Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians

Adaptive Responses of Native Amazonians investigates the adaptive responses of the aborigines of Amazonia from the ecological perspective within anthropology. The discussions are organized around the major modes of Amazonian subsistence (cultivation, hunting and fishing), nutrition, and settlement pattern. Comprised of 15 chapters, this volume begins with an overview of Amazonian ecosystems, citing environmental models of Amazonian adaptive behavior and sociocultural evolution as well as the problematic definition or measure of the concept of adaptation. The reader is then introduced to shifting cultivation among the Machiguenga, Native American inhabitants of the tropical rainforest of the Upper Amazon, and the Kuikuru, one of three Carib-speaking villages located at the headwaters of the Xingú River. Subsequent chapters focus on the adaptive strategies of the Wakuénai people to the oligotrophic rainforest of the Rio Negro Basin; neotropical hunting among the Aché of Eastern Paraguay; trekking by the Mekranoti-Kayapó Indians of Central Brazil in lowland South America; and fishing patterns among the Cocamilla Indians of Achual Tipishca in the Huallaga River Basin in northeastern Peru. The book also considers nutrition and settlement patterns among native Amazonians. This monograph will be a useful resource for anthropologists, scholars, specialists, and others who are interested in the general fields of human ecology, South American ethnology, and tropical studies.