield formations that contact the basaltic extrusions and recent sedimentary formations and creates a landscape of enormous geological and soil heterogeneity. More details on the site are described in Hecht and Posey (1989, also, Hecht, 1990). It is within these highly heterogeneous landscapes that Kayapó village or "proto" urban and farming activities, and their related pedogenesis, unfold. It is important to remember that this village has been occupied by the Kayapó since the 1930s, but the village population numbers are lower than was typical for their settlements due to the impacts of disease, warfare and despair, according to oral history and written accounts. The Kayapó have only began to recover their numbers in the last 15 years. The kind of large populations described in Orelleana's early Amazon accounts did not exist in Kayapo settlements during the last  century

 

II-3 Kayapó Settlements

II-3-1 Historical framework

           The Kayapó (Mebengokrê in their language) form part of the Macro Gê peoples who once stretched in a great interior crescent from near Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon to Ilheus on the Atlantic coast of Brazil. Famed for their ferocity, the Northern Kayapó did not have sustained relations with Europeans until the 19^th century (Nimuendajú 1932). Frei Gil Vilanova, a Dominican missionary was the first white person who appears to have had friendly relations with a band of Northern Kayapó, the Pau de Arco group, and set up a mission located on the Araguaia River at Santa Anna to proselytize them and then watched in despair as disease after disease ravaged the group. Even then, Kayapó villages were historically large. When Henri Coudreau (1897) arrived at the Santa Anna settlement in 1896, he found 5,000 Pau d'Arco Kayapó living in four settlements. While these numbers may seem high, Coudreau was witnessing a population that had been in contact with Europeans for 30 years, and thus was probably quite diminished given the number of diseases that had already decimated this particular group (Krause 1911) and a 250 year history of epidemics in the Araguaia-Xingu watersheds. (Hemming, 1987)

Darrell Posey, who worked with the Gorotirê Kayapó from 1977 until shortly before his death in 2001, collected their oral history , including stories about their historic villages and their dynamics of social fission. According to Posey, (1987) the northern Kayapó, ancestors of the Gorotiré group, lived in one ancestral village until the end of the nineteenth century. This village, Pyka Tô Tí, was said to have had "streets" and so many houses that one could only know one's kin and guiding chief. There were two men's houses, each headed by a strong chief (benadjwyra-ratx) and subdivided into many subgroups with lesser chiefs. Complementary female chiefs mirrored the male political structure. Posey visited the Pyka Tô Tí site in 1978, when the outer circle of the village was still apparent. The diameter of the village was 1,050 meters, with a population estimated at over 5,000 (Posey 1979).

This village was a ceremonial as well as residential center, but the problems of European disease, viewed by the Kayapo as the outcome of sorcery, resulted in a gradual social decomposition of the settlement. People fled the town and worried about evil spirits, ghosts and accusations of sorcery. Some extended kin groups dispersed, while others remained in the settlement to tend their gardens, but periodic reunions would occur at ceremonial times. By 1936 when the missionary Horace Banner contacted the Kayapó, the village had completely dispersed into small hostile settlements, one of which was Gorotirê (Posey 1987).

As Posey (1987) and other Kayapó scholars (Bamberger, 1966; Turner, 1965; Verswijver, 1992) point out, when a person was accused of causing a disease outbreak, they either fled with loyal family members or risked being killed. One could also stay and battle it out with one's accusers. Whoever lost these altercations would have to leave the village with their kinsmen. Constant disease problems, a result of direct and indirect contact, undermined social cohesion and large urban settlements. The impacts of European disease certainly increased intragroup hostility and fissioning of Kayapo societies (Posey 1987), and probably similar social processes could have unravelled the native social fabric elsewhere in Amazonia (see Myers et al. this volume). This example from Kayapó history is a relatively late story of cultural decimation but it provides clues about the collapse of urban settlements, one that is not simply the story of a holocaust, but also of a diaspora. A similar trajectory is described for the Tupi speaking Ka'apor (Balee, 1994). The great riparian centers on the main tributaries of the Amazon where the vast terrains of Terra Preta were formed, suffered these collapses much earlier during the contact period (Heckenberger et al. 1999: Hemming, 1987; Neves et al, this volume; Peterson et al. 2001) perhaps through similar processes.

