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1 results

  • Pre-Columbian geometric earthworks in the upper Purús: a complex society in western Amazonia

  • Martti Pärssinen, Denise Schaan, Alceu Ranzi
  • Journal:
    Antiquity / Volume 83 / Issue 322 / December 2009
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    02 January 2015, pp. 1084-1095
    Print publication:
    December 2009

  • It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. The combination of land cleared of its rainforest for grazing and satellite survey have revealed a sophisticated pre-Columbian monument-building society in the upper Amazon Basin on the east side of the Andes. This hitherto unknown people constructed earthworks of precise geometric plan connected by straight orthogonal roads. Introducing us to this new civilisation, the authors show that the ‘geoglyph culture’ stretches over a region more than 250km across, and exploits both the floodplains and the uplands. They also suggest that we have so far seen no more than a tenth of it.