摘要：
In this doctoral dissertation I examine how and why mid-to late-Holocene societies in SE Uruguay carried out practices that resulted in the elevation of earthen mounds in lowland environments, and the effects those practices had on both the landscape and human experiences. I present an innovative contribution which merges aspects of Historical Ecology and Materiality frameworks not regularly mingled to understand the ways humans over time have shaped themselves and their world.
Excavations carried out in the earth mound complex Colina Da Monte (SE of Uruguay) revealed different site formation aspects, anthropological processes, and temporalities. The evidence recorded suggests that the peripheral mounds grew broadly contemporaneously since 1500 years BP and grew as a product of the deposition of materials associated with daily domestic practices (burning, lithic knapping, refuse disposal, food preparation, and sediment deposition). The central platform mound preceded the peripheral mounds (ca. 2500 years BP), although its earliest chronology is not clear. Its centrality in the site, its far visual reach of its surroundings, its distinct platform morphology and large size, the almost complete absence of recorded ceramics and faunal remains, its complex chronology, along with the presence of an accumulation of rocks in the interior and base of the mound, all suggests that this mound possessed a central and dominant character, meaning, and material centrality in the region. Later peripheral mounds grew while the central platform mound remained active and growing until ca. 1200 cal years BP, when deposition and cultural activity ceased on this central mound, while activity on the peripheral mounds continued until the pre-conquest period (ca. 500 cal years BP).
Chemical, granulometric, spatial, and archaeological data show that long-term cultural practices took place in CDM and impacted the soils in all the mound locations. Colina Da Monte mound complex is the anthropol
