Stephen Rostain's book is a culmination of 25 years of research on the extensive human modification of the wetlands environment of Guiana and how it reshapes our thinking of ancient settlement in lowland South America and other tropical zones. Rostain demonstrates that populations were capable of developing intensive raised-field agriculture, which supported significant human density, and construct causeways, habitation mounds, canals, and reservoirs to meet their needs. The work is comparative in every sense, drawing on ethnology, ethnohistory, ecology, and geography; contrasting island Guiana with other wetland regions around the world; and examining millennia of pre-Columbian settlement and colonial occupation alike. Rostain's work demands a radical rethinking of conventional wisdom about settlement in tropical lowlands and landscape management by its inhabitants over the course of millennia.

About the Author
Stephen Rostain is Director of Investigation at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France. He received his Ph.D. on the archaeology of French Guiana in 1994 from the Sorbonne University in Paris. He has conducted archaeological excavations in France, Mexico, Guatemala, Aruba and Brazil, but his main investigations have been conducted in Amazonia, especially in the Guianas and in Ecuador. Rostain has published more than 100 articles, book chapters and books. In 2008, he received in Paris the Clio award for archaeological projects in foreign countries. The distinguished anthropologist Philippe Descola is chair of anthropology of nature at the College de France and author of numerous books, including In the Society of Nature and The Spears of Twilight .

Reviews

"This book is part of a new phase in Amazonian cultural geography and anthropology, and shows that the field is branching and spreading...As landscape archaeology and geography of the Amazon develops, this book can serve as a key text on raised field agriculture in a particular geographic context, and as an introduction to pre-Columbian agricultural systems more generally."

- John Walker, University of Central Florida, AAG Review of Books

Book Information
ISBN 9781598746358
Author Stephen Rostain
Format Paperback
Page Count 277
Imprint Left Coast Press Inc
Publisher Left Coast Press Inc
Weight(grams) 453g