EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book Raised Field Technology

Download or read book Raised Field Technology written by Arthur Stephen Morris and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Inca Empire and, indeed, in the previous centuries, the harsh climate and difficult physical environment of the Andean plateau around Lake Titicaca sustained a population many times larger than the one struggling to sustain itself in more recent times. Academics began studying this in the late 1960s and discovered that the Incas and their forefathers had used a complex system of raised fields and irrigation canals to obtain high yields from their crops. This technology seems to have been lost after the Spanish conquest. the Peruvian and Bolivian governments as well as international NGOs, which have set about reintroducing this system of farming, along with the traditional Andean wonder crops such as quinua, canilua and amaranth. This book presents a critical analysis of these raised field projects, setting them in context and taking into consideration factors such as agrarian reforms and counter-reforms, the psychology of aid dependency and the limited remit of the agencies. It shows that very few of the raised field projects have led to permanent cultivation and explains the failures in terms of a variety of standard factors. a more integrated approach, which recognizes the integrated nature of society and economy in the traditional communities and the existence of a rounded Andean technology, of which the raised fields comprise only one part.

Book Community Factors in Agricultural Change

Download or read book Community Factors in Agricultural Change written by Robin Rose Kozloff and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Raised Fields of Lake Titicaca  Peru

Download or read book Raised Fields of Lake Titicaca Peru written by Thomas Joseph Lennon and published by . This book was released on 1987 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Ancient Titicaca

    Book Details:
  • Author : Charles Stanish
  • Publisher : Univ of California Press
  • Release : 2003-03-12
  • ISBN : 0520928199
  • Pages : 380 pages

Download or read book Ancient Titicaca written by Charles Stanish and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2003-03-12 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the richest and most complex civilizations in ancient America evolved around Lake Titicaca in southern Peru and northern Bolivia. This book is the first comprehensive synthesis of four thousand years of prehistory for the entire Titicaca region. It is a fascinating story of the transition from hunting and gathering to early agriculture, to the formation of the Tiwanaku and Pucara civilizations, and to the double conquest of the region, first by the powerful neighboring Inca in the fifteenth century and a century later by the Spanish Crown. Based on more than fifteen years of field research in Peru and Bolivia, Charles Stanish's book brings together a wide range of ethnographic, historical, and archaeological data, including material that has not yet been published. This landmark work brings the author's intimate knowledge of the ethnography and archaeology in this region to bear on major theoretical concerns in evolutionary anthropology. Stanish provides a broad comparative framework for evaluating how these complex societies developed. After giving an overview of the region's archaeology and cultural history, he discusses the history of archaeological research in the Titicaca Basin, as well as its geography, ecology, and ethnography. He then synthesizes the data from six archaeological periods in the Titicaca Basin within an evolutionary anthropological framework. Titicaca Basin prehistory has long been viewed through the lens of first Inca intellectuals and the Spanish state. This book demonstrates that the ancestors of the Aymara people of the Titicaca Basin rivaled the Incas in wealth, sophistication, and cultural genius. The provocative data and interpretations of this book will also make us think anew about the rise and fall of other civilizations throughout history.

Book Agrobiodiversity

    Book Details:
  • Author : Karl S. Zimmerer
  • Publisher : MIT Press
  • Release : 2023-10-31
  • ISBN : 0262549697
  • Pages : 403 pages

Download or read book Agrobiodiversity written by Karl S. Zimmerer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experts discuss the challenges faced in agrobiodiversity and conservation, integrating disciplines that range from plant and biological sciences to economics and political science. Wide-ranging environmental phenomena—including climate change, extreme weather events, and soil and water availability—combine with such socioeconomic factors as food policies, dietary preferences, and market forces to affect agriculture and food production systems on local, national, and global scales. The increasing simplification of food systems, the continuing decline of plant species, and the ongoing spread of pests and disease threaten biodiversity in agriculture as well as the sustainability of food resources. Complicating the situation further, the multiple systems involved—cultural, economic, environmental, institutional, and technological—are driven by human decision making, which is inevitably informed by diverse knowledge systems. The interactions and linkages that emerge necessitate an integrated assessment if we are to make progress toward sustainable agriculture and food systems. This volume in the Strüngmann Forum Reports series offers insights into the challenges faced in agrobiodiversity and sustainability and proposes an integrative framework to guide future research, scholarship, policy, and practice. The contributors offer perspectives from a range of disciplines, including plant and biological sciences, food systems and nutrition, ecology, economics, plant and animal breeding, anthropology, political science, geography, law, and sociology. Topics covered include evolutionary ecology, food and human health, the governance of agrobiodiversity, and the interactions between agrobiodiversity and climate and demographic change.