II-4 The Contemporary Scene        

The Kayapó Village of Gorotirê  is located on the Rio Fresco,  a tributary of the Xingu, and follows the river bluff model of village location suggested by Denevan (1996). There are several smaller streams-igarapes- near Gorotire, and a complex mosaic of forest, agricultural, Cerrado and grassland vegetation surround the settlement. Gorotirê   has  a classic "old village" structure: a circular plaza with a Men's house, the "home" of unmarried warriors and the locus of male political and ceremonial life, surrounded by individual kin group houses,  a model widespread though this part of native Amazonia, and similar to that described for prehistoric Xingu settlements by Heckenberger (1996). There is also a separate "lane" of houses built separate by FUNAI, the Indian Affairs Bureau, which leads down to the river.

 

As fishers, foragers, farmers and hunters, the Kayapó use a broad array of technologies and techniques. They are famed for the complexity of their subsistence systems, their broad interest in agronomy and the natural sciences (Bamberger 1966, Posey 1985). Since the 1980s they have been involved in complex economic circuits, and have engaged in a process of refashioning their culture to deal with the exigencies of the political and economic issues of modern Amazonia that threaten their livelihoods and traditional lands. (Posey, 1989, Turner 1965, Garfield 2002). They are "traditional" in many ways and "untraditional" in others. From the perspective of Terra Preta , adoption of metal cooking pots, dishes, utensils and tools, and the wide spread use of plastic bags, toys and bottles would certainly affect the frequency and kinds of artifacts found in Kayapó village middens. Clay artifacts (pots, storage containers, toys, urns) no longer form a significant part of the "mix". But other practices associated with the area around houses probably continues as it did in the past: piling vegetable debris, sweepings, making seedbeds for transplants, growing medicinal plants, fruit trees and special plants, cooking and processing, and garbage burying, composting and burning.

 

II-4-1 Kayapó Settlement Structure

Kayapó villages follow the traditional structure seen throughout the lower Amazon and especially among Gê groups. A central vegetation free compacted central plaza is surrounded by houses with door yard gardens and cooking areas. These door yard areas (Ki krê bum) are filled with fruit trees, medicinal plants, seedlings, botanical experiments and various residues of daily lives. These also contain "garbage disposal" middens--compost, or "toss" middens and burning middens - which can also be hearths (kôt) . Finally, there is an outer area, the atykma, that includes various other kinds of tossed debris and trash that one prefers to have further from the house, including animal skins, bones, large debris such as roofing materials, charcoal from the cleaning of hearths. Atykmas may also be burned periodically as debris builds up, or as a means of reducing the attractiveness to dogs and vermin of the organic residue from hunting and food processing.  The term "atykma" owes it etiology to "tyk" which means black or dark.

 

II-4-2 Methods

We took ten samples  at each site:in the Plaza, in five houses including their gardens, their various middens and their related atykmas . The houses and gardens we sampled were all less than thirty years old, but in the traditional part of the settlement. Kayapó door yard gardens vary greatly in the number of species, preferences and management of their gardens, a phenomenon widely noted in studies of dooryard gardens throughout the tropics. Cooking and food preparation mostly occur in the garden so there are food additions, but the domestic dogs, pet birds and monkeys are also provisioned from the leftovers.

 

     The samples were  analysed at the Department of Forestry Soil Laboratory at UC Berkeley. A water slurry was used to assess pH. Carbon was analysed by the total combustion method, N by the Kjeldahl technique. P was analysed with the modified Olsen technique. Macro-nutrients were  extracted  with KCL.The results of the settlement transects are presented in Table 1.

 

Table 1. Mean Soil Values in an "Urban Catena"

	pH	C gm/kg	N	P mg/kg-1	Ca cmolc/kg-1	Mg cmolc/kg-1	K mg/kg-1
Plaza	4.3	16.9	0.08	3	0.15	0.12	83
Garden	5.3	21.9	0.16	111	3.60	0.65	167
Midden*	6.7	26.7	0.13	127	5.35	0.92	2141
Midden**	6.5	18.2	0.08	80	2.09	0.79	2208
Atykma	5.2	27.2	0.10	97	3.72	0.69	393

*Bury/toss" midden; **Burn Midden

 

 

As one would expect, the Plaza values are the lowest of all sites, since the area  is swept, kept free of vegetation and compacted. Garden areas are also swept from time to time, although individual trees and plants may be mulched and receive ash additions. Although not shown in this table, garden soils varied most among households reflecting the habits of sweeping and use of garden areas. Some dooryard areas were used more as plant nurseries, while others were maintained with a more "patio" type of approach.

