Gregory Knapp

Observing the economy

1. Introduction 2. The theory/data dialectic 3. Land and Environment 4. Labour and its Organisation 5. Technology 6. Output - Surpluses and deficits 7. Distribution and exchange 8. Consumption 9. Economics, Politics, religion and ideology 10. Interpreting Economic data.

Cultigens in Prehistoric Eastern North America: Changing Paradigms [and Comments and Replies]

The widely accepted view that eastern North America was a separate center of plant domestication has resulted in an increasingly isolationist perspective on the regions culture history and a neglect of research on the diffusion into it of tropical cultigens. New data on archaeobotanical macromorphologies, the chemical and chromosomal composition of archaeobotanical specimens, and the geographical distribution of archaeobotanical remains challenge old paradigms. In particular, the diffusion of tropical cultigens across the Caribbean must now be seriously considered. This paper reports on current research suggesting alternatives to existing paradigms in relation to four plants (maize, tobacco, beans, and chenopods) and stresses prehistoric eastern North Americas relationship to, instead of isolation from, Mesoamerica nd South America.

Pre-Hispanic Agricultural Fields in the Andean Region

The twenty-six papers in this collection represent the Proceedings of the 45th International Congress of Americanists at Bogota in 1985. They are grouped into topics and regions as follows: Agricultural terracing in the 0000 valley, Peru (8)

Terracing and Irrigation in the Peruvian Highlands [and Comments and Reply]

Agricultural terraces in the Colca Valley of southem Peru facilitate the irrigation necessary for agriculture in this semiarid environment. Terrace expansion and contraction, in tum, are closely related to the availability of water. In the short term, households abandon terraces because of constraints in the system of water distribution. In the longer term, periodic droughts trigger water conservation practices which curtail expansion and lead to terrace abandonment. During periods of relative water abundance, constraints are relaxed, allowing new terraces to be constructed and abandoned ones rebuilt. Cyclical pattems of terrace contraction and expansion suggest that repeated observations of land use over time are necessary for an understanding of agricultural intensification and deintensification in the Central Andes.

Prehistoric Flood Management on the Peruvian Coast: Reinterpreting the “Sunken Fields” of Chilca

Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University. Palerm. A. 1973 Obras hidr6ulicas prehisp6nicas en el sistema lacustre del Valle de M6xico. Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia M6xico, D.F. Rojas, T., R. Strauss, and J. Lamieras 1974 Nuevas notas sobre las obras hidr6ulicas prehisp6nicas y coloniales en el Valle de M6xico. Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, M6xico, D.F. Sanders, W. T. 1965 Cultural ecology of the Teotihuacan Valley. Department of Sociology and Anthropology, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1976 Final Field report, Cuauhtitlan-Temescalapa survey project. Report to the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, M6xico, D.F. Sanders, W. T., J. R. Parsons, and R. S. Santley 1979 The Basin of Mexico: ecological processes in the evolution of a civilization. Academic Press, New York. Sanders, W. T., and R. S. Santley 1977 A prehispanic irrigation system near Santa Clara Xalostoc in the Basin of Mexico. American Antiquity 42:582-588. Santley, R. S. 1977 Intra-site settlement patterns at Loma Torremote and their relationship to Formative prehistory in the Cuautitlan region, state of Mexico. Ph.D. dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University. University Microfilms, Ann Arbor. Tolstoy, P., and L. I. Paradis 1970 Early and Middle Preclassic culture in the Basin of Mexico. Science 167:344-351. Woodbury, R. B., and J. A. Neely 1972 Water control systems of the Tehuacan Valley, chronology and irrigation. In The prehistory of the Tehuacan Valley (Vol. 4), edited by R. S. McNeish, pp. 81-153. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Mountain Agriculture for Global Markets: The Case of Greenhouse Floriculture in Ecuador

