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Department of Anthropology Papers Department of Anthropology
6-9-2011
Agency, Causeways, Canals, and the Landscapes of

Everyday Life in the Bolivian Amazon
Clark L. Erickson
University of Pennsylvania, [email protected]
Suggested Citation:
Erickson, C.L. (2009) Agency, Roads, and the Landscapes of Everyday Life in the Bolivian Amazon. In Landscapes of Movement: Trails, Paths, and
Roads in Anthropological Perspective, edited by James Snead, Clark Erickson, and Andy Darling, pp. 204-231. Penn Museum Press and the University of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_papers/2

For more information, please contact [email protected].
Landscapes
of Movement
Trails, Paths, and Roads
in Anthropological Perspective
edited by
James E. Snead
Clark L. Erickson
J. Andrew Darling
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Philadelphia
17885.FM LandscapesOfMovement.indd 3 6/11/09 2:24:26 PM

10
Agency, Causeways, Canals,

and the Landscapes of Everyday Life
in the Bolivian Amazon
clark l. erickson
B uilt environment provides an excellent medium for addressing issues

of space, place, landscape, agency, flow, circulation, and interaction of
human agents within physical structures laden with cultural, social, politi-
cal, economic, and symbolic meaning (e.g., Atkin and Rykwert 2005; Law-
rence and Low 1990; Low and Lawrence 2003; Moore 2005). The concept
of built environment addresses issues of aesthetics, design, planning, func-
tion, and meaning of architecture. Traditionally, built environment meant
formal buildings, monuments, and cities, although in more recent years,
vernacular architecture and landscape are included. Because built environ-
ment is often highly patterned and physical, a form of material culture or
human artifact, archaeologists can document, analyze, and interpret its ori-
gins, function, evolution, and meaning in much the same way as traditional
objects of archaeological study are employed to understand the past.
In this chapter, human agency and structure that are embedded in the
cultural or anthropogenic landscape, a particular form of built environ-
ment, are examined through practice theory. My research focuses on mun-
dane landscapes, the landscapes of everyday life including farming, daily
economic activities, routines of work and sociality. These environments
have been transformed to such an extent through applications of technol-
17885.01 LandscapesOfMovement.indd 204 6/11/09 2:26:01 PM

recto running head 205
ogy and mobilization of human labor and energy that I refer to them as an-
thropogenic or engineered landscapes. Although often ignored in favor of
large urban centers and monumental sites, these cultural landscapes are as
constructed and planned as formal architecture anywhere on Earth. I docu-
ment the patterned practices of everyday life that are physically embedded
in a precolumbian and historical cultural landscape of the Baures Hydraulic
Complex in the Bolivian Amazon. In this case study, ubiquitous landscape
features such as causeways and canals provide a means of understanding
complex landscapes of movement and social interaction through the per-
spective of practice theory and landscape.
Agency and Structure in Cultural Landscapes

Pierre Bourdieu’s (1977) practice theory stresses the dynamic relationship
between the agency of individuals and groups and structure, the interface
of which he labeled habitus. Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is particularly rel-
evant to archaeology because of his focus on the built environment, space,
and the practices of everyday life (e.g., Barrett 2001; Bintliff 2004; Dobres
and Robb 2000, 2005; Dornan 2002; Joyce and Lopiparo 2005; Llobera 1996,
2000; Smith 2001; Robin 2002). Bourdieu’s original case study was the Ber-
ber house, a highly structured physical entity that is both a model of and a
model for society. Human individuality and creativity produces cultural in-
novations that can become habitus (or structure) if adopted in human rou-
tines of life. Over time, habitus become an active force for shaping human
activity. In turn, individual agents through daily practice can alter those
structures of everyday life.
The complex recursive relationship between practice and structure cre-
ates the patterns that we recognize in the archaeological record and identify
as aspects of long-term traditions; local, regional, and cross-cultural varia-
tion; and continuity and change over short and long temporal scales. Land-
scape is a valuable medium to read the nuances of practice, agency, structure,
and habitus. Landscape archaeologists read the physical, patterned “resi-
dues” of accumulated human routines and practical knowledge or habitus.
We do landscape archaeology through recognition of context, association,
pattern, continuity and discontinuity, anomaly, palimpsest, landscape capi-
tal, inhabitation, and historical ecology (Anschuetz, Wilshusen, and Sche-
ick 2001; Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Balée and Erickson 2006; Wilkinson

206 verso running head
2003). With fine-g rained analysis, even ephemeral patterning is detectable.

Anomalies and disjunctures reveal discrete agency and spatial and temporal
groupings and boundaries, which often relate to socio-political organization
on the ground or changes over time (e.g., Erickson 1993; Walker 2004).
Trails, paths, and roads may be the best built environment media for
highlighting the contributions of the archaeology of landscapes due to their
materiality, longevity, permanence, patterning, and multiple functions and
meanings. Trails, paths, and roads connect people to people, people to re-
sources, or in the case of ritual roads and pilgrimage, people to their gods
and sacred places. As complex networks of human relationships, routes
map communication, transportation, interaction, and social, political, eco-
nomic organization (e.g., Ingold 1993; Tilley 1994, 2004; Wilkinson 2003).
On the other hand, where trails, paths, and roads do not go can demarcate
territories and boundaries between groups occupying the same landscape.
The multiscalar thinking about time and space in a landscape approach is
relevant for understanding the archaeology of movement, which can in-
clude anything from local short-term events to regional phenomena with
deep histories and beyond. The size and complexity of movement network
may reflect the scale and intensity of interaction (Earle, Chapter 12, this vol-
ume; Appendices 1 and 2). Short, ephemeral trails and paths and circulation
within households may relate to individual or small group activity (e.g.,
Robin 2002; Stahl and Zeidler 1990). In contrast, nested, bounded networks
of road communication may reflect either hierarchical or heterarchical or-
ganization of society (e.g., Crumley 1995; Crumley and Marquardt 1987).
In other cases, vast networks of informal trails and paths of small, relatively
non-complex societies may cover entire regions, subverting assumptions
about scale and socio-political stages (Snead 2002, Chapter 3, this volume;
Darling, Chapter 4, this volume). In addition to mundane practical everyday
use, trails, paths, and roads may serve important functions of performance
during processions, rituals, and pilgrimage (e.g., Abercrombie 1998; Bauer
1998; Inomata and Coben 2006; Moore 2005; Morrison 1978; Ferguson,
Berlin, and Kuwanwisiwma, Chapter 2, this volume; Keller, Chapter 7, this
volume). Approaches to the archaeology of movement range from descrip-
tions and functional analyses of trails, paths, and roads, often through the
lens of process, political economy, evolution, and cultural ecology (e.g.,
Espinoza 2002; Hyslop 1984; Kantner 1997; Oyuela 2000; Wilkinson 2003;
Ur, Chapter 9, this volume) to studies of the interpretation and meaning