Two types of middens are found in the gardens: the burn midden which is kind of a hearth (Kôt) and the "Toss" middens. The burn midddens have significantly lower levels of soil nutrients except for potassium, these soil values at these sites are the lowest of all the household sites While an initially surprising result, the incompletely burned residue from these burn sites often wind up in the "toss" site, which is really a compost pile, or are dumped out into the atykma. Charcoal residues can also be reburned, so that eventually carbon and nitrogen are probably more completely volatized. Hearths are also periodically cleaned of charcoal residue and ash from time to time. The combination of removing charcoal bits and continued, almost daily reburning produces situation where nutrient elements are easily leached or volatized, hence the lower values when compared to toss middens and atykmas.

The "toss/bury" midden is, as mentioned, a kind of heap on which food preparation residues, ashes, broken palm artifacts, basketry, sweepings and the like are dumped. These may then be covered with cooking ash, or swept earth. These middens with their combination of incompletely burned charcoal, and domestic residues of all kinds exhibit more of the characteristics of a proto "Terra Preta": high levels of organic matter, more than 100 ppm of extractable phosphorous. These also exhibited high levels of potassium. The colors in the middens varied and produced a kind of brindled effect, probably an outcome of charcoal staining.

The atykmas exhibit features similar to that of the toss/bury midden, except the debris that is deposited on these sites includes larger sized items (ruined carrying baskets, for example) large animal bones and hides (which are often raided by dogs) old roof and construction materials and rotting detritus that one prefers not to have close to the house. The atykmas may be occasionally burned, but also are depositories of ashes from time to time, although not to the degree seen in the "toss" middens. Overall the soil characteristics are similar to the garden soil, but with a higher organic matter levels (in fact the highest overall in our sample) reflecting the addition of significant amount of vegetation debris such as old roofing materials in the atykmas. Potassium levels are intermediate between door yard garden soils and the middens. These high organic matter levels, coupled with the ash may suggest the initiation of processes that over time create the Terra Preta soil. When these values are compared with chemical characteristics for ADE classification (cf.Kampf et al, this volume) the middens and the atykma fall within the ranges of the descriptive statistics for "greyic" ADEs in terms of pH, C, Ca, and Mg, and P, but it should be remembered that this settlement  relatively young.

II-5 Implications for Terra Preta Formation.

The data outlines the kinds of anthromorphic influences on soil properties within a village transect. The possible "proto" Terra Preta elements are present in the  midden and the Atykmas that exhibit in their soil chemistry many of the features of Terra Pretas: Relatively high pH compared to the background soil, relatively high levels of carbon, and high phosphorous levels. While Gorotirê  is a relatively young settlement, and the houses where we sampled were less than 30 years old, the process of "middenization" of the soil seems to be occurring through regular additions of charcoal and domestic detritus of various types but with important differences related to the use of modern materials. Since the 1950s the use of metal utensils---pots, plates, cups--- rather than ceramics has characterized households, and thus few artifacts except those woven from palms, or feather ornaments, are being deposited in these sites. In the past, the quantity of ceramic used over a life time would structure and build these formations in ways more typical of the "archeological" Terra Preta. Whether the addition of ceramic clays, glazing slips and horizontal ceramic fragments enhances the stability of these soils is a still unanswered question, but (deleted   ) modern deposits contain visible signs of incompletely burned charcoal, the key component in the stability of ADEs. Whether these current processes could produce Terra Preta over longer periods of settlement is still open to debate. What is clear, however, is that the ceramic dimension in the formation of these soils no longer exists in Kayapo settlements.

 

 

 

III. Terra Mulata

III-1 The Question of Fire

Indigenous populations used fires to manage vegetation throughout their occupation of the New World. The recent occupation of Amazonia through predatory land uses that immolated extensive areas has had the unfortunate effect of conflating massive uncontrolled burning with the complex subtle, low impact fire regimes managed by local populations. Fire has thus  been demonized fire as a land  management tool even though evidence from virtually all forested landscapes has revealed its utility and ecological importance (Pyne 1997).

