Patterned Villagescapes and Road Networks in Ancient Southwestern Amazonia

Abstract

Our recent data, collected using remotely sensed imagery and unmanned aerial vehicle surveys, reveal the extremely well-defined patterning of archaeological plaza villages in the Brazilian Acre state in terms of size, layout, chronology, and material culture. The villages comprise various earthen mounds arranged around central plazas and roads that radiate outward from, or converge on, the sites. The roads connected the villages situated 2–10 km from each other in eastern Acre. Our study attests to the existence of large, sedentary, interfluvial populations sharing the same sociocultural identities, as well as structured patterns of movement and spatial planning in relation to operative road networks during the late precolonial period. The plaza villages of Acre show similarity with the well-documented communities organized by road networks in the regions of the Upper Xingu and Llanos de Mojos. Taking into consideration ethnohistorical and ethnographic evidence, as well as the presence of comparable archaeological sites and earthwork features along the southern margin of Amazonia, we suggest that the plaza villages of Acre were linked by an interregional road network to other neighboring territories situated along the southern Amazonian rim and that movement along roads was the primary mode of human transport in Amazonian interfluves.