of these features framed in phenomenology, practice, memory, interpreta-

tion, and semiotics (e.g., Aveni 2000; Chadwick 2004; Keller, this volume;
Llobera 1997, 2000; Snead and Preucel 1999; Sofaer, Marshall, and Sinclair
1989; Tilley 1994, 2004). As the result of intentional activities of everyday
life, repetitive movement creates physical structure over time. Once es-
tablished, this highly patterned structure often determines later activities
through features that facilitate and impede movement. Because of this re-
cursive relationship, trails, paths, and roads can be models of and for society
or Bourdieu’s habitus.
The practices of everyday life and social interaction, in particular
human movement through space, simultaneously create and are structured
by the built environment and cultural landscape. Repetitive bodily move-
ment through space and the physical structures that result from and chan-
nelize this movement create a tight recursive relationship. Places determine
networks of movement and these networks structure new places. Infor-
mal movement creates paths and trails, which over time, grow and become
more complex through accretion and formalization. Although “entrenched”
over time, these movement networks can be transformed through chang-
ing needs, new technology, and the shifting of places of origin and des-
tination. Although movement through already established routes is often
unconscious, circulation through most space involves decision making
(consideration of slope, natural obstacles, least resistance, and other physi-
cal contingencies of movement), negotiation (where you can and you can-
not go because of neighbors, land tenure, and other social contingencies of
movement), and meaning (the aesthetics, symbolism, ideology, metaphor,
and other interpretations of movement). In extreme cases, movement can
be highly structured through designed roads, bridges, and stairs that facili-
tate and direct traffic and walls, barriers, gates, and other cultural obstruc-
tions that impede or control circulation.
The Engineered Landscapes of

the Baures Region of Bolivia
The Baures Region is a remote corner of the Llanos de Mojos (Moxos), a
vast landscape of seasonally inundated grassland savannas, permanent wet-
lands, lakes, gallery forests, forest islands, and closed canopy forest in the
Amazon Basin of northeast Bolivia (Figure 10.1). Much of the country is

submerged beneath a thin sheet of water during the wet season. Rivers and
lakes are filled with fish and other aquatic species throughout the year and
migrate across the savannas during floods. The flooding of the wet season
is in sharp contrast to the dry season when water can be scarce. Scattered
“forest islands” rise a meter or two above the surrounding savanna, rang-
ing in size from several hectares to many square kilometers and sustaining
settlements, ranches, gardens, and fields within the populated areas to the
north and west. Unlike the anthropogenic (human created) forest islands in
central Bolivian Amazon, those in the savannas of Baures Region are natu-
ral formations produced by upwelling of the Brazilian Shield.
The Baure probably were the last indigenous group to be subjugated by
Bolivia
0 100 200
kilometers
Rio
Gu
apo
re Prehispanic Hydraulic
i
Ben
Complex of Baures
Rio
Baures
Mam
Trinidad
Sa
ore
n M cq
Sa nco
Bl
Ri
art uin
n
o
a
Ja
in
Lake Ito
no
Titicaca La Paz m
as
Cochabamba
Santa Cruz
Sucre
0m 200m 1000m 5000m

10.1 The Bolivian Amazon.

the Spanish in Bolivia. After a brief bloody retribution by the Spanish army
for killing their first missionary, the Jesuits established control in the early
1700s. The Jesuits were impressed by what they recognized as a remark-
able civilization: elaborate dress, large settlements, political organization,
intensive agriculture, and monumental earthworks associated with the
Baure people (Anonymous 1743; Eder 1888, 1985; Métraux 1942; Denevan
1966, 1991; Block 1994). Baure settlements were distributed in the Itonama,
Blanco, Negro, San Joaquin, San Martin, San Simon, and Itenez (Guaporé)
river drainages. In addition to groups speaking dialects of Baures (Baure,
Muchojeone, and Paikoneka), smaller dispersed groups such as the Sirionó,
Itonama, and Guarasug’we also occupied the Baures region. Population was
estimated to be 40,000 dispersed in 75 to 124 large settlements (Altamirano
1891:117; Block 1994; Denevan 1966; Eguiluz 1884:22). Over time, native
populations sharply declined due to Old World diseases, wars with the Por-
tuguese, slavery, and other abuses following the expulsion of the Jesuits and
later during the Rubber Boom and Chaco War. While some successful Jesuit
mission towns such as Concepción de Baures continue to the present, many
failed and were abandoned during the Mission Period.
I use the term “Baure” for the contemporary, Colonial, and preco-
lumbian native peoples of the region, “Baures” for the mission and con-
temporary administrative center town, “Baures Region” for the areas of
archaeological features and contemporary occupied landscape (Figure
10.1), and “Baures Hydraulic Complex” (BHC) for the engineered landscape
in the savannas between the San Joaquin and San Martin rivers (recognized
as the Kenneth Lee Archaeological Reserve by the National Government
of Bolivia) (Figure 10.2).
The inhabitants of the Bolivian Amazon imposed their agency and struc-
ture on the environment through permanent and significant engineering.
Various scholars have highlighted the importance of causeways and canals
(CEAM 2003; Denevan 1966, 1991; Erickson 1980; Métraux 1942; Michel
1993; Pinto Parada 1987; Plafker 1963; and specifically for the Baures region:
Orbigny 2002; Lee 1979, 1995; Nordenskiöld 1916, 1918, 2001; 2003). Various
sites in Baures, Magdalena, Bella Vista, and along the Itenez/Guapore River
were briefly investigated by archaeologists (Becker-Donner 1956; Calandra
and Salceda 2004; Denevan 1966; Dougherty and Calandra 1981, 1983, 1984;
Kelm 1953; Prümers 2006; Prümers, Betancourt, and Plaza 2006; Reister
1981). As part of the Agro-Archaeological Project of the Beni (University of