Among the Kayapó, there are low biomass, "cool fires", that are limited in scale, and are set throughout the year (although mostly in the drier months) as a means of vegetation management, including weed control. Fire is used to reduce biomass in grasslands and forest understories, to more completely burn slash, to create fire breaks, and reduce  fire "laddering"  by slash and vines. These reduce  the overall flammability of the vegetation. At a regional level these activities reduce the severity of tropical burning since the high biomass, large scale conflagrations and catastrophic fires  occur rarely in this kind of setting. Low intensity fires are cool enough to walk through, and tend to enhance, rather than cross, forest/grassland boundaries.

Fire is a defining feature of swidden agriculture. For a number of reasons this complex form of land management and one of its key technologies have been cast as villains in the drama of tropical development, a process that may well have obscured a more careful and perhaps more fruitful analysis of the roles that fire and succession might have had in the creation of soil fertility over longer stretches of time.

III-2 Swidden

In the literature on tropical development, the rejection of fire as a natural resource management tool has been forcefully articulated since the mid 18^th century (Bryant, 1996; Grove, 1997). Much of the colonial literature, especially that of Britain involved endless harangues against the practice of shifting cultivation viewing it as uniformly destructive, a disordered and unproductive agriculture and a practice that permitted its populations to live beyond the control of the state. (cf Bryant, 1996). Control of swidden was thus associated with a political as well as a technical agenda, and the sins of fire use and "nomadic behavior" were used as arguments for sedentarization and dispossession of native tribals in India and Africa, on the twin grounds of resource waste and intractability. Viewed as a technically deficient practice, especially at higher population densities this land use has been a target for technical change in the Latin American tropics. This position may be justified in many cases, but the ensemble of swidden practices employed by many native groups incorporates features that enhance its sustainability ( Denevan and Padoch, 1988; Hecht 1990; among others). This negative ideological context has obscured the important contributions, subtlety and potentials of fire management, and thus the validity of careful burning in tropical landscapes remains vastly understudied.

 

III-3 Kayapó Agriculture: The World of the "Cool" Fire

Kayapó agriculture embraces various practices in many different types of ecosystems. The landscapes in which the Kayapo regularly move must be understood as a canvas on which a range of techniques from highly intensive to subtle manipulations are used. Planting occurs within virtually all the various savanna and forest types.

Fire is also used in virtually all Kayapó production systems, but not in the manner that typically characterizes recent colonist or large scale forest clearing. Burning is a low level, relatively constant activity used to maintain cerrado formations, to favor certain vegetation in some areas, like the Inaja (Attalea sp) and Tucuma (Astrocaryum  sp.) palm groves which are important for attracting herds of pigs and for building materials, to clear for agriculture, for weeding, possibly to control plant pathogens and insects. To live among the Kayapó is to live in a place where parts of the landscape smolder. The "soft" or "cool" fires are more controllable, and they create incompletely burned residues--charcoal of varying sizes. These  types of combustion products appear to be one of the key elements in the soil stability of the ADEs.

As part of the Kayapó Project, a soils project was developed that initially included research that focused on the logic of concentric ring agriculture which occurs widely throughout Amazonia, and to document soil management techniques. The details of the concentric ring agriculture are presented elsewhere (Hecht and Posey 1989). The upshot of the research, however, was quite surprising to us: Plots often stay in production for long periods of time (5-11 years), and they are managed via a complex set of practices that include structuring the field, a range of "cool" burning techniques, importing nutrient additions, and food processing and residue management. The activities include:

·         preburn planting,

·         structuring the agricultural field in the felling phase for its concentric zones,

·         coivara burning (burning of residual slash ),

·         infield burning,

·         scattering of cooking residues,

·         burning crop residues,

·         ash additions,

·         mulching,

·         planting mix additions,

·         ant and termite nests additions, and

·         palm mulches and ashes.

