AGROBIODIVERSITY IN AMAZÔNIA AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH DARK EARTHS
CHARLES R. CLEMENT 1, JOSEPH M. MCCANN 2, NIGEL J. H. SMITH 3
1Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia, INPA, Manaus, AM, Brasil,
2Division of Social Sciences, New School University, New York, NY 10011 USA, 3Department of Geography, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
in
Chapter 9 In: Lehmann, J.; Kern, D.; Glaser, B.; Woods, W. (Eds.). Amazonian Dark Earths – Origin, Properties, and Management. Kluwer Academic Publ., Dordrecht. pp. 159-178.

1. INTRODUCTION
Amazônia still contains both pre-Colombian concentrations of indigenous crop plant genetic diversity (Clement, 1999a, 1999b), the major component of agrobiodiversity of interest to indigenous and traditional Amazonian societies, and clear evidence of indigenous technologies used to manage the local environment and its biodiversity
(Balée, 1989; Clement, 1999a; Denevan, 2001), although much of both was lost after European conquest (Clement, 1999a, 2003). The combination of these technologies certainly increased carrying capacity, allowing the development of advanced chiefdoms based on local food security, with the large populations observed along the
main rivers at contact (Piperno and Pearsall, 1998; Denevan, 2001).
One of the most interesting and durable environmental modifications was the creation of Amazonian Dark Earths (Smith, 1980, 1995; Woods and McCann, 1999), including both terra preta do índio and terra mulata (as defined by Sombroek, 1966), whose origin (Neves et al., 2003) and other characteristics are the subject of this volume. Given the interaction among pre-Colombian technologies, an obvious question is ‘What is the relationship between native (and early exotic) agrobiodiversity and Dark Earths?’ Specific questions that will allow us to answer this include ‘Are there indicator plant or crop species for Dark Earths?’ and ‘How are they related to the centers and
regions of crop genetic diversity at contact?’ and, if they are, ‘Do Dark Earth sites act as reservoirs of Amazonian crop genetic diversity?’ The answers to these questions about agrobiodiversity and Dark Earths will contribute to our understanding of human adaptations to Amazônia, both during the mid to late Holocene and in the present. This
contribution attempts to answer these questions from the literature, in order to determine if they are interesting enough to merit further research.