Public Interest Anthropology at Penn

Clark Erickson is currently directing a multi-year, multidisciplinary investigation of traditional agricultural systems, gaining valuable information which may have applications in the contemporary world.This includes agricultural production, precolumbian land use, anthropogenic landscapes, human environmental impact, and the technological and engineering knowledge of prehispanic farmers in the Amazonian region of Bolivia (Llanos de Moxos or Llanos de Moxos, Department of the Beni, Bolivia). The fieldwork involves archaeological survey, mapping, and excavation of agricultural earthworks (raised fields, causeways, canals, and settlement mounds), digital analysis of remote sensing, and establishment of a Geographic Information System. The research also includes agricultural experimentation based on the now-abandoned technology defined from archaeological research. Between 1990 and 1994, an "applied archaeology" program was developed whereby indigenous communities participated in the raised field experiments. Since 1995, investigations have focused on a vast complex of precolumbian earthworks, discovered to be an artificial landscape-scale fishery, in the Baures, the region along the border between Bolivia and Brazil. The research is funded by the National Science Foundation, H. John Heinz Charitable Trust, the Research Foundation, American Philosophical Society, and the Interamerican Foundation.