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PreColumbian agriculture and forest disturbance in Costa Rica: palaeoecological evidence from two lowland rainforest lakes

(Department of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA

Sally P. Horn

(Department of Geography, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996, USA

Lake-sediment cores from Laguna Bonilla and Laguna Bonillita provide some of the first evidence of prehistoric human impacts on lowland rainforests in Costa Rica. The longer Bonillita sediment record docu ments permanent settlement of the lake shores by 2560 BP, about 600 years earlier than previously inferred from the archaeological record. Zea pollen and charcoal fragments in cores from both lakes indicate a subsist ence strategy that included maize cultivation and some use of fire. A dramatic decline in Myrsine pollen percentages about 1300 BP suggests local eradication of this woody plant, likely as a result of land clearance and/or the use of Myrsine for construction.

Key Words: Lake sediments • pollen • charcoal • forest disturbance • lowland rainforest • human impact • indigenous agriculture • Zea • vegetation • preColumbian • Costa Rica.

The Holocene, Vol. 6, No. 3, 289-299 (1996)
DOI: 10.1177/095968369600600304


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