By analyzing the nutrient contents, and comparing the treatments of soils in agricultural production, we can perhaps understand better the processes that create the Terras Mulatas of the upland soils, and permit sustainability of these systems

 

III-3-1 Nutrient Additions

The Kayapó essentially employ three general types of inputs as part of the mulch, nutrient addition, infield burning processes. These involve the use of crop debris, the introduction of wild or semi wild materials, usually from palms which are placed in the field as mulch first, and then later burned. Other nutrient inputs come from the many cooking hearths that occur in the agricultural plot over its production lifetime. Sweet potatoes, sweet manioc, squashes and corn are often cooked in the field and carried home, this being more efficient than hauling firewood. These firepits are later planted, or the ashes are spread around with Inaja fronds. Nutrient additions also include the clippings of large leaved Musa and palm species--- especially the Inaja (Attalea sp.), the Babassu (Orbygnea martiana), and Tucuma (Astrocaryum sp.). Fronds are quickly applied as ground covers that begin as mulch and weed control, and may simply gradually break down, or they may be fired later in the season to provide a mid growing season boost in fertility and weed incineration.  Finally, the Kayapo use crumbled ant and termite mounds and their ash to enrich their fields. The use of Ant nests as a soil improver is not limited to Amazonia. Nineteenth century British farmers also used this technique, and it is widely recorded throughout the tropics (Eldrige and Myers, 1998; Lobry de Bruyn, et al., 1990).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 2: Composition of Available Nutrient Additions From Ash

Source	pH	C g/kg	%N	P mg/kg1	Ca mmolc/kg-1	Mg mmollc/kg-1	K mg/kg-1
Yam ash/Coivara mix	7.9	34	0.17	77	31.9	28.3	1,891
Yam mix	7.4	26	0.15	53	48.1	14.9	1,633
Yam ash	9.4	55.2	0.21	225	21.9	21.1	3,739
Banana ash	10,2	44	0.12	1750	14.2	02.9	26,294
Rice ash	8.5	127	0.46	235	73.4	62.1	3,646
Inaja ash	10.6	72	0.29	1965	12.2	18.3	26,229
Sweet Potato ash	10.0	46	0.24	370	31.0	50.7	12,060
Beans ash	9.0	31	0.60	220	43.0	69.6	4,349
In Field Middens	6.9	34	0.20	201	37.3	12.9	1,531
Yam planting mix	7.4	27	0.15	53	48	14.9	1633
Ant nests	4.3	24	0.15	25	8.8	17.2	709
Ant nest(1)	4.2	24	0.14	13.9	10.7	6.3	67
Ant nest ash (2)	5.5	357.	1.26	119	15.4	50.5	10,842
Ant nest ash (3)	5.0	183	0.91	51	2.3	42.7	3,848
(plus litter)	4.5	130	0.67	38	2.0	366	1,851

III-3-2Methods

Table 2 outlines the composition of the various ash inputs into the production system. These are composite samples taken from the first 5 cm of soil where they occurred, and involves 10 subsamples. These samples were "opportunistic" that is, when we observed someone burning these crop residues or applying these ashes, we collected them. As with other samples sets, these were analysed at the Forestry soils Laboratory at UC Berkeley.

 

III.3.4

As one expects from ash, the pH is very high compared to that of the "background soils" which usually have values of  pH of around 4.5. Several samples exhibit very high pHs that correlate most strongly to elevated K levels. These are the Musa and palm ash, plants that are often K accumulators.  Depending on the  quantities applied,  ashes could have a liming effect and would modify the availability of cations within the soil, even at the relatively light applications that characterize the use of these residues

Carbon levels range from 26 to over 350 mg/g ^-1; the last value is that of ant nest ash. The high C content is clearly an outcome of the  relative combustion of the residues during the agricultural cycles, but the ant nest values may also reflect the transport of organic material by the ants themselves, and problems of ignition within the clayey matrix of the  mounds. Incomplete and variable combustion may explain the large range in C content in these ash samples.

