THE RISE AND FALL OF THE AMAZON CHIEFDOMS

Cumulative evidence from archaeology and ethnohistory shows greater va riety and complexity among Amazonian Indian societies of the prehistor ic and contact periods than exist today. The ancestors of living India ns traveled a long cultural history from early foragers who hunted wit h fine stone points and made rock paintings, to innovative pottery-age fisherpeople and horticulturalists, and finally to the populous, weal thy, and powerful chiefdoms of late prehistory. This history was trunc ated and impoverished when Europeans invaded and relegated Indians to ecological and societal marginality.