ABSTRACT
In some Amazonian cases, landscape archaeology can be a useful component of the study of ontology. The large, diverse anthropogenic landscapes of the Llanos de Mojos (or Mojos) in the Bolivian Amazon are not fully explained by either an environmentalist model or a migration-based history. Starting from a theory of ontology based in Amazonian ethnography, this chapter cultivates a third perspective, reaching towards a long-term history of Mojos landscapes. These are examined through landscape archaeology, drawing analogies from ethnohistoric, ethnographic, and environmental studies. The palimpsests of Mojos landscapes both afforded and were constructed by a diversity of sustained, distinctive economies, language groups, and ritual practices. Archaeological analysis suggests that Mojos landscapes are characterized by diversity and sedentism, but did not strengthen political centralization or hierarchy. Clear patterns can be seen at a regional scale, and in one example at a much smaller scale in two kinds of landscape features: raised fields and forest islands. Communities built and inhabited landscapes over more than 2,000 years in Mojos and thereby formed “middle grounds” between different polities, economies, and ontologies, as they continue to do today.