From the perspective of low nutrient tropical soils, two elements particularly stand out - the high levels of P that range from 53 - to close to 2000 mg/kg ^-1  in the ash inputs, and some very high levels of K. The higher P and K are associated with the Inaja palm and various Musa sp which are allowed to remain in the swidden field and are planted or encouraged in the outer ring of the fields.  Both are indicator species for ADEs (see Clement et al., this volume). This is especially interesting in light of the background soil levels of closer to three to five mg/kg ^-1  which is more or less typical of unmanaged forest soils in the Amazon  and within our study site. As P is considered one of the limiting factors in many tropical soils, the additions provide a nutrient boost throughout the cultivation cycle with period "cool" burns, and through ash applications in older fields. In-field burning in one management technique that contributes to the continuing productivity of these systems. Even less dramatic qualities of ash and planting mixes still show quite large potential additions, as for example in the case of the sweet potato ash.. Somewhat surprising however is the relatively small amounts of P that occur in the ant and termite nest samples. These tend to cluster below about 50 mg/kg ^-1in contrast to the much higher average in the vegetation samples. It should be noted, however, that these levels of P are still very high compared to background soil levels.

 

Kayapó agriculture, like much indigenous production in Amazonia has largely focused on root crops, especially sweet potato. While manioc provides an important staple, the ease of preparation, the diversity and deliciousness of Kapayo sweet potato varieties has made them central to the production system, both in the production space of concentric ring agriculture, and in the cuisine. Thus, women devote more labor time to the management of this crop than all others. It is worth pointing out that both manioc and sweet potatoes respond much better to K than to N or Ca additions. Traditional tropical agronomy may have overlooked the importance of K to the longer term production logic of farmers, particularly swidden farmers in the later phases of their agricultural cycle who are more dependent on long lived root crops. The emphasis on corn, beans and rice - relatively short season annuals, all of which are extremely responsive to N and high amounts of P - may have obscured a suite of management strategies that emphasize K and P for tubers.

What is clear from this ensemble of ash analyses is that the nutrient additions supplied through crop residues and selected inputs could provide an important nutritional boost during the longer production period. In field burning and ash applications may well reduce the problem of soil nutrient decline in this swidden complex. Moreover, organic matter additions from incomplete combustion with a moderated pH may help to keep such soils very biologically active and reduce leaching. These may set up the framework for the longer term development of ADEs.

III-4 The Impact of In-Field Burning

One of the most surprising discoveries of the Kayapó field work was the realization of the ubiquity of "in-field burning". The next question was to assess the impact of such activities in a ways that examined how this practice might affect soil fertility parameters. Table 3 shows the results from two four-year old fields now mostly cultivated in manioc.

 

Table 3. Impacts of In field burning Four-year Manioc Field Mean Soil Nutrients

	pH	C gm/kg-1	N%	P mg/kg-1	Ca cmolc/kg-1	Mg cmolc/kg-1	K mg/kg-1
Manioc (unburned)	5.2	2.7	0.23	9.1	2.9	0.09	479
Manioc (infield burn)	5.9	2.3	0.17	14	4.8	1.16	650
Manioc Replant Unburned	5.2	1.32	0.12	6.0	2.1	0.59	231
Manioc Replant (in field burn)	5.4	1.84	0.16	7.2	3.9	0.78	322

III-4-1b Methods

The plots were under the management of the same farmer. The sites were adjacent, and the management differs in the following ways: In the first case, mature manioc plantations were burned as much for weed control and to boost plant productivity both by reducing weed competition as well as increasing fertility. This is paired with an unburned section of the field. In the second site, in an older  successional manioc  field, one area had been burned, while the other escaped it. The plants were about 4 months old in each case, although one site was an initial planting while the other was part of a longer successional management. Ten samples to 10 cm were taken in each "treatment", and analysed in the same way as the other samples discussed in this article.

In the first example, burning increases pH, reduces C% and N relative to the unburned site mainly because these elements volatized. P levels increase by 53% in the first case but are still relatively low. Ca and mg levels increase significantly in the first case, although in absolute values they are not especially high, in absolute terms, K levels increased by almost 40%.

