Islands in the rainforest
Subtitle: landscape management in pre-Columbian Amazonia
By: Stéphen Rostain ; translation by Michelle Eliott
Contributors: Eliott, Michelle
Series: New frontiers in historical ecology vol.4
Publisher: Left Coast Press, Inc.
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Walnut Creek, CA
Language: eng
Number of pages: 275
ISBN-13: 9781598746341; 9781598746365; 9781611326871
Subjects: History; Ecology; Indigenous peoples; Agriculture; Raised field agriculture; Indians of South America; Land tenure
Description: "Stéphen 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"--P. [4] of cover.

Covers the area between the Amazon and Orinoco rivers, the Cassiquiare Canal, and the Atlantic Ocean (Guyana, French Guiana, Suriname, parts of Brazil, parts of Venezuela).
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.