Book Review published in Latin American Antiquity 18(2):235, 2007
Early Inhabitants of the Amazonian Tropical Rain Forest: A Study of Humans and
Environmental Dynamics by Santiago Mora. University of Pittsburgh Latin American
Archaeology Reports No. 3, Pittsburgh, 2003. xvi + 211 pp., 49 figures, bibliography.
$21.00 (paper)
Reviewed by John Griggs, The University of Texas
Researchers interested in the origins and development of precolumbian populations
in the Neotropics dream of finding a site like Peña Roja, which is located on a low, fertile
terrace along the middle Caquetá River in southern Colombia. Since 1988 Santiago Mora
and his colleagues have undertaken meticulous excavations at this site and dedicated
countless hours of laboratory analyses to its materials. They identified preceramic and
ceramic components with abundant plant remains in stratified deposits dating from 9250 to
385 BP. In Early Inhabitants of the Amazonian Tropical Rain Forest, Mora documents Peña
Roja’s settlement history, emphasizing the preceramic period. He presents his findings in
both English and Spanish, a laudable undertaking given his multinational audience.
Unfortunately, Mora’s presentation and interpretation of the Peña Roja data do not
reflect the academic rigor apparent in fieldwork and analyses.
Nearly half the book consists of a labored and sometimes inaccurate and biased
review of precolumbian adaptations to the Neotropics. For example, although Mora (p. 75)
states that “Panama’s early human occupation is not well documented from an
archaeological perspective,” his list of references suggests that his knowledge of the
relevant literature is too incomplete or too selective to justify such a bold statement.
Investigations whose results were published prior to the publication of Early Inhabitants
supply substantial data pertaining to early occupations (for summaries, see Cooke and
Ranere, Under the Canopy: The Archaeology of Tropical Rain Forests, 2003:219-248;
Piperno and Pearsall, The Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics, 1998). What is
more, Mora (p. 75) sometimes gets his facts wrong: Piperno does not argue that
microbotanical data reveal “…human landscape modifications that date between 11,050
and 14,000 years BP.” Instead, she places the event at “11,050 B.P.” (Piperno et al.,
Geoarchaeology 6:213).
Typographic, orthographic and grammatical errors throughout the book should have
made the editor’s head spin. One example (p. 81): “Now the time has come to disprove the
comment biased using empirical data form an archaeological site…[emphasis mine].” In
another section (p. 87), readers are informed that the climate of the Peña Roja area is
classified as Afi according to the Holdrige [sic] system when, in fact, it was Köppen who
coined the Afi designation.
By far the most disturbing aspect of Mora’s book is his interpretation of the Peña
Roja data, which is oriented towards “proving” his thesis that preceramic occupants of the
site were “pure” hunter gatherers (e.g., pp. 9, 47, 59, 79, 81, 167, 181). The interpretation is
beset by inconsistent accounts of field research, data and analysis. For instance, on page
107, Mora describes the excavations “Peña Roja 9 and 10” – the only operations with
preceramic materials – as “just test pits.” On page 109, however, we are told that these
excavations employed “the horizontal decoupage technique.…a progressive clearing of the
deposits, exposing large surfaces.…” Adding to the confusion, Mora’s use of the terms
“levels,” “horizons” and “strata” is inconsistent. In his text neither term denotes a cultural
stratum (sensu stricto) such as an occupation floor. His “levels” are arbitrary excavations,
averaging 4 cm in depth (p. 109), while his “horizons” are, in his own words (p. 133),
“pedological horizons,” not the classic archaeological horizons defined in Chapter 2 (p. 23).
Although Mora indicates that the levels and horizons are not cultural strata (again, sensu
stricto), he often uses the terms as if they were. When introducing the site, he observes that
the matrix comprising the four preceramic horizons consists of a single “stratum” 65
centimeters thick (p. 105).
Even the interpretation of materials by excavation levels is problematic. On page
117 Mora posits that “…fishing was an important activity during the preceramic” based on
the vertical distribution of certain plants used today as bait. He cites as an example the
meager representation of Astrocaryum jauari seeds in ceramic levels and “abundance
picks” (presumably “abundance peaks”) in preceramic levels 22 and 24 and at the bottom
of the preceramic deposit. Interestingly, when other cultural remains, including stone tools,
are charted along with the Astrocaryum seeds, they exhibit similar patterns of distribution
(e.g., figs. 21-22, 25, 27, 29, 35-37). Might not a more parsimonious explanation be that
variations in the distribution of these remains reflect oscillations in population density?
Mora’s treatment of the distribution of lithics is uneven. For good reasons,
archaeologists usually associated stone axes with land clearance and planting. Although the
Peña Roja excavation record suggests that axes described from levels 21 and 22 are
preceramic (fig. 23), Mora (p. 145) claims that they are not. He includes many illustrations
of quotidian tools such as unifacial flake knives and perforators. But he does not illustrate
what are arguably the most significant artifacts from the preceramic levels, the ones he calls
“hoes, grinders, plates, manos and mortars.” Just what were “pure” hunter gatherers doing
with this suite of tools? The hoes, we are told, may have been used for digging unspecified
roots (p. 163). Yet microbotanical data suggest that several cultivars were processed with
such tools at Peña Roja. Phytoliths from leren (Calathea allouia), bottle gourd (Lagenaria
siceraria) and squash (Cucurbita spp.) occur in preceramic horizon 5 of test pit 9. Cucurbita
phytoliths were found in horizon 6 (p. 135). Radiocarbon dates run on bulk phytoliths and
organic remains associated with these cultigens range from 8090 BP and 9125 BP (horizon
5) to 9160 BP (horizon 6); the last date, which was associated with Cucurbita phytoliths,
overlaps statistically with the earliest date obtained from the site, 9250 BP (horizon 7).
Mora (p. 127) downplays the importance of these cultivars, at one point suggesting that
none were found in horizon 6. It is odd that he didn’t discuss an alternative hypothesis, i.e.,
that these “pure” hunter gatherers employed hoes, mortars, and manos to cultivate and
process these kinds of crops. Data from elsewhere in the Neotropics indicate that
populations were experimenting with agriculture in the Early Holocene, employing stone
tools similar to those found at Peña Roja, most notably hoes (Piperno and Pearsall, The
Origins of Agriculture in the Lowland Neotropics, 1998).
In sum, Mora provides important new data about the antiquity and subsistence
economy of early human colonization of Neotropical forests. He is entitled to interpret his
own data as he sees fit. This reviewer disagrees with him on many counts.