Conference | Workshop

The Population History of the Bolivian Tropical Lowlands: Towards a multidisciplinary synthesis

Date: Monday 20 January 2025 - Tuesday 21 January 2025
Location: Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden
Room: 2.12 and 2.11 (20/01), and 2.27 (21/01)

About

The tropical lowlands of Bolivia are among the most linguistically diverse areas in the world, with an especially high number of language families and isolates represented there. We know very little about the sociohistorical dynamics that have given rise to the present situation. Nevertheless, the archaeological literature suggests that this area played a very central and important role in connecting people across the continent and was home to (sometimes considerable) human presence. Southwest Amazonia may well have been the fifth early Holocene center of plant domestication (Lombardo et al. 2020), there is considerable evidence of anthropogenic landscapes going back some 2500 years (Erickson 2006), and a history of considerable population densities going back to well before the European arrival, not just along the rivers, but also inland (Prümers et al. 2022, Iriarte et al. 2020).

We cannot know to what extent the linguistic diversity in Bolivia’s tropical lowlands reaches back in time, but the presence of many different cultures in terms of landscape management and material culture (Walker 2008, Prümers & Jaimes Betancourt 2014) suggests that cultural diversity has been part and parcel of the area for a long time, on a par with the ecological diversity of the area. Genetic (Sandoval et al. 2023), archaeological (Eriksen 2011), ethnohistorical (Levi-Strauss 1948, Eriksen 2011), and linguistic evidence (Crevels & Van der Voort 2008) furthermore suggests complex interplays of intensive interactions coupled with identity preservation reminiscent of the northwest Amazon (e.g. Epps 2020). Add to this the central position of the Llanos de Mojos in connecting large areas of South America through trade routes (Walker 2008, Eriksen 2011) and the fact that several incursions of expanding families like Arawak and Tupí took place, and it becomes abundantly clear that this has for a long time been a culturally complex, highly dynamic, and continentally important area.

In order to know more about this fascinating area, we are convening specialists from several different disciplines to present their perspectives on the human past of the tropical lowlands of present-day Bolivia, in order to assemble a maximally complete reconstruction of the historical dynamics of the area. In this workshop, we focus on two main questions, with several possible subquestions:

What can we say about the historical social dynamics of the area?

To what extent do we see evidence of historical interactions between groups (e.g. in linguistics, material/immaterial culture, genetics)?
To what extent does the observed linguistic diversity correlate or correspond to the ecological diversity found in the area?
What can we say about the expansions of large language families into the area (timing, mode of expansion) and what can we say about how this influenced the dynamics of the area?
What was the role of riverine and terrestrial movement in the dynamics of the area?
What can we say about the presence of language groups at the time of European contact?
What can we say about historical phases of occupation, demographic fluctuations, changes in climatic circumstances, etc.?

What can we say about the historical role of the Bolivian lowlands (and the Llanos de Mojos in particular) as a hub in continent-wide trade relations?

What evidence is available of long-distance connections (material culture, borrowed lexicon, genetic connections) and with which areas? Can we date some of these connections?
What was the nature and the extent of relation between the nearby zones with other dominant cultures, such as the Chaco and Chiquitanía, the Andean foothills, Rondônia and central Amazonia, Madre de Dios?
How far back can we trace this central role of the Llanos de Mojos?
What can we say about the radius (and mode) of movement of the groups in the area?

Registration

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Programme

09:00 - 09:30	Welcome coffee/tea
09:30 - 10:00	Introduction
10:00 - 11:00	Tabita Hünemeyer (Institut de Biología Evolutiva, CSIC, UPF) TBA
11:00 - 11:30	Coffee pause
11:30 - 12:30	Jaimes Betancourt (University of Bonn) Cultural Dynamics in Southwestern Amazonia in the Light of the Archaeological Record
12:30 - 13:45	Lunch
14:00 - 15:00	Heiko Prümers (Deutsches Archäologisches Institut) The Casarabe Culture: One piece of a complex puzzle
15:00 - 15:30	Coffee pause
15:30 - 16:30	Umberto Lombardo (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) *From Plant Domestication to Agriculture in Southwestern Amazonia*
16:30 - 17:30	Kate Dudgeon (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) Detecting the origins of cultural diversity in the Bolivian Amazon