0 12.5 25
Kilometers
10.2 Major Causeways-Canals, Minor Causeways-Canals, and forest islands in the

savannas of the Baures Hydraulic Complex, Bolivia.
Pennsylvania and National Institute of Archaeology), we investigated sites

and earthworks including raised fields, fish weirs, water management struc-
tures, settlements, artificial river meander cut-offs and inter-river channels,
causeways, and canals between 1995 and the present (Erickson 1995, 2000a,
2000b, 2000c, 2001, 2002, 2006a; Erickson et al. 1995; Erickson, Winkler,
and Candler 1997; Vranich 1996).
Mapping Agency and Structure

in a Landscape of Movement
The study region is unpopulated today; thus, the earthworks are remark-
ably well preserved in contrast to areas subject to heavy cattle grazing. All
surveyed forest islands larger than 1 km2 have ring-ditch sites of diverse size
and shape: octagons, hexagons, squares, rectangles, “D” shapes, circles,
ovals, and irregular shapes (Erickson 2002, 2006a, 2008; Erickson, Winkler,
and Candler 1997; Vranich 1996) (Figure 10.3). Large forest islands have
multiple, evenly spaced, ring-ditch sites. Ditches are often several meters
deep and steep sided and some extend 1–2 linear km and include multiple
concentric rings. The Jesuits described these features as forts with deep

10.3 D-shaped ring-ditch site at the Buen Retiro Ranch, Bolivia.
moats and palisades (Anonymous 1743; Eder 1985) (Figure 10.4). Although
few have been investigated archaeologically, ring-ditch sites may have been
cemeteries, sacred spaces, elite residences, settlements, and/or defensive
structures. These features also are documented for Riberalta, Bolivia (Ar-
nold and Prettol 1989), and the Acre and Upper Xingu river regions of Brazil
(Heckenberger 2005; Pärssinen and Korpisaari 2003).
10.4 Reconstruction of a ring-ditch site. (Artwork by Daniel Brinkmeier)

Although similar in shape and scale to the large circular villages with
central plazas of the Central and Eastern Amazon basin (Wust and Ba-
retto 1999; Heckenberger 2005, 2008), the ring-ditch sites of the Baures
Region, Riberalta, and the Acre region tend to lack evidence of domestic
activity, which suggests non-residential use. The Jesuits were impressed
by the larger settlements, but also describe dispersed, dense occupa-
tion throughout the forest islands. As an early strategy of control and
indoctrination, the Jesuits resettled peoples in their new mission towns,
a settlement system that continues today. Archaeologically, settlements
are difficult to document due to thick vegetation and soil cover and the
ephemeral nature of Amazonian residential structures. Today, individual
households often maintain several houses in different locations for farm-
ing and resource collection.
A vast network of raised earthen causeways and canals provided a
landscape of movement to connect these important places. A causeway is
defined as a formal, intentionally raised road, usually of locally obtained
earth. A canal is an intentionally excavated linear feature intended to hold
water seasonally or permanently or simply the result of building causeways.
Causeways and canals are usually associated as combined landscape features
in the BHC. Causeways and canals vary in length from tens of meters to
many kilometers. Most causeways and canals are straight. Many form radial
patterns from a common source, usually located on a forest island. Most
causeways and canals are associated with low-lying, seasonally or perma-
nently inundated savannas or wetlands, although some penetrate the higher
ground of forest islands. Causeways and canals can be divided into Major
and Minor types based on scale, energetics, design, and context.
Major Causeways are highly visible as tree-lined features flanked on one
or both sides by canals filled with dark aquatic vegetation, which stands out
against the grass-covered savanna (Figure 10.5). The adjacent water-filled
canals block annual savanna burns, allowing trees to flourish on causeways
after abandonment. Major Causeways range in width from 1 to 10 m and
elevations vary from 0.5 to 3 m tall; Major Canals are comparable in dimen-
sions. Most Major Causeways-Canals are straight and extend up to 7.5 km,
although most are several kilometers long. Pedestrians used the elevated
causeways and canoe traffic circulated in the adjacent canal(s) (Erickson
2000a, 2000c, 2001, 2006a; Erickson and Walker, Chapter 11, this volume).
Major Causeways-Canals represent the longest inter-forest island connec-

10.5 Tree-covered parallel Major Causeways-Canals crossing the savanna between

forest islands.

tions. These works often are monumental in design, labor, and scale; most
appear on satellite imagery from space and are formal roads. Some are
particularly labor intensive in scale of earth moved and we recorded many
double and triple parallel causeways-canals (Figure 10.5). Construction was
done using simple wooden digging sticks and earth moved in baskets and/
or carrying cloths.
The more common Minor Causeways-Canals were also laid out in
straight alignments but are shorter in length and required less construction
than the Major Causeways-Canals. These features consist of a single shal-
low canal (1 m wide and less than 0.5 m deep) with low causeways or berms
alongside ((Figure 10.6). My informant-guides and I interpret these shallow
canals as precolumbian canoe paths: channels for paddling or poling large
canoes across the shallow inundated savanna during the wet season. During
the dry season, the channels could be used as routes for pedestrian traffic
through savanna grasses. Repeated paddling, poling, or dragging a large
canoe through the shallow water can create canal-like depressions over time
with minimal planning or labor (Figure 10.7). The irregular scar of annual
10.6 Minor Causeway-Canal or canoe path (dark line) crossing the savanna in tall
grass between Largo and Paralelo forest islands.