Mountain agriculture has been conceptualized in terms of altitudinal zones, verticality, and agroecosystems, but an alternative framework is that of adaptive dynamics, conceptualizing farming in terms of choice between options based on optimizing returns in different frameworks of rational decision making in different production zones. In this framework, production zones are not defined solely in terms of altitude but also in terms of soil, slope, and access to irrigation. A recent option in the irrigated production zone has been greenhouse floriculture, which has become one of the most globally competitive agricultural exports in equatorial mountains. In Ecuador, greenhouse floriculture expanded in the 1990s partly in response to favorable trade agreements but also due to diffusion of technologies from multiple sources and local entrepreneurship. Interviews with various actors and fieldwork provide details on greenhouse adaptive strategies and suggest that this agroindustrial activity has proven unusually resilient to changes in global trade patterns and changes in climate. It has provided an option for employment that has stemmed outmigration and encouraged some immigration of labor. At the same time, there are concerns regarding impacts on water resources and regarding pesticide impacts. Excessively static or ecosystemicist conceptions of mountain environments and agricultural strategies fail to anticipate the full range of possibilities for development in the diverse production zones of high-altitude regions. These possibilities also help to contest assertions about the inevitable decline of mountain agriculture in the face of modernization and globalization.

Mapping Flower Plantations in the Equatorial High Andes

Cut flowers have become the premier agricultural export of the high Andes over the last two and a half decades. The expansion of this activity was monitored for a crucial part of this period by the Ecuadorian publicity firm “Marketing Flowers.” A commercial wall map from this association is presented and analyzed in terms of its purposes, makers, and utilization. Maps by commercial or industrial groups, although neglected in the scholarly literature, can be very significant in providing information on the changing cultural landscape as well as promoting the agendas of these actors.Flores cortadas se han convertido en lo mas importante producto agrícola de exportación de los Andes de altura en las últimos dos décadas y media. La expansión de esta actividad era estudiado durante una parte crucial de este período por la empresa de publicidad ecuatoriana “Marketing Flowers.” Un mapa mural hecho por esta asociación se presenta y analiza en términos de su propósito, los fabricantes, y la utilización. Mapas por grupos comerciales o industriales, aunque poco estudiado en la literatura académica, puede ser muy importante en el suministro de información sobre el cambio de paisaje cultural, así como sobre la promoción de las agendas de estos actores.

Spell of the Urubamba: Anthropogeographical Essays on an Andean Valley in Space and Time

Daniel Gade (1936–2015) devoted his research career to the historical study of relationships between people, biota, and the environment, beginning with doctoral research on the use of plants in the Urubamba Valley in southern Peru in 1963 and continuing with studies in many other parts of the world, including Spain, Italy, France, Morocco, and Madagascar, as well as Vermont and Queb ec. However, no other part of the world commanded as much of his attention as the central Andes, which he revisited repeatedly over the span of fifty years. This volume, his last, combines detailed updates on research sites and topics in the Urubamba Valley with reflections on his own trajectory and observations on broader issues of methodology. It serves as a fine companion volume to his earlier major books, Plants, Man and the Land in the Vilcanota Valley of Peru; Nature and Culture in the Andes; and Curiosity, Inquiry, and the Geographical Imagination. As with many in the Sauerian tradition, Gade was skeptical of the benefits of modernization and concerned with its costs. In his previous book Curiosity, he provocatively linked this stance to the perspective of the German counterenlightenment, including Goethe. For Gade, fieldwork and travels in Peru provided a rewarding immersion in a flawed but vital place that had yet to become fully modernized. Gade recognized that his choice to pursue scholarship and understanding rather than activism was a personal one, and that he may initially have underestimated the currents of change. However, in each of his seven research stints he reevaluated the valley afresh, including an increasing appreciation for the region’s diversity and dynamism. His engagement with difficult topics also benefitted from extensive archival research in multiple libraries and collections. In the present volume, Gade provides overviews of various aspects of the cultural and historical geography of the greater Urubamba Valley, while at the same time reflecting on his lifetime of research and involvement in the region. The introductory chapters include a discussion of aspects of multiple ecological niches, or verticality, in this mountain environment. The factors affecting the ranges of plants and animals are complex, with temperature being only one factor among many. Other chapters discuss the human biogeography of vilca and the spectacled bear, the changing human geography of the Vilcabamba territory and the tropical lowlands of Urubamba, and the complex “discovery” and popularization of Machu Picchu. Each chapter stands alone with its own abstract

