Under the direction of Dr. Clark Erickson, Mr. John Walker will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. As part of Dr. Erickson's larger project, Mr. Walker will examine the practice of prehistoric raised field agriculture in the Lllanos de Moxos region of eastern Bolivia. This area is located in the low-lying Amazon basin and characterized by large expanses of carefully constructed and now-abandoned agricultural fields. Earth was dug to create drainage ditches and then mounded to form raised areas suitable for agriculture. This technique was widely used in Western South America as well as the lowlands of Middle America and experimental work has indicated that such systems can provide effective means for crop production. In South America this approach was discontinued in either prehistoric or early historic times and in Bolivia people now graze cattle on naturally growing grasses which cover field surfaces. Mr. Walker wishes to understand how raised fields were integrated into a larger social and economic context and also why they were abandoned. A number of explanations have been proposed. They include a postulated prehistoric breakdown in social organization: climate change related to an El Nino event: and either the direct or indirect influence of Spanish colonization. To address these questions Mr. Walker will use aerial photographs to locate and verify on the ground the position and extent of raised fields. He will conduct a surface survey to locate habitation sites, determine their relationship to agricultural features and reconstruct population density. He will also carry out limited excavations within the fields themselves. It is essential to determine both when the fields were constructed and abandoned and this can be extremely difficult to do. NSF support will allow Mr. Walker to obtain radiocarbon dates on organic materials recovered in the course of excavation. This research is important for several reasons. It will shed new light on subsistence adaptations in inhospitable lowland tropical environments. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists and assist in training a promising young scientist. including faunal remains in an excellent state of preservation. Although many archaelogical sites have been discove red in this part of Alaska, the Cape Addington rockshelter is unique in the protected nature of the sediments and the high degree of preservation of the contents. Based on the presence of well dated beachline features, it i quite possible that the shelte r preserves terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene materials. It thus would have the potential to shed light on the entire prehistory of the region. One of the primary goals for fieldwork during the summer of 1977 will be to etermine the total depth of the archaeological deposit. A trench will be excavated in stratigraphic units to bedrock and all cultural material as well as shells, faunal and floral remains will be collected. Surface mapping will also take place. Material ill be identified and samples s ubmitted for radiocarbon dating. Isotopic analysis of shell will permit investigation of climate change. Coastal Alaska is of anthropological interest for several reasons. It is highly likely that the earliest humans to ener the New World from Asia util ized a route through this region and Dr. Moss' work has potential to shed new light on the peopling of the New World. Rich coastal resources permitted hunting and gathering peoples to reach a level of cultural complexity unnown elsewhere in the world at this level of subsistence and for decades anthropologists have studied this unique phenomenon. In Alaska however knowledge is severely limited because of the generally poor state of archaeological preservation and thereforethe discovery of a `dry` rock s helter is extremely important. This research will provide unique data of interest to many archaeologists. It will also, hopefully, set the stage for a larger research project. q ^