09:00 - 10:00	Mickaël Brohan (Université Paris Nanterre); talk given in Spanish *Sobre ciertos vecinos arawak olvidados: Etnonímia, relaciones interétnicas y confederaciones multiétnicas en el conjunto takana (siglos XVI-XIX)*
10:00 - 11:00	Vincent Hirtzel and Isabelle Daillant (CNRS, Laboratoire d'ethnologie et de sociologie comparative) *Early colonial social and linguistic landscape of the Andean foothills and the Amazon in central Bolivia (16th-17th centuries)*
11:00 - 11:30	Coffee pause
11:30 - 12:30	Nick Emlen (University of Groningen) *Multilingualism and interregional contact between the altiplano, the eastern slopes, and the Amazon plain*
12:30 - 13:45	Lunch
14:00 - 15:00	Mily Crevels (Leiden University) TBA
15:00 - 16:00	Bernat Badagil (Ghent University) *What voices and sounds can tell us about the highly diverse population history of lowland Bolivia*
16:00 - 16:30	Coffee pause
16:30 - 17:30	General discussion

Abstracts

Amazonian archaeology is currently addressing significant paradigm shifts. As evidence of monumentality and sophisticated natural resource management continues to grow, a remarkable diversity of cultural contexts and landscape transformation patterns is emerging. While the historical and social processes behind these transformations in the Amazonian cultural landscape remain debated, many of these changes are often linked to the dispersal of the Arawak linguistic family. This paper compares the archaeological record from distinct cultural regions of the Llanos de Moxos with existing models that explain the process of 'Arawakisation' across the Amazon. In the Llanos de Moxos, multiple local cultural developments unfolded simultaneously within multi-ethnic, potentially multilingual settings, leading to societies shaped by, yet distinctive from, Arawak influences. Examining these local cultural dynamics during the Middle Holocene is essential for understanding the following complex occupational histories.

When the DAI project began in the Casarabe region in 1999, the “Casarabe culture” did not yet exist in the relevant literature, but was regarded only as a part of the “Mojos culture”. This is just one of many generalizations that have led to a distorted and incomplete picture of local history. The conference paper will present the latest findings regarding the Casarabe culture, questioning “preconceived ideas” and - where possible and justified - refuting them. These include the assumption that the complexity of pre-Hispanic societies in the Llanos de Mojos was linked to equally complex agricultural systems (ridged fields, etc.). References to the neighboring regions of the Casarabe culture will also illustrate how little is known to date of other pre-Hispanic cultures in the Llanos de Mojos.

The beginning of plant cultivation is one of the most important cultural transitions in human history. Southwestern Amazonia has previously been proposed as an early center of plant domestication, based on the presence of wild plants very close to domesticated plants. The history of early human occupation and plant cultivation in southwestern Amazonia is still in a very early phase. In my talk, I will report on the cultivation of squashes (Cucurbita sp.) and cassava (Manihot sp.) more than 10,000 years ago, and maize (Zea mays) around 7,000 years ago, in the Llanos de Moxos, in the Bolivian Amazon. Interestingly, despite the early start of plant cultivation and domestication, it was not until about 2,000 years ago that agricultural societies emerged in the region. When agriculture appeared in the Bolivian Amazon, it substantially transformed the landscape through the construction of thousands of hectares of agricultural fields. These fields are distinct in various places in the plains, each representing a specific adaptation to the edaphic conditions. In addition, I will provide an overview on my current ERC_CoG grant which focuses on reconstructing the demography of the llanos de Moxos from 11.000 to 2.000 yrs BP and unveiling the drivers of demographic changes.

The modern Bolivian Amazon is a hotspot of cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity, evident since Pre-Colombian societies dating back 1000-1500 years and demonstrated by a variety of settlement patterns, subsistence strategies and material culture. However, the origins of cultural diversity and subsequent societal trajectories remain relatively unknown. Current research suggests humans have inhabited the Llanos de Moxos region (LdM) for ~11,000 years. Human presence is documented in Forest Island archaeological sites, where accumulations of anthropogenic material have created slightly elevated mounds, enabling patches of trees to grow in the otherwise seasonally flooded savanna. However, to date, little is known about the lifeways of the people who formed the islands. This paper therefore synthesises data from archaeological excavations of Forest Islands in the LdM, spanning the Holocene, and combines it with new data from sediment cores sampled as part of the DEMODRIVERS-ERC project, to provide new insights into the origins of cultural diversity in the LdM. Evidence discussed includes settlement patterns, material culture, human burials and human-plant-animal interactions, situated within a new chronological framework. This paper also showcases the important contribution of environmental archaeology to better understand cultural diversity through time.