Book The Archaeology of Garden and Field

Download or read book The Archaeology of Garden and Field written by Naomi F. Miller and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1997-09 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultivation and land use practices the world over reflect many aspects of people's relationship to each other and to the natural world. The Archaeology of Garden and Field explores the cultivation of land from prehistoric times to the nineteenth century through excavation, experimentation, and the study of modern cultural traditions. The Archaeology of Garden and Field contains a wealth of information distilled from the combined experiences of the editors and contributors. Whether one's interest is the Old World or the New, prehistory or the present, this book provides a starting point for anyone who has ever wondered how archaeologists find and interpret the ephemeral traces of ancient cultivation.

Book The Andean World

    Book Details:
  • Author : Linda J. Seligmann
  • Publisher : Routledge
  • Release : 2018-11-08
  • ISBN : 1317220773
  • Pages : 1412 pages

Download or read book The Andean World written by Linda J. Seligmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 1412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive reference offers an authoritative overview of Andean lifeways. It provides valuable historical context, and demonstrates the relevance of learning about the Andes in light of contemporary events and debates. The volume covers the ecology and pre-Columbian history of the region, and addresses key themes such as cosmology, aesthetics, gender and household relations, modes of economic production, exchange, and consumption, postcolonial legacies, identities, political organization and movements, and transnational interconnections. With over 40 essays by expert contributors that highlight the breadth and depth of Andean worlds, this is an essential resource for students and scholars alike.

Book The Tiwanaku

    Book Details:
  • Author : Alan L. Kolata
  • Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
  • Release : 1993-12-08
  • ISBN : 1557861838
  • Pages : 337 pages

Download or read book The Tiwanaku written by Alan L. Kolata and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 1993-12-08 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tiwanaku The city of Tiwanaku lies ruined in the rugged Andean steppe of Bolivia twelve thousand feet above sea level, the highest urban settlement of the ancient world. Its wide streets open towards ramparts of glaciated mountain peaks and the intense blue waters of Lake Titicaca. Gigantic stone sculptures and shattered architectural blocks suggest profound antiquity and the passage of great events, now lost and unremembered. Here, two and a half thousand years ago, a distinct society emerged which over the course of thirteen centuries developed one of the greatest civilizations and the first empire of the ancient Americas. This book, the first published history of the Tiwanakan peoples from their origins to their present survival, is a feat of scholarly and archaeological detection undertaken and led by the author. Alan Kolata draws together the evidence of historical documents from the time of the Iberian conquest, accounts and legends of the contemporary inhabitants, and the results of extensive excavations in order to provide a narrative covering three thousand years. In doing so he addresses and explains features of Tiwanakan culture that have long puzzled scholars: the origins of their uniquely massive architecture, the nature of their sophisticated hydraulically-engineered agriculture, their obsession with decapitation and the display of severed heads, and not least the reasons for their mysterious and sudden decline at the end of the tenth century. The book is illustrated throughout with photographs, maps and drawings, and is fully referenced and indexed. Although written to appeal to the nonspecialist and assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, this is a book of scholarly import, and likely to become the standard work for many years.

Book Ancient Tiwanaku

    Book Details:
  • Author : John Wayne Janusek
  • Publisher : Cambridge University Press
  • Release : 2008-05-12
  • ISBN : 9780521816359
  • Pages : 392 pages

Download or read book Ancient Tiwanaku written by John Wayne Janusek and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-05-12 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first major synthesis exploring Tiwanaku civilization in its geographical and cultural setting.

Book Inventing Indigenous Knowledge

Download or read book Inventing Indigenous Knowledge written by Lynn Swartley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a multi-sited and multivocalic investigation of the dynamic social, political and economic processes in the creation and implementation of an agricultural development project. The raised field rehabilitation project attempted to introduce a pre-Columbian agricultural method into the contemporary Lake Titicaca Basin.

Book The Aztec  Inca and Maya

    Book Details:
  • Author : Martin J Dougherty
  • Publisher : Amber Books Ltd
  • Release : 2023-03-20
  • ISBN : 183886010X
  • Pages : 415 pages

Download or read book The Aztec Inca and Maya written by Martin J Dougherty and published by Amber Books Ltd. This book was released on 2023-03-20 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Aztec, Inca and Maya charts the rise and fall pre-Columbian civilizations in Mesoamerica and South America, from the Maya to the Aztec and Inca empires, as well as the Zapotec, Olmec, Teotihuacan and Toltec civilizations from the 2nd century BCE to the 16th century CE.