10.7 Poling and paddling a large dugout canoe across the flooded savanna of the
Baures Hydraulic Complex.
canoe transit of my native guides is a good example of what a few hunters

can do through even irregular routines over many years. Their paths have
been permanently etched on the landscape as a modern layer of palimpsest.
I can trace their recent canoe path across the savanna to their forest island
camp on satellite imagery, a distance of 7 km. The sinuous irregular courses
of these recent canoe paths stand in contrast to the straight trajectory of
Minor Causeways-Canals, which implies concern with trajectory during the
initial shallow channel excavation. Although simple constructions, Minor
Causeways-Canals share the straightness and precision of layout of the
larger Major Causeways-Canals.
The project Geographic Information System (GIS) of the Baures Region
includes Digital Elevation Models, Landsat ETM scenes, CORONA images,
aerial photographs, topographic maps, and vector maps of cultural fea-
tures, classified vegetation, and landuse. Numerous flights in low-flying air-
craft provided opportunities for oblique photography. Two short seasons of
pedestrian survey, mapping, and excavation in the Baures region were con-

ducted in 1995 and 1996. The GIS documents over 1000 individual artificial
linear features representing 994 linear km in total length (averaging 1 km)
in the 500–700 km2 of the BHC (Figure 10.2). Most are Minor Causeway-
Canals. A remarkable concentration of Minor Causeways-Canals is found
in a 3–4 km2 area of savanna between and around two large forest islands:
the San Martin Forest Island Complex (Figure 10.8). In this small subset
of the GIS, I detected 168 linear features, of which the majority are Minor
Causeways-Canals of 1 km or less in length. Eleven Major Causeways-
Canals extend to the south and north.
F 0 550 1,100 1,650 2,200

Meters
10.8 Major Causeways-Canals and Minor Causeways-Canals of the San Martin

Forest Island Complex.
Prehistory, Ethnohistory, and Ethnography

of Movement in the Amazon
As agency and structures of everyday life, the causeways and canals of the
Baures region can be understood through archaeological context informed
by the spatial patterning in the GIS and fieldwork and, to a limited extent,
through historical and ethnographic analogy, and comparison to similar

phenomenon in the Llanos de Mojos and Amazonia. Although archaeologi-

cal studies of causeways and canals are scarce, trails, paths, and roads are re-
ported for the Amazon region. Large urban settlements with circular plazas
bounded by concentric arcs of ditch and embankment that are connected
by wide, radial roads of several kilometers in length are documented in the
Upper Xingú River basin (Heckenberger 2005, 2008). Located in uplands,
these roads are defined by earthen curbs rather than raised roadways and
excavated canals. While sharing straightness, radial patterning, and associa-
tions with ring-ditch sites, these roads are less numerous, of lower density,
and easier to construct than those of the BHC. Archaeologists also have
documented a precolumbian network of causeways in the Venezuelan sa-
vannas associated with chiefdoms (Garson 1980; Spencer, Redmond, and
Rinaldi 1994) and networks of wide curbed roads in the Upper Xingu re-
gion (Heckenberger et al. 2008). Although individual causeways and roads
are similar in size and length to those of the Baures Region, the network is
smaller in geographic scale and of lower density.
Although dispersed settlements, trekking, long-distance trade, reciproc-
ity, and competitive feasting are emphasized in native Amazonian ethnog-
raphy and history (e.g., Descola 1994; Posey 1983; Rival 2002), scholars have
largely ignored the ubiquitous trails, paths, and roads that made this interac-
tion possible. During early exploration along the Amazon River (Solimões
River) by the Orellana Expedition of 1541–1542, Carvajal (1988) reported
large riverine villages with wide avenues or streets radiating from plazas far
into the hinterlands. An early account of the Paresi, a group linguistically
related to the Baure, describes long, wide avenues between their many vil-
lages (Pires de Campo 1862). Nimuendajú (1939, 1946) discussed everyday
and special ritual roads used by the Apinayé and the Eastern Timbira for
processions, log races, and other rituals associated with initiations and com-
munity. Fabian (1992) discusses roads and plazas of the Bororo of Central
Brazil as key elements for structuring of cosmological and spatial order.
The Spanish soldiers, missionaries, and colonial authorities observed
the use of precolumbian and contemporary causeways and canals in the Bo-
livian Amazon (Altamirano 1891; Anonymous 1743; Castillo 1906; CEAM
2003; Denevan 1966, 1991; Block 1994; D’Orbigny 2002; Lizarrazú 1906;
Marbán 1889; Métraux 1942). Many early Spanish expeditions penetrated
the region using the vast network of trails, paths, and roads, most of which
were still in use during the Mission Period. Jesuit Father Francisco Eder pro-

vides a rich eyewitness account of causeways and canals during the Mission
Period in the mid-18th century.
[M]ost of the year the savannas are covered with high water. Boats
are the only way to get from one forest island to another. Since most
of the natives have no boats (either due to laziness or because they
don’t know how to make them), but they still find it necessary or
enjoyable to go visiting their neighboring friends, usually for the
purpose of drinking, they built a certain kind of bridge or dam-like
structure of earth by digging a ditch on two sides and piling earth in
the middle. These causeways generally remain dry in the floods and
are wide enough for Spanish two-horse carriages. The water filled
ditches created by their construction are also used for canoes. Dur-
ing the hot dry period and burning of the savannas, these ditches
retain enough water so that maize and other goods can be trans-
ported. These causeways were mostly used by the Baure tribe; al-
though they are found elsewhere. Nowadays, however, few are in
use, partly because the lack of canoes at the disposal of the Indians
and partly because after all these years of disuse, the causeways have
become ruins. (Eder [1772]1985:104–5; Eder [1772] 1888:36; Boglar
and Bognar 1973–81)1
The Baure efficiently combined causeways for terrestrial traffic and

canals for aquatic circulation into an integrated landscape of movement.
While we tend to focus on causeways as platforms for pedestrian move-
ment, Eder clearly points out that canoe traffic in the associated canals may
have been more important. Native peoples in this region and throughout
Amazonia relied heavily on water transport. The canoe was a key character-
istic of Tropical Forest Culture (Lathrap 1970; Lowie 1948). A complex net-
work of natural and artificial waterways connects most of Amazonia with
neighboring drainage basins (Nordenskiöld 1916). Canoe travel by Amazo-
nian peoples played a key role in alliances, warfare, slaving expeditions, and
trade during the Colonial Period (DeBoer 1986) and contemporary daily
life (Smith 1999). The artificial enhancement of water routes through canal
digging and river meander cut-offs is well documented (Abizaid 2005; Raf-
fles and Winkler-Prins 2003). In describing the Mojo, Block (1994:23) states
that they “lived in their canoes” and an early vocabulary of Mojo Arawak

