Pre-Columbian Earth Builders of the Amazon

Continuing advances in the archaeology of the Amazon have changed long-standing misconceptions about the rainforest as a homogeneous, nearly pristine environment occupied by small, scattered groups. Massive archaeological sites, deep deposits of anthropogenic soils, and earthworks found over thousands of kilometers now testify to the scale and intensity of past human impact in some parts of the Amazon. However, debate persists about the extent of such transformations, as distinct environments within the Amazon Basin (floodplains, savannas, seasonal forests) reveal different scales and intensities of pre-Columbian landscape modification. In that context, the discovery of hundreds of geometric earthen enclosures in the southern rim of the Amazon is proving that some areas that were previously considered virtually untouched forest may have been densely settled in the past. Although regional variations exist, most southern Amazonian enclosures appear to be defensive earthworks built at the turn of the second millennium ce, a period recognized by archaeologists as one of escalating population densities, migrations, and warfare across the Amazon Basin.

Reading the Wild Rivers Act Controversy

Today, there is a shift in the representations of Northern Australia and its environments. While Indigenous stakeholders have come to the forefront of debates, and the existence of ‘natural values’ and Indigenous ownership have become relatively uncontroversial, environmentalists and environmental regulation have been widely criticized. Chapter 2 surveys media coverage of the controversyin order to better understand these and other recent trends in environmental politics both nationally and internationally. In surveying media narratives, I show how the controversy provides an opportune moment to audit media coverage of Indigenous issues and its decisions regarding who was able to speak authoritatively for and about Northern Australia and its rivers. What remained consistent was the presentation of the region as both a remote and pristine environment and an essentially Indigenous domain, underdeveloped due to ‘meddling greenies’. If these were, as stakeholders largely agreed, ‘wild rivers,’ then what does their wildness now count for and for whom?

The Mushroom Crisis

As the pearl crisis raged, a rush for wild steppe mushroom moved to the center of the imperial agenda in Mongolia. Unheralded and forgotten, steppe mushrooms were big business in the Qing; by the 1820s, thousands of undocumented workers crossed the internal boundary from China to Mongolia each year in search of mushrooms. The chapter opens with the case of a passport forger whose arrest triggered a court edict against mushroom picking in 1829; we have little else of the affair in Chinese. The archives in Ulaanbaatar, however, contain hundreds of documents that detail the long, violent conflict that culminated in his arrest. By analyzing the confessions of mushroom pickers and the depositions of local officials, the chapter reconstructs the history of the mushroom rush and explores how a recreating a “pure” and pristine environment in Mongolia became the top concern of the court.

Urban contamination sources reflected in inorganic pollution in urban lake deposits, Bergen, Norway

The 7000 years transition from a pristine environment towards a modern city has brought a number of chemical changes and effects to urban lake sediments in Bergen.