Large precolonial communities in Brazil’s Cerrado sustained sizeable settlements through diversified maize farming rather than intensive monoculture or hunting and gathering alone, according to a new study that is reshaping archaeologists’ understanding of Indigenous agriculture in tropical South America.
The research, published in Science Advances, provides the first large-scale direct evidence that maize was a staple food for some of the region’s largest villages during the Late Holocene. At the same time, neighbouring communities followed markedly different subsistence strategies, relying on a broader range of wild and cultivated resources.
For decades, archaeologists have debated whether the Indigenous societies of the Brazilian Cerrado—a vast tropical savanna that covers much of central Brazil—were primarily hunter-gatherers or intensive maize farmers. The new findings suggest that neither model fully captures the region’s agricultural history.
Instead, researchers found that while some communities relied heavily on maize, they cultivated it within resilient polycultural farming systems that also incorporated wild plants and other domesticated crops.
“We found that some societies depended heavily on maize grown within diversified agricultural systems capable of sustaining large villages,” said lead author Eliane Chim. “This fundamentally changes our understanding of Indigenous food production and settlement in central Brazil.”
To investigate ancient diets, the international research team analysed stable carbon, nitrogen and oxygen isotopes preserved in the teeth and bones of more than 100 individuals from 37 archaeological sites across the Cerrado, Caatinga and Atlantic Forest biomes. The isotope data were combined with new radiocarbon dates, faunal isotope baselines, archaeobotanical remains and palaeoecological records to reconstruct food production and consumption during the Late Holocene.
The results revealed striking differences between neighbouring populations living in similar environments. Residents of large open-air villages obtained a substantial proportion of their diet from maize, whereas people occupying nearby rock shelters consumed a far more diverse range of foods and showed little evidence of intensive maize use.
Because both groups inhabited comparable landscapes, the researchers conclude that the contrasting diets reflect different cultural traditions and economic practices rather than environmental constraints.
The findings also challenge long-standing assumptions about the spread and development of agriculture in tropical South America.
“Our findings show that maize was part of resilient polycultural food-production systems that combined domesticated crops with wild plants and local ecological knowledge,” said Patrick Roberts, Director of the Department of Coevolution of Land Use and Urbanisation at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology.
Researchers say the study also highlights the importance of the Cerrado as a centre of Indigenous innovation before European colonisation, an area that has often received less attention than the Amazon in discussions of precolonial land use.
André Strauss, of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at the University of São Paulo, said the findings demonstrate that societies in the Cerrado developed distinct approaches to managing one of the world’s most biodiverse tropical landscapes.
Beyond resolving a long-standing archaeological debate, the researchers believe the study offers new perspectives on the long history of human influence in the Cerrado. They argue that Indigenous farming practices helped shape the region’s ecosystems for centuries and could inform modern discussions on biodiversity conservation, sustainable land management and the value of traditional ecological knowledge.
Souces : Max-Planck-Gesellschaft