“is filled with watery words, including seven separate expressions for river,
describing various sizes, colors, and textures.” Canoe transportation is still
highly valued in the Baures region. My informants and guides repeatedly
tell me, “We would rather paddle or pole a canoe than walk any day.”
The desire to travel by canoe has shaped the Baures landscape in other
major ways. The obsession with straightness was also applied to the vast
meandering rivers of the region. Nordenskiöld (1916) and D’Orbigny
(2002) documented a number of river meander short cuts or cut-offs and
canals, which connect the main channels of adjacent rivers or their head-
waters, many of which were still functioning. More recently, additional
canals designed to reduce travel time and canoe portage have been docu-
mented (Denevan 1966, 1991; Erickson, Winkler, and Candler 1997). My
informants state that the historical and modern river cuts are the product
of and “owned” by local communities. Erland Nordenskiöld (1916) cited
informants who stated that these artificial canals could change mighty river
courses over time. In the Baures Region, members of the Tujeré Commu-
nity excavated a 0.25 km canal to cut a river meander in 1995 (Erickson,
Winkler, and Candler 1997).
Contemporary farmers, hunters, ranchers, and cattle use informal
paths to cross the savannas and wetlands, easily recognized by their irregu-
lar, sinuous trajectories despite the flat topography and open savanna. Al-
though sometimes producing worn trench-like ruts in the landscape over
time, these informal sinuous foot and canoe paths contrast sharply with
the straight precolumbian causeways-canals. In travels within the BMC, my
guides consider the overgrown Major Causeways-Canals as obstacles where
their canoes must be portaged or a canal must be cut through the feature
with shovels. In contrast, precolumbian Minor and Major Causeways-Canals
rarely cross or intersect, suggesting a memory of and respect for preexisting
features when new routes were created or added.
The Creation of a Landscape of Movement

Obsession with straightness and radial patterns is common in the cultures
of the Americas. In the ethnography of the Central Amazon, straight roads
are sacred axes of circular plaza villages dedicated to ritual uses such as the
log racing of the Bororo and Gê (Nimuendajú 1939, 1946; Fabian 1992), in
addition to trails and paths of mundane, everyday travel. The basic func-

tions of causeways and canals were for transportation and communica-

tion: moving people, goods, and information between settlements in the
savanna and rivers of the BHC. Canals were particularly useful for moving
heavy and bulky agricultural produce from field to settlement and connect-
ing people with resources such as game, fish, construction materials, fire-
wood, and orchards. To move pedestrians or long, heavy canoes between
two points in the flat landscapes of the BHC, direct paths are the most ef-
fective. On the other hand, constructing ruler-straight formal Major and
Minor Causeways-Canals are beyond what is necessary for efficient move-
ment. Other elements emphasize overengineering and expense such as the
existence of multiple parallel causeways-canals when a single causeway-
canal would suffice. These formal patterns suggest the agency of individu-
als, families, hamlets, and communities who agreed to create a local and
regional infrastructure of direct communication based on a shared aesthetic
of intense social interaction, straightness, and order.
The chronology for causeway and canal use begins around 600 years
ago in the Central Bolivian Amazon (Erickson 2000c). We have a single cor-
rected radiocarbon date ranging from ad 1490–1630 for a Major Causeway-
Canal in the BHC (Erickson 2000c; Erickson, Winkler, and Candler 1997).2
Based on these dates and palimpsest and context of earthworks, most Major
and Minor Canals-Causeways probably were built and used in the late pre-
columbian or protohistoric periods before Spanish conquest and mission-
ization of Baures in the early 1700s. With the introduction of Old World
diseases, slavery, and wars between Spain and Portugal over this region, na-
tive populations collapsed, the region was depopulated, and the earthworks
were largely abandoned.
How did the landscape of the BHC come to be and how does the his-
torical process inform us about agency and structure? Despite our lack of
direct dates of earthworks and settlements, the GIS shows a complex histor-
ical process of landscape formation that can be “read” through palimpsest
and patterning. Superposition, intersection, and disjuncture of landscape
features across space give us clues to help to sort out the complex construc-
tion of this built landscape. In particular, the rare intersections where earlier
earthworks are “cut through” by the construction of later features provide
clues about chronology and use. When this evidence is present, we can as-
sume that either gradual replacement is occurring or some earthworks have
fallen into disuse.

The straightness and uniformity of individual Major and Minor

Causeways-Canals also argues for a single construction episode. The lack
of evidence of segmental or incremental construction of individual Major
and Minor Causeways-Canals is additional evidence of overall design and
structure on the landscape. Straight Major and Minor Causeways-Canals
were planned from the beginning. Few, if any, irregular paths, trails, or
canoe paths can be dated through palimpsest as precolumbian. The cutting
of these straight features by recent irregular trails and canoe paths suggests
a disjuncture in patterns of movement. Thus, Minor and Major Causeways-
Canals predate the modern features. Most are recently created by seasonal
hunters and wild animals such as peccaries, agouti, deer, and tapirs moving
between forest islands parallel to the overgrown earthworks, thus are not
the evolutionary predecessors of the more formal features.
We find no evidence of mistakes, corrections, and/or experimenting in
the design and patterning. The Major and Minor Causeways-Canals appear
fully developed on first appearance and throughout their construction and
use. The formal design emphasizing precision and straightness applies to all
levels of the landscape of movement from Minor Causeways-Canals repre-
senting the efforts of individual households living in dispersed hamlets to
the Major Causeways-Canals of large communities and supra-communities
living in villages and towns and possibly a polity at the regional scale. A
shared belief in structure clearly dominated formation of this landscape
from the beginning and was passed down through generations as memory,
inhabitation, and landesque capital (discussed below).
The majority of the Major and Minor Causeways-Canals do not cross or
intersect their neighbors (Figure 10.2). The predominant radial pattern of
the Major Causeways-Canals insures autonomy. When Major Causeways-
Canals intersect, one usually terminates at the juncture, indicating con-
temporary use and respect for preexisting structures. Because of their
number and density such as the San Martin Forest Island Complex, Minor
Causeways-Canals are more likely to intersect, especially where crowded
on the landscape (Figure 10.8). Their more ephemeral nature and simple
construction suggests that these features regularly went in and out of use
according to the needs of individual households, in contrast to the Major
Causeways-Canals, which are more permanent and used by larger groups of
people. The palimpsest relationship between Major and Minor Causeways-
Canals provides details about the creation process of the landscape. The