Los historiadores, antropólogos y lingüistas que han estudiado la cuenca entre los ríos Beni y Madre de Dios de la actual Bolivia coinciden en que, entre principios del siglo XVI y finales del XIX, la región fue ocupada por grupos indígenas takana-hablantes y, en menor medida, pano-hablantes, con la excepción de los aguachile (arawak) y los leco (que hablan una lengua aislada) del piedemonte. Sin embargo, un examen cuidadoso de las fuentes tempranas, complementado por nuestros propios datos etnográficos, nos lleva a matizar esa conclusión; no sólo reevaluando la extensión de la presencia arawak en la zona, sino también demostrando que los grupos de esta familia mantuvieron estrechos vínculos sociopolíticos con los de habla takana. La exposición se centrará en tres de esos grupos arawak hoy desaparecidos y olvidados: los magíana, al este del río Beni, que junto con otros muchos grupos participaron en la etnogénesis jesuítica de los maropa o reyesanos, takana-hablantes de las sabanas; los iñapari, al noroeste del Madre de Dios, antiguos vecinos de los araona, cuyo etnónimo es de origen takana; y, sobre todo, los diversos pueblos poco conocidos del piedemonte en la zona del Tuichi, emparentados con los aguachile, los cuales, en épocas coloniales, formaron confederaciones multiétnicas junto con diversos grupos takana.

This paper proposes a synthetic vision of the Indigenous linguistic and social landscape as it can be reconstituted from 16th and 17th century sources for a territory encompassing the forested slopes of the Andes (from the Alto Beni River to the headwaters of the Ichilo River) and, to the north, the plains inhabited by the Arawak-speaking groups historically known as “mojos”. In this area, there are currently five different ethnolinguistic groups: the Mosetenes and Chimanes (who constitute a linguistic microfamily), the Mojeños (Arawaks), the Yurakares (isolated) and the Yukis (Tupi-Guarani). Four hundred years ago, the social and linguistic landscape of this area was different, more complex and more diverse. This paper will focus on specifying the characteristics of the area, with a focus on the “moços” and the “amos” or “raches”, two groups that have disappeared today, as well as the Arawak polity of the Mamoré and its plains.

At various moments throughout history, the altiplano, eastern slopes, and Amazonian lowlands of Bolivia have been in close and sustained contact. In contrast to today’s discourse of binary division between Andean and Amazonian languages, cultures, and societies, during and after the Inca period this contact took the form of a continuous multilingual network stretching from the altiplano (Aymara and Quechua), east of Lake Titicaca and down the tropical foothills (Puquina, Leko, and Aguachile), and into the Amazon plain (Takanan and Arawakan languages). This paper brings together evidence from linguistics, ethnohistory, and anthropology about the nature of this multilingual and cross-regional social network. Special attention is paid to toponyms (place names), and new methods are presented for the use of topic evidence for learning more about language histories in South America and beyond.

To what extent can we use high-resolution comparative approaches in linguistics and ethnomusicology to open a window into human history when we lack tangible historical information? The Guaporé-Mamoré region, overlapping significant territory in the Bolivian and Brazilian lowlands, is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions in the continent. In spite of that, we know extremely little about the history of a vast majority of the languages and the indigenous nations who speak them before the 20th century.

This talk discusses the author’s ongoing interdisciplinary research that combines fine-grained linguistic and ethnomusicological comparative elements in order to triangulate historical information about the indigenous peoples of this area, with a focus on the shared patterns on the Bolivian portion of the area, exploring the following questions:

What grammatical and musical features constitute reliable elements for comparative analysis seeking to diagnose long-term contact?
How do the convergences and divergences resulting from a comparative ethnomusicological analysis of lowland Bolivian indigenous groups overlap with the linguistic reality of these groups?
What contact patterns, if any, can be inferred from a comparative ethnomusico-linguistic analysis?

Questions?

Please contact Alba Hermida Rodríguez (a.h.r.hermida.rodriguez@hum.leidenuniv.nl) or Rik van Gijn (e.van.gijn@hum.leidenuniv.nl).