1491_ New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus - Charles C. Mann [239]
Meggers-Roosevelt dispute: Author’s interviews, Meggers, Roosevelt, Balée, Denevan, Erickson; Meggers 1992a:37 (colonialism, elitism); Baffi et al. 1996 (CIA membership).
Painted Rock Cave excavations: Roosevelt et al. 1996; Fiedel et al. 1996; Haynes et al. 1997. Press coverage was unusually thorough. (Gibbons 1996; Wilford 1997a; Hall 1996). In Science, Roosevelt presented her estimate of initial occupation as [.similar]11,200 to 10,500 uncalibrated radiocarbon years B.P. (380); I converted the mean, 10,600 B.P., into calendar years with Stuiver et al. 1998.
Contemporaneity with Clovis: This is subject to debate, with Clovis-firsters challenging Roosevelt’s earliest radiocarbon dates, and Roosevelt crying foul because (in her view) the Clovisites apply more stringent standards to challengers than they do to Clovis (Haynes et al. 1997). Further confusing the issue is the participants’ disagreement over the best way of calibrating raw radiocarbon dates from this period.
138 crops: Clement 1999a, 1999b.
Stone axes: Author’s interviews, Denevan; Denevan 1992b. I am grateful to Prof. Denevan for sending me a copy of this article, upon which my discussion of stone axes is based. See also the updated version of the argument in Denevan 2001:116–23. To some extent, Denevan was anticipated by Donald Lathrap, who called slash-and-burn “a secondary, derived, and late phenomenon within the Amazon Basin,” which only made economic sense after the introduction of maize (quoted in ibid.:132). Denevan argued for a much later, post-1492 introduction of slash-and-burn.
Experiments with stone and steel axes: Carneiro 1979a, 1979b; Hill and Kaplan 1989 (difference between hardwoods and softwoods). True, Carneiro’s workers had no experience with stone axes, which one assumes unfairly magnified their inefficiency. But Carneiro also did not include the effort required to obtain the stone (often far away), make the ax, and keep it sharp, all of which were time sinks. Girdling, too, has been suggested, but it is also very slow.
Three years: Beckerman 1987. I thank Prof. Brush for helping me get this book.
Yanomamo history: Author’s interviews, Balée, Petersen, Chagnon.
Yanomami and steel tools: Author’s interview, Ferguson; Ferguson 1998 (lifestyle changes, 291–97), 1995; Colchester 1984 (seventeenth-century change, 308–10). Ferguson’s thesis is disputed, in part because it downplays the antiquity of Yanomamo warfare (author’s interview, James Petersen).
Controversy on Yanomami gifts: These and other charges were publicized and amplified in Tierney 2000. Tierney’s charges of exacerbating epidemics seem to have been refuted (see note to p. 102), but the furor over them obscured discussion of uncontrolled gifts of steel tools (Mann 2001, 2000a).
Absence of slash-and-burn in North America: Doolittle 2000:174–90 (“gossamer,” 186; “once fields,” 189).
Small farmer slash-and-burn as contributor to deforestation: Author’s interviews, Clement, Fearnside; Fearnside 2001. Fearnside’s figure is a step down from the estimate that slash-and-burn was responsible for 55 percent of total tropical forest clearing in the Americas in Hadley and Lanly 1983.
Nutrient loss: Hölscher 1997. I thank Beata Madari for giving a copy of this article to me.
Meggers survey: Meggers et al. 1988; Meggers 1996:183–87.
Central Amazon archaeology: Author’s interviews, Bartone, Heckenberger, Neves, Petersen; Heckenberger, Petersen, and Neves 2004; Neves et al. 2004; Mann 2002a. I convert uncalibrated radiocarbon years as per Stuiver et al.1988. The site discussed here is called Hatahara, after its owners.
Rainfall and canopy: Brandt 1988.
Importance of agroforestry: