Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures List of Contributors Foreword, by William Denevan 1. Introduction: Definitions and Conceptual Underpinnings, by David L. Lentz 2. Climate Changes in the Northern American Tropics and Subtropics since the Last Ice Age: Implications for Environment and Culture, by David A. Hodell, Mark Brenner, and Jason H. Curtis 3. Vegetation in the Floristic Regions of North and Central America, by Andrew M. Greller 4. Anthropocentric Food Webs in the Precolumbian Americas, by David L. Lentz 5. Prehispanic Agricultural Systems in the Basin of Mexico, by Emily McClung de Tapia 6. Prehispanic Water Management and Agricultural Intensification in Mexico and Venezuela: Implications for Contemporary Ecological Planning, by Charles S. Spencer 7. Stability and Instability in Prehispanic May a Landscapes, by Nicholas Dunning and Timothy Beach 8. Precolumbian Silviculture and Indigenous Management of Neotropical Forests, by Charles Peters 9. Native Farming Systems and Ecosystems in the Mississippi River Valley, by Gayle J. Fritz 10. Hohokam Impacts on Sonoran Desert Environment, by Suzanne Fish 11. Vegetation of the Tropical Andes, by James Luteyn and Steven Churchill 12. The Lake Titicaca Basin: A Precolumbian Built Landscape, by Clark L. Erickson 13. Andean Land Use at the Cusp of History, by Terence N. D'Altroy 14. Lowland Vegetation of Tropical South America -- An Overview, by Douglas Daly and John Mitchell 15. The Lower Amazon: A Dynamic Human Habitat, by Anna C. Roosevelt Summary and Conclusions Index

Promotional Information

Together with experts in a variety of disciplines in the natural and social sciences--including botany, geology, ecology, geography and archaeology--Lentz investigates the history and effects of human impact on the environment in the New World before the arrival of the Europeans in the late 15th century. An Imperfect Balance offers an objective evaluation of "precontact era" land usage, demonstrating that native populations engaged in land management practices not entirely dissimilar to their European counterparts.

About the Author

David Lentz is director of the graduate studies program at The New York Botanical Garden. He is the author or coauthor of and contributor to more than fifty scholarly articles and books.

Reviews

The combination of articles and examples in [this] book is able to draw a picture of pre-Columbians as integral and influential parts and components of the landscape. The volume brings together natural scientists, archaeologists, and cultural ecologists to investigate the interaction between natural systems and human intervention. Such a combination is rarely seen in this comprehensive manner.