德国考古研究院Heiko Prümers等研究人员通过激光雷达揭示玻利维亚亚马逊地区前西班牙时期的低密度城市化进程。2022年5月25日,《自然》杂志在线发表了这项成果。
Author: Prmers, Heiko, Betancourt, Carla Jaimes, Iriarte, Jos, Robinson, Mark, Schaich, Martin
Issue&Volume: 2022-05-25
Abstract: Archaeological remains of agrarian-based, low-density urbananism1,2,3 have been reported to exist beneath the tropical forests of Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka and Central America4,5,6. However, beyond some large interconnected settlements in southern Amazonia7,8,9, there has been no such evidence for pre-Hispanic Amazonia. Here we present lidar data of sites belonging to the Casarabe culture (around AD500 to AD1400)10,11,12,13 in the Llanos de Mojos savannah–forest mosaic, southwest Amazonia, revealing the presence of two remarkably large sites (147ha and 315ha) in a dense four-tiered settlement system. The Casarabe culture area, as far as known today, spans approximately 4,500km2, with one of the large settlement sites controlling an area of approximately 500km2. The civic-ceremonial architecture of these large settlement sites includes stepped platforms, on top of which lie U-shaped structures, rectangular platform mounds and conical pyramids (which are up to 22m tall). The large settlement sites are surrounded by ranked concentric polygonal banks and represent central nodes that are connected to lower-ranked sites by straight, raised causeways that stretch over several kilometres. Massive water-management infrastructure, composed of canals and reservoirs, complete the settlement system in an anthropogenically modified landscape. Our results indicate that the Casarabe-culture settlement pattern represents a type of tropical low-density urbanism that has not previously been described in Amazonia.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04780-4
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04780-4
Nature:《自然》,创刊于1869年。隶属于施普林格·自然出版集团,最新IF:69.504
官方网址:http://www.nature.com/
投稿链接:http://www.nature.com/authors/submit_manuscript.html
本期文章:《自然》:Online/在线发表