cases of Major Causeways-Canals intersecting (“cutting through” and physi-

cally perforating) Minor Causeways-Canals outnumber cases of the reverse.
Thus, the Major Causeways-Canals were built after the establishment of
many Minor Causeways-Canals, but the evidence also suggests overlap in
use period.
Earthwork construction profoundly transforms soils, water, and veg-
etation in highly patterned ways. The design and construction process
is “additive” in that, once established, earthworks are permanent. Major
Causeways are literally additive in that earth is piled up to create them.
Minor Causeways-Canals are superimposed on earlier features as palimp-
sest, much like a messy, unerased blackboard. Although the features are
eroded remains today, we have no evidence of removal of earthworks
through destruction, leveling, or erasure. Thus, established earthworks do
not disappear through disuse and abandonment, but rather become land-
scape features of “inhabitation” (e.g., Barrett 1999a) whereby the occupants
of the landscape at any point in time are surrounded by and immersed in
the works of their ancestors. This inhabitation has important implications
for long-term memory, local history, a sense of pride, place, and commu-
nity, agency, and structure. As an additive or accumulating landscape, the
BHC was continually under construction and undergoing a “filling” process
that has implications for agency and structure. Certain rules of design were
respected during the complex process of landscape creation. Whether the
avoidance of building new Major Causeways-Canals across preexisting fea-
tures reflects respect for past tradition and structure, or simply a decision
to save time and energy by not dismantling old features is difficult to deter-
mine. Both choices show the increasing dominance of multigenerational
group structure over individual agency as the landscape becomes filled.
Through accumulation of generations of labor into permanent landesque
capital (Erickson and Walker, Chapter 11, this volume), the built environ-
ment appears overengineered. The occupants built more Major Causeways-
Canals than necessary, often double, triple, or parallel and many are wider
and taller than needed for a society without wheeled vehicles and draft
animals. Their sense of order and magnitude in the landscape approaches
a monumentality commonly associated with more ostentatious complex
societies (Trigger 1990).
Despite sharing straightness, individual Major Causeways-Canals vary
greatly in terms of length, width, and height. Although common in the

BHC, complexes of radial Causeways-Canals show little similarity in num-

ber of rays, orientation, and scale. This supports the idea that individual
Major and Minor Causeways-Canals were planned according to a [shared]
structure in mind, builders had considerable leeway in the execution and
imposed their agency accordingly. These variations also support a more
bottom-up construction and organization of the earthworks.
The numerous and repetitive Minor Causeways-Canals may be the result
of long-term landscape-accumulation as households migrated across space
through deaths, house replacement, fissioning of communities, and popu-
lation growth; thus, Minor Causeways-Canals would have been abandoned
and replaced as needed. Amazonian houses are impermanent structures
that need maintenance and replacement; the lifespan of a typical Amazo-
nian house is short due to post and thatch decay. The dispersed households
and multifamily hamlets documented in the ethnographic record outside
of permanent villages and towns are relatively ephemeral, thus new Minor
Causeways-Canals were created as settlements cycled around the forest is-
lands and provide more evidence of occupation than the ephemeral settle-
ments themselves.
Landscape Movement as a Map of Social

Integration and Organization
The causeways-canals of the BHC represent engineered networks for social
interaction. Their linear patterning stands in sharp contrast to natural for-
mations. Even the animal paths that wander between forest islands often fol-
low or are determined by what humans created. The irregular paths, trails,
and roads of modern everyday life that crisscross the occupied areas around
the town of Baures and surrounding forest islands stand in sharp contrast to
the highly ordered precolumbian landscape. Although the informal would
have been easier to create and maintain, the precolumbian peoples appar-
ently preferred more orderly, formal circulation and structure. The number
and patterning of Minor Causeways-Canals show a strong desire of indi-
vidual agents to directly connect with neighbors and a rich sphere of social
interaction.
Major Causeways-Canals, characterized by their impressive number,
length, width, volume of earth, and straightness, were a visible form of
monumentality and a means to show community labor, pride, and aesthet-

ics. Construction of these overengineered, larger, and more elegant features

may have been driven by healthy competition between communities. In
the ethnographic and historical record for Amazonia, the social, political,
economic, and ritual organization of complex and non-complex societies is
based on dynamic and delicate balancing of alliance, competitive feasting,
labor reciprocity, trade, host-guest asymmetry, raiding, and warfare (e.g.,
DeBoer 1986, 2001; Heckenberger 2005; Lathrap 1970; McEwan, Barreto,
and Neves 2001). The Jesuit Father Eder ([1703] 1985) complained about the
Baure use of causeways for visiting and drinking with friends, an activity
that he considered wasteful and unproductive.
All activities rely on physical connections linking people face to face
across the landscape. The vast network of causeways and canals probably fa-
cilitated and solidified these social processes. Many Major Causeways-Canals
lead to or radiate from ring ditches on the larger forest islands, suggesting
integrated design and the special ritual function of social gatherings. By di-
recting the eye to the distant horizon on a near flat landscape or convergence
on key forest islands, Major Causeways-Canals provide a powerful phenome-
nological experience even today (Figure 10.9). Major Causeways-Canals may
have been elegant, wide tree-lined avenues when in use, further emphasizing
a sense of monumentality and order. Equally impressive are three clearly
10.9 Reconstruction of use of Major Causeways-Canals in the Baures Region.

(Artwork by Daniel Brinkmeier)

artificial canals that traverse narrow sections of long forest islands, which
would eliminate the need for hours of canoe portage or circumnavigation.
Some of these features required considerable labor due to the volume of soil
and rock excavated (Erickson, Winkler, and Candler 1997).
The density, patterning, and type of trail, path, road, and water net-
works may reflect the social organization, demography, and complexity
of these societies. Based on their number, design, and context in the San
Martin Forest Island Complex, Minor Causeways-Canals probably were
constructed, used, and maintained by individual extended families or small
groups of families in hamlets dispersed over adjacent forest islands (Figure
10.10). Each provided personal, direct physical connection to kin, neigh-
bors, and friends. We can predict households and hamlets stretching along
the edges of forest islands overlooking the open savanna. Fewer in number
and more impressive in scale of construction, the Major Causeways-Canals
connect many of the same places, but are strategically placed to efficiently
connect all large forest islands with single or parallel routes.
I am convinced that the tangled mass of Minor Causeways-Canals was
organized bottom-up by families, hamlets, lineages, and communities rather
than imposed top-down from a central political authority. But does a single
causeway-canal between two adjacent forest islands represent the work of
10.10 Reconstruction of the landscape of movement of the Baures Hydraulic

