ABSTRACT
The idea that Amazonian societies had overcome environmental limitations was crucial for the debacle of the unitarian view of sociocultural development in the lowlands. A better understanding of the Amazon as a region of multiple contrasts emerged among biologists, geographers, and environmental anthropologists. Theory wars had to be supported by field data. On the cultural ecologists' side, data were provided by physical geography, ecology, and a vicious system of archaeological settlement analysis based on artifact seriation, using Ford's methodology. To cultural ecologists, indigenous peoples have a history of symbiosis and adaptation to nature. In the Western imagination, indigenous peoples are part of nature, since supposedly they have always lived in symbiosis with the environment. Indigenous ways of life are part of the history of Amazonian landscapes. Ignoring this might jeopardize any efforts to preserve the tropical forest for future generations.