In the second case there is also an increase in pH, but the combustion seems to have been somewhat incomplete (or the weed biomass was higher) and the  C and N are higher in the burned versus the unburned site. It shows slight  improvements in P N and Mg, with important gains in Ca and K. This second example points out that in field burning per se may not radically change the soil parameters all sites, and fertility gains may be modest in plots that have been in continuous cultivation

III-5 The Quick and the Dead

The last table compares a "natural experiment," the outcome of a sorrowful event. In this case, a comparison was available due to the unfortunate circumstance that the daughter of one of the key informants had died. Her year-old garden had immediately been abandoned for supernatural reasons, while the mother continued with her normal garden, as well as embarking on a highly intensively managed garden to provide for the funeral feast several months later. The Mother's gardens were adjacent to the daughter gardens, so no sharp disjunctures existed in the background soils. Table 4 shows the differences between an unmanaged system, and those which receive the normal and exceptional array of Kayapó soil management practices. The sampling regime is the same as the previous site.

Table 4: Mean Soil Values in Managed and Unmanaged Two-Year Agricultural Plots

	pH	C gm/kg-1	N%	P mg/kg-1	Ca cmolc/kg-1	Mg cmolc/kg-1	K mg/kg-1
Unmanaged	5.2	1.49	0.10	3.6	22.6	0.54	112
Managed	5.9	1.60	0.14	9.7	31.0	0.74	481
Highly Managed	5.9	2.2	0.26	14	41.0	0.91	451

 

The differences between the highly managed and unmanaged systems are striking. While pH's are improved to the same degree, soil C is more than 30% higher, N levels increase by 150%, P levels more than triple.

Ca and Mg levels practically double. Potassium levels increase by a factor of four. The regular system is intermediate for all the elements but still shows significant differences for all the elements. P practically triples, N increases by 40% and K values rise by more than 300%. (Delete: these increases)

 The management techniques included enhanced mulching, especially with large leafed palms, an array of ash  and insect nest additions and carefully managed slow  in- field burns. This ensemble was able to dramatically improve soil fertility parameters, which was critically important. The feast from this garden was a spiritual necessity for the both those who remained and for the disembodied daughter. While Kayapo are now involved in commodity markets, and perhaps the necessity of intensive practices for daily consumption may not have the socio-cultural significance it once had, this site, with its special attentions mediated by spiritual norms, may reflect a much more venerable and focused set of practices that could have been more widespread in the past.

 

 

IV Implications

Terra Preta and Terra Mulata--ADEs--- are generally believed to be anthropogenic soils (Smith, 1972; Sombroek, 1966; Woods and McCann, 1999). The mechanisms through which they develop still remain speculative, but this paper suggest some of the practices, both "settlement" and agricultural that could have contributed to the development of these anthropic soils. The soil management described here could perhaps be understood to contribute to development of "proto" ADEs based on their chemical characteristics.

There is always danger in projecting from the past to the present. The Kayapó experienced both a holocaust and a Diaspora from which they are still recovering. Native populations were far higher in the region prior to European arrival, and what we see in many ways is an  truncated version of their land use practices, a result of the loss of native knowledge through population declines, loss of key practioners through disease or age, as well as more general cultural shifts.  In addition,  with their greater participation in commodity circuits, the Kayapó rely on metal and plastic implements for many of the tasks of daily life, implements that previously were made of clay and woven vegetation.  Hafted metal cutting and digging tools replaced those of stone and wood.

Yet cultural resilience is also part of the narrative about the Kayapó (cf Posey, 1989, Turner 1965, 1991) and they have gone to great lengths to capture and record the knowledge of their resource and ritual specialists. What we describe here are systems that are neither "traditional" or "acculturated" - they are Kayapó systems of resource use and reflect their strategies of survival in a grueling historical context. The elements of soil management elaborated by the Kayapó can provide hints about the suites of techniques necessary to sustain agriculture and improve soil properties over time in the Amazon Basin and suggest the kinds of practices that helped form ADEs elsewhere in Amazonia.

 

Acknowledgements           

This research was carried out under the auspices of Kayapó Ethnoscience project, funded by World Wildlife Fund, Cnpq, the Earth Love Fund, the Wenner Gren Foundation, and a Fulbright Fellowship and UCLA research funding to Hecht. Kayapó participants included Kwyra Ka, Bepto Pup, Teresa Kayapó among others. Of course, this entire research effort owes its existence to the continued vision and efforts of Darrell Posey, who died in March 2001. Special thanks to William Wood who encouraged me to return to the topic of Kayapó soils after a long hiatus.

 

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[1] Such frameworks often include cosmological attributes.

Liaqat Hayat <liaqat...@gmail.com> wrote:

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