Archaeology provides few examples of large-scale fisheries at the frontier between catching and farming of fish. We analysed the spatial organization of earthen embankments to infer the functioning of a landscape-level pre-Columbian Amazonian fishery that was based on capture of out-migrating fish after reproduction in seasonal floodplains. Long earthen weirs cross floodplains. We showed that weirs bear successive V-shaped features (termed ‘Vs’ for the sake of brevity) pointing downstream for outflowing water and that ponds are associated with Vs, the V often forming the pond’s downstream wall. How Vs channelled fish into ponds cannot be explained simply by hydraulics, because Vs surprisingly lack fishways, where, in other weirs, traps capture fish borne by current flowing through these gaps. We suggest that when water was still high enough to flow over the weir, out-migrating bottom-hugging fish followed current downstream into Vs. Finding deeper, slower-moving water, they remained. Receding water further concentrated fish in ponds. The pond served as the trap, and this function shaped pond design. Weir-fishing and pond-fishing are both practiced in African floodplains today. In combining the two, this pre-Columbian system appears unique in the world.

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The Quebrada de Morohuasi (Salta Province, Argentina), located in a semi-arid high-altitude environment, is known to host vast pre-Hispanic cultivation areas. Recent archaeological studies carried out in the agricultural area of Morohuasi allow for a better definition and understanding of the social and productive dynamics that took place there. Field records and AMS dating indicate two main productive phases that were discontinuous in time. These show an initial phase during the Formative Period, between the 1st and 4th centuries CE, during which the agricultural substratum was formed, and a final phase during the first decades of the 15th century CE that was related to the establishment of an agricultural colony under the control of the Inkas. Although the same cultivation plots were utilized during both phases, the mode and relations of production were substantially different, particularly in the second phase with the participation of contingents of mitmaqkunas brought from other regions.

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The use of drugs in the management and control of large carnivorous mammal