New Nature study reveals Amazonia’s monumental forest architecture
MultiBEING researchers Martti Pärssinen, Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen and Francisco Apurinã have contributed to a new study that maps an extensive concentration of precolonial earthworks across Southwestern Amazonia.
MultiBEING researchers Martti Pärssinen, Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen and Francisco Apurinã (University of Helsinki) have contributed to a study that offers new insights into the scale and complexity of the ancient societies that inhabited and shaped Amazonian forests.
The article, Over 20,000 precolonial earthworks in the Southwest Amazonia, was published in Nature.
Using LiDAR technology together with archaeological, Indigenous and ethnographic data, the international research team estimates that more than 20,000 pre-colonial earthworks may exist across Southwestern Amazonia. The findings suggest that the region was home to large, interconnected populations that created extensive networks of ceremonial and political earthworks, roads and managed sustainably forest.
The study highlights Amazonia as a dynamic biocultural landscape shaped through long-term relationships between people and their environments.
For MultiBEING researchers, the study contributes to a growing body of work enduring relationships between people, land, water, plants, animals and more-than-human beings. It highlights how monumental earthworks were embedded within broader sociocultural and cosmological worlds, reflecting deep ancestral connections to place. These landscapes carry evidence not only of past societies but also of enduring Indigenous understandings of care, responsibility and coexistence.
The study also underscores the importance of ethical research practices that respect Indigenous rights and knowledge systems, including careful consideration of how archaeological data are collected, interpreted and shared.
Read the open-access article: Over 20,000 precolonial earthworks in the Southwest Amazonia | Nature
University of Helsinki press release: An ancient civilization of millions once flourished in the Amazon | University of Helsinki
On Virtanen’s previous work on Amazonian urbanity: Urbanity in Ancient and Present-day Southwestern Amazonia: Human-Environment Collectives, Cycles of Generosity, and their Ruptures