Book The Hydraulic State

Download or read book The Hydraulic State written by Charles R. Ortloff and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2020-08-12 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hydraulic State explores the hydraulic engineering technology underlying water system constructions of many of the ancient World Heritage sites in South America, the Middle East and Asia as used in their urban and agricultural water supply systems. Using a range of methods and techniques, some new to archaeology, Ortloff analyzes various ancient water systems such as agricultural field system designs known in ancient Peruvian and Bolivian Andean societies, water management at Nabataean Petra, the Roman Pont du Garde water distribution castellum, the Minoan site of Knossos and the water systems of dynastic (and modern) China, particularly the Grand Canal and early water systems designed to control flood episodes. In doing so the book greatly increases our understanding of the hydraulic/hydrological engineering of ancient societies through the application of Complexity Theory, Similitude Theory and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis, as well as traditional archaeological analysis methods. Serving to highlight the engineering science behind water structures of the ancient World Heritage sites discussed, this book will be of interest to archaeologists working on landscape archaeology, urbanism, agriculture and water management.

Book Forest  Field  and Fallow

Download or read book Forest Field and Fallow written by Antoinette M.G.A. WinklerPrins and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-01-12 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume aims to present the essential work of geographer and historical ecologist William M. Denevan to explain the impact and influence his thinking had on the conceptual advancement not only in his own discipline, but in a range of related disciplines such as anthropology, archaeology, and environmental history. The book is organized around eight themes, demonstrating Denevan’s early and profound insights on topics that remain of current relevance today, and the scholarly impact his writing had on subsequent scholarship. The book is unique because it offers commentary from active scholars who address the impacts of Prof. Denevan's thinking and work on contemporary environmental and ecological issues, with a focus on several groundbreaking themes (e.g. historical demography, agricultural landforms, cultural plant geography, human environmental impacts, indigenous agro-ecology, tropical agriculture, livestock and landscape, and synthetic contributions). This book will be of interest to a range of scholars in geography, anthropology, archaeology, history, and ecology, as well as to environmental managers and practitioners, especially those working for non-profit organizations and government organizations tasked with finding ways to adapt to global environmental change.

Book Growing the Taraco Peninsula

Download or read book Growing the Taraco Peninsula written by Maria C. Bruno and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2024-08-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Growing the Taraco Peninsula is an examination of long-term human-environmental interactions through agriculture among Indigenous communities of the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia, located on the shores of Lake Titicaca in the Andes. Maria Bruno weaves together ethnographic observations of modern-day Aymara farming practices with an in-depth study of archaeological remains, particularly plants, to examine the development of agricultural landscapes through time. Beginning with the first small-scale communities of the Formative period (1500 BCE–500 CE) through the development of the Tiwanaku state (500–1100 CE), Bruno draws upon ethnographic insights from modern-day Indigenous farming practices on the peninsula as well as archaeological evidence from excavations at four sites to explore the landscapes and human-plant relationships that Taraco communities created through their agricultural practices. Through evaluation of environmental data on climate and land-use dynamics—rainfall, lake level, and soil character and distribution—she proposes a new hypothesis of how raised-field agriculture may have emerged in the region. With a detailed analysis of foodways at the Kala Uyuni site, her study reveals how Indigenous Taraco communities sustainably incorporated crops and wild plants into their daily and special-occasion meals, connecting the agricultural landscapes to local and regional social and political dynamics. Bringing together several indicators of the region’s long-term history and demonstrating that shifts in agriculture do not neatly correspond to the changes traditionally highlighted by archaeological culture histories, Growing the Taraco Peninsula reveals Indigenous landscape creation through farming on the Taraco peninsula as a critical example of sustainability. This valuable contribution to Andean archaeology is also of interest to scholars, students, and the general reader concerned about the environment, sustainable farming, sustainability, Andean history, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Book Advances in Titicaca Basin Archaeology   III

Download or read book Advances in Titicaca Basin Archaeology III written by Alexei Vranich and published by U OF M MUSEUM ANTHRO ARCHAEOLOGY. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Farming Systems and Poverty

Download or read book Farming Systems and Poverty written by John A. Dixon and published by Food & Agriculture Org.. This book was released on 2001 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A joint FAO and World Bank study which shows how the farming systems approach can be used to identify priorities for the reduction of hunger and poverty in the main farming systems of the six major developing regions of the world.

Book Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes

Download or read book Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes written by William M. Denevan and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes examines Indian agriculture in South America. The focus is on field types and field technologies, including agricultural landforms such as terraces, canals, and drained fields, which have persisted for hundreds of years. What emerges is a picture of mostly successful indigenous farming practices in difficult environments--rain forests, savannahs, swamps, rugged mountains, and deserts.