Human ecology and ancient agrarian land use at Wawakiki Spring, South Coast Peru, A.D. 1000--2000.

摘要

Agricultural landscapes constitute a critical point of articulation between humans and their environment. Consequently, they present an avenue through which to examine household, community, or regional level strategies to production, the various conditions and motivations that surround those strategies, and the impacts humans have in altering courses of environmental change on our planet. To understand the courses and consequences of agricultural land use, this dissertation specifically traces capital investments, cultigens, and areas of cultivated terrain at the site of Wawakiki in the hyper-arid coastal environment of southern Peru. The resultant data are contextualized within a series of nested analytical units that include site, micro-region, and macro-region in order to explain changes in agriculture and landscape transformation on multiple scales.; This study draws several conclusions. First, it reveals the complexity of variables that surround agricultural production strategies. Too often, emphasis is placed on causes of agricultural intensification, alteration, or abandonment without first coming to a more balanced and developed understanding of the processes at play or the courses agrarian evolution can take on multiple scales. This research demonstrates that there is no single cause or course of agricultural land use; rather, demography, culture, and environment wholly interact on multiple levels to shape and re-shape the conditions surrounding the evolution of agrarian landscapes.; The historical depth employed in this investigation also sheds light on the ecological relationships contemporary human groups in southern Peru hold with their environment, and the pathways that have conditioned those relationships through time. These results indicate that many of the direct and indirect impacts coastal Osmore populations have had on their environment over the past millennium have enhanced the landscape for agricultural purposes, while concomitantly diminishing potential land use and resource management in other areas. Over the long term, biodiversity has diminished in the area, and consequently changes in sustainable activities like farming and herding have accelerated. Furthermore, these changes are rooted in more than one thousand years of late pre-Hispanic, Spanish colonial, and post-colonial agriculture and resource management. This study holds implications for issues related to agricultural land use, resource renewability, and long-term sustainability in arid environments.