Complex. (Artwork by Clark Erickson)

a single household, a community, or multiple communities? If an indepen-

dent community occupied each forest island, did neighboring communities
collaborate on the construction and maintenance of causeways and canals?
We have documented rare cases of straight Major Causeways-Canals with a
slight sharp angle midway between forest islands, which may have been the
result of two collaborating communities building their own half of a shared
project. Some paired, parallel Major Causeways-Canals between forest is-
lands may also represent the work of two interacting communities.
If polities beyond groups of communities existed, nested spatial patterns
of interaction would be expected. Patrick Brett (2007) applied Network
Analysis (e.g., Jenkins 2001) to the patterning of causeways and canals of the
BHC. The analysis determines the centrality, spatial integration, hierarchy,
flow, and accessibility through consideration of nodes and connections. The
Degree of Centrality, which measures “centrality” of nodes on forest islands
based on number of associated individual Causeways-Canals, highlighted
eight important nodes. The high Degree of Centrality suggests that these
locations are centers of population and social, political, and economic hier-
archy. Although the most important node was expected to be located in the
center of the BHC, the Degree of Centrality defines the central location as a
node in the San Martin Forest Island Complex. Surprisingly, forest island size
was not associated with Degree of Centrality. Other indices of Betweenness
Centrality (which measures control of movement) and Closeness Centrality
(which takes into consideration distance) delineate a connecting “spine” of
important forest islands running northeast to southwest through the center
of the BHC. Brett’s analysis suggests a weakly hierarchical organization.
Another basic assumption is that the presence and density of cause-
ways and canals map degrees of human interaction within a social network
and their absence marks disjunctures, boundaries of territories, and buffer
zones. Forest islands near rivers on the east and west edges of the BMC
have few or no Causeways-Canals, thus may be the frontier of an integrated
region of social interaction. Because of deep flooding and year-round water
in the rivers, Causeways-Canals were not needed or too difficult to build.
Few causeways and canals are found outside of the BHC despite similar
environments. The Network Analysis and GIS suggests an interacting,
bounded regional society with a diverse, densely settled population with
highly structured circulation and movement.
Ethnographic analogy suggests that households and hamlets were

capable of building and maintaining the Minor Causeways-Canals and

that villages, lineages, and communities could have created the Major
Causeways-Canals as public works. Ten years ago, the indigenous commu-
nity of Cairo near the town of Baures built a straight causeway measuring
1 km to connect two forest islands in a few weeks (Figure 10.11). Although
the road connected two forest islands of individual communities, the road
was entirely built by the “end of the line” community to improve pedestrian
and oxcart access to the town of Baures. A second causeway of 0.5 km was
constructed between the town plaza and port on the Negro River. These
grass-roots efforts by the community were also a symbol of pride and em-
powerment (Erickson, Winkler, and Candler 1997; Erickson 2001).
Based on our raised field experiments, profiles of earthworks, and the
GIS, an estimate of labor for the 476 linear km of Major Causeway-Canals
in the BHC is 713,864 m3 of earth moved or 1,427,727 person-hours or
285,545 person-days. The construction of the 93.491 linear km of the Minor
Causeway-Canals of the San Martin Forest Island Complex sample required
movement of 9,349 m3 of earth that represents 18,698.2 person-hours or
3,740 person-days. The average labor for a single Minor Causeway-Canal is
22 person-days (based on 170 Minor Causeway-Canals). A minimal unit of
a family of 5 could construct a single feature in 4.4 days or two families as
predicted here could do the work in 2.2 days.
Based on energetics, spatial organization and patterning, and scale, the
Minor Causeways-Canals of the Baures region are a local phenomenon cre-
ated through the agency of those that inhabited these locales. In the case of
the Major Causeways-Canals, the overall organization was more complex
and weakly hierarchically organized, but individual Major Causeways-Canals
were within the capacity of communities. Based on these characteristics,
the Major Causeways-Canals were created and served to integrate society
at a larger scale than the more local Minor Causeways-Canals. The political
organization of the Baure during the late precolumbian and early Colonial
periods has often been described as a chiefdom or possibly an alliance of
chiefdoms (Block 1994; Denevan 1966; Métraux 1942; Steward and Faron
1959; and others). By attributing the Minor and possibly Major Causeways-
Canals to communities and smaller organizations, I do not imply that the
features necessarily exist outside of chiefdoms, states, and empires. Com-
munities and their works appear, thrive, and fail within the context of hier-
archical states, globalism, failed states, and other forms of complex society.

10.11 A 1-km Major Causeway-Canal built by the community of Cairo in 1994.

Conclusion
The precolumbian Causeways-Canals provided basic transportation and
communication, but also may have served as land tenure boundaries, water
management, ideological statements about order, pride, and aesthetics,
and stages for ritual events and processions for households, communities,
and polities. In a society with no stone pyramids, palaces, temples, or cities,
monumentality was expressed in grand avenues and canals, far beyond what
was necessary for daily life in terms of number, density, redundancy, width,
engineering, and complexity. These characteristics in turn imply multigen-
erational organization of human labor and energy to build and maintain
these local, regional, and interregional scale structures.
As the result of the structures of everyday life, the Causeways-Canals of
the BHC embody formal characteristics, rules, or grammar: shape, length,
width, source and destination, environmental context, and straightness. As
products of agency, certain variations in individual earthworks and groups
of earthworks are expected. The Major Causeways-Canals were sufficient
in size to permit two-way traffic, ideal for moving groups of humans at the
community and intercommunity levels of organization and possibly extend-
ing to regional scale organizations. In contrast, the Minor Causeway-Canals
were limited to one-way movement and more suitable for individual or small
group movement between hamlets or individual households. The straight-
ness and basic form imply a shared concept of a “proper” earthwork.
Landscapes of movement are key elements of the social reproduc-
tion of community and formation of cultural landscapes through the re-
cursive historical relationship between agency and structure. Although
treated synchronically in this chapter, the Causeways-Canals have a com-
plex temporal dimension. Once created through human agency of repeti-
tive movement or formal design and construction, Causeways-Canals begin
to structure future movement within the cultural landscape. Placement of
new Causeways-Canals had to consider previously established features that
may have been used contemporaneously or been abandoned, thus invok-
ing memory. The high density and numbers of Minor Causeway-Canals at
the local level in the San Martin Forest Island Complex suggest that these
features were created, used, and abandoned at a high rate, possibly during
an individual’s or household’s lifetime. The lack of intersection or crossing
of Minor and Major Causeways-Canals indicates that the builders of new

