Ecology of the prehistoric agriculture of the swamps of the valleys of Ecuador

Abstract

The humid lands of the Sierra Norte of Ecuador were wastelands of reeds, undergrowth and rough grasslands, forty years after the Spanish conquest. Recent discoveries of raised agricultural fields, abandoned in these humid lands, have demonstrated their importance in the prehistoric economy. Ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological evidence weighed in the reconstruction of the ecological and economic functions of the prehistoric raised fields.