MOVING TO PRODUCE - NUKAK MOBILITY AND SETTLEMENT-PATTERNS IN AMAZONIA

This paper presents original information on the mobility and settlemen t patterns of the Nukak, who live between the Guaviare and Inirida riv ers in the Colombian Amazon. The objective of this paper is to provide a better understanding of how egalitarian societies produce spatial a rrangements in order to organize their settlements and to exploit the tropical rain forest resources. Traditional Nukak subsistence is based on hunting and the gathering of plants and animal products such as ho ney, turtle eggs and palm grubs; fishing and small-scale horitculture are also practised. High residential mobility is practised in both the rainy and the dry season; it is estimated that bands make between sev enty and eighty residential moves per year. Residential camps comprise two to five domestic units and usually cover under 130 m(2). The Nuka k case shows that forager mobility in tropical rain forests is not exc lusively the consequence of avoiding over-exploitation of an easily de pleted environment. On the contrary, mobility is partly a complex way of concentrating forest resources in patches: the Nukak 'move to produ ce'. Sanitation, abandonment due to a death, social/ritual activities, and inter-band marriage also play a role. Therefore we must seek hist orical and socio-ideological reasons as well as environmental ones for the high mobility and low population density of tropical hunter-gathe rers.