Aftershocks: Earthquakes and Popular Politics in Latin America (review)

Campesina, have formed transnational coalitions to support local and national organizations around themes of mutual interest, like food sovereignty. The second section considers the region’s landless movements and their impact on agrarian reform and ensuring that rural communities have rights to land ownership as a foundation for sustainable growth. “Sustainable Livelihoods, Social Justice,” consists of several articles that analyze organizations that move beyond “traditional” agricultural and agrarian reform movements, such as dam and mine opposition, women’s participation, and alternative economic projects, and which seek to articulate new ways of using natural and human resources. Finally, the last section of the book considers the role of transnationalism. Although transnational connections run throughout the book, the articles in this section more closely examine the transnational communities wrought by massive migration and the establishment of fair trade networks between Latin American producing and North American and European consuming communities.

Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov, 1938–2003

T erry Gilbert JordanBychkov, past president of the Association of American Geographers, died at home in Austin, Texas, on October 16, 2003, after a two-and-a-half-year struggle with pancreatic cancer. Few geographers have influenced their subfields as much as Jordan-Bychkov. For most of his life he lived and published under the name Terry G. Jordan; he was always known simply as ‘‘Terry’’ to his friends. In addition to a series of influential scholarly books and articles, he created, and for many years coauthored, a widely adopted introductory textbook. His approach to geography was not a common one, and for that reason, perhaps, his name became even better known as evocative of a distinctive area of study and kind of geography. In 1997, in recognition of his marriage to Bella Bychkova, he changed his professional nom de plume to Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov. Terry was a sixth-generation Texan, with a strong appreciation not just for Texas but also for lands of pioneer and frontier heritage. He was never happier than when he was at one of the remote places of the earth, whether New Zealand or Siberia, Finland or New Guinea, and remote borders, frontiers, and ‘‘land’s ends’’ were his very favorite places. Terry was a great believer in knowing where people came from, in understanding intellectual precedents and influences. An avid student of genealogy, he situated himself as the product of two ethnic and genealogical strains, based on the backgrounds of his father and mother. Terry often attributed his interests in scholarship and Europe to his father and his interest in the South and his feistiness to his mother. Terry’s father, Gilbert J. Jordan (also known as Johann Gilbert Jordan), was born in 1902 in the Texas Hill Country village of Plehweville (now Art). The bilingual grandson of immigrant German Methodist ranchers, he graduated from Southwestern University (Georgetown, Texas) in 1924, attended the University of Texas, and obtained his PhD in German Literature from Ohio State University. From 1930 to 1968 he was professor of German at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas and served as department chair for many years. He wrote several volumes of poetry, a translation of William Tell, a genealogy of the Jordan family, articles on medieval German drama, and a translation of a nineteenth-century, German, travel account (finally published in 1999 by Terry). He was awarded the First Class Service Cross by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1960. Terry’s father voted socialist (Norman Thomas), and, from the age of twenty, was an atheist who hid that fact to maintain his job. Terry’s mother, Vera ‘‘Bebbie’’ Jordan (Tiller) was born October 10, 1907, on a cotton farm near Elysian Fields, East Texas. She had family roots in Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia. Terry remembered her as a ‘‘steel magnolia, a southern matriarch in every sense of the word,’’ who created a hospitable and warm home. She ‘‘showed us how to live, fight, and die.’’ Terry was a member of a vast Texas family clan with numerous branches; however, he always distanced himself from them in his independence of thought and in his distinctly unromantic and (at times) tragic view of Texas life and history. The family gave him a degree of authenticity and legitimacy in