features respected the existence of the older features. In some cases, a clear
palimpsest of Minor Causeways-Canals is embedded on the landscape as a
series of superimposed features. Select Minor Causeways-Canals probably
became Major Causeways-Canals over time as needs and destinations of
travel changed. In turn, these features channeled movement of increasingly
larger groups of interacting peoples and expanded the spatial scale of inter-
connected movement at the subregional and regional level.
Trails, paths, and roads are the connective tissue for the threads of activ-
ities that constitute the practice of everyday life. In the case of formal engi-
neered roads, the implications of agency and structure of movement extend
into the social, political, economic, ideological, and symbolic spheres. Even
ephemeral movement activity of individuals and small groups is sometime
physically registered in the topography and vegetation patterning of the
cultural landscape. From the local level to the regional level, the more for-
mal means of movement are engineered and embedded into the landscape
in highly visible and more permanent ways. As patterned physical features,
the agency and structure of movement is amenable to archaeological inves-
tigation. Archaeologists traditionally focused on significant places or sites
and their interrelationships. An archaeology of movement combined with
a landscape approach and practice theory provides an exciting new perspec-
tive to understand past peoples’ lives. As a produce of the dynamic interre-
lationship between agency and structure, trails, paths, and roads are active
rather than passive cultural objects.
Acknowledgments
Fieldwork in the Baures region was conducted in 1995 and 1996 under
permit from the Bolivian government to Clark Erickson and Wilma Win-
kler (Agro-Archaeological Project of the Beni). I thank Wilma Winkler,
Alexei Vranich, Freddy Bruckner, Oscar Saavedra, Conrad Bruckner, Edwin
Bruckner, Anita Bruckner, Oscar Ferrier Toledo, Hans Schlink, Kenneth
Lee, Ricardo Bottega, Rodolfo Pinto Parada, and John Walker for their valu-
able help. Three guides, Osmar Cuellar, Jesus Zapata, and Eduardo Esero,
accompanied me during fieldwork in 1996. Satellite imagery was provided
by the Global Land Cover Facility and aerial photographs and topographic
maps were purchased from the Military Geographic Institute and the Air
Force of Bolivia. Patrick Brett helped created the GIS. Jason Ur, James
Snead, and a reviewer provided useful comments.

Notes
1. Eder wrote in Latin. The 1888 and 1985 translations are Latin to Spanish by Armen-
tia and Barnadas respectively. The 1973–1981 translation is from Latin to Hungarian to
English by Bogler and Bognar. I have combined the best of each translation and added
my own editing for clarity based on my knowledge of the causeways, canals, and local
environment.
2. Burned wood from the base of the causeway was radiocarbon dated to 335 years bp
(before present) ±20 (OS-17293) or an uncalibrated calendar date of ad 1615 (between
ad 1595 and 1635). The corrected date at 68.2% confidence is ad 1490 (0.26) ad 1530; ad
1560 (0.74) ad 1630.
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Agency, Causeways, Canals, and the Landscapes of

This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. http://repository.upenn.edu/anthro_papers/2

University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

17885.FM LandscapesOfMovement.indd 3 6/11/09 2:24:26 PM

Agency, Causeways, Canals,

B uilt environment provides an excellent medium for addressing issues

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Agency and Structure in Cultural Landscapes

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2003). With fine-­g rained analysis, even ephemeral patterning is detectable.

17885.01 LandscapesOfMovement.indd 206 6/11/09 2:26:01 PM

of these features framed in phenomenology, practice, memory, interpreta-

The Engineered Landscapes of

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0m 200m 1000m 5000m

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17885.01 LandscapesOfMovement.indd 209 6/11/09 2:26:01 PM

10.2 Major Causeways-Canals, Minor Causeways-Canals, and forest islands in the

Pennsylvania and National Institute of Archaeology), we investigated sites

Mapping Agency and Structure

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10.3 D-shaped ring-ditch site at the Buen Retiro Ranch, Bolivia.

10.4 Reconstruction of a ring-ditch site. (Artwork by Daniel Brinkmeier)

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17885.01 LandscapesOfMovement.indd 212 6/11/09 2:26:03 PM

10.5 Tree-covered parallel Major Causeways-Canals crossing the savanna between

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17885.01 LandscapesOfMovement.indd 214 6/11/09 2:26:05 PM

canoe transit of my native guides is a good example of what a few hunters

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F 0 550 1,100 1,650 2,200

10.8 Major Causeways-Canals and Minor Causeways-Canals of the San Martin

Prehistory, Ethnohistory, and Ethnography

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phenomenon in the Llanos de Mojos and Amazonia. Although archaeologi-

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The Baure efficiently combined causeways for terrestrial traffic and

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The Creation of a Landscape of Movement

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tions of causeways and canals were for transportation and communica-

17885.01 LandscapesOfMovement.indd 220 6/11/09 2:26:06 PM

The straightness and uniformity of individual Major and Minor

17885.01 LandscapesOfMovement.indd 221 6/11/09 2:26:06 PM

cases of Major Causeways-­Canals intersecting (“cutting through” and physi-

17885.01 LandscapesOfMovement.indd 222 6/11/09 2:26:06 PM

BHC, complexes of radial Causeways-­Canals show little similarity in num-

Landscape Movement as a Map of Social

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ics. Construction of these overengineered, larger, and more elegant features

10.9 Reconstruction of use of Major Causeways-Canals in the Baures Region.

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10.10 Reconstruction of the landscape of movement of the Baures Hydraulic

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a single household, a community, or multiple communities? If an indepen-

2003). With fine-g rained analysis, even ephemeral patterning is detectable.

cases of Major Causeways-Canals intersecting (“cutting through” and physi-

BHC, complexes of radial Causeways-Canals show little similarity in num-

capable of building and maintaining the Minor Causeways-Canals and