William Denevan

William Maxfield Denevan (born October 16, 1931 in San Diego) is professor emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a prominent member of the Berkeley School of cultural-historical geography.[1] He also worked in the Latin American Center and the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the same university. His interests are in historical ecology and indigenous demography of the Western Hemisphere, especially Amazonia and the Andes.

He earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Geography at the University of California at Berkeley. His dissertation (1963) was on "The Aboriginal Settlement of the Llanos de Mojos: A Seasonally Inundated Savanna in Northeastern Bolivia," which he edited into a book in 1966. In 1963 he became Assistant Professor of Geography at Wisconsin, where he remained throughout his career, serving as chair of the department from 1980–1983 and director of the Latin American Center from 1975 to 1977, becoming the Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography in 1987, and retiring in 1994. In 1977 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1987 he given Honors by the Association of American Geographers. In 2001 he became an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the Gerlach Prize for 2001-2005 from the Pan American Institute of Geography and History.

In his book The Native Population of the Americas in 1492 (1976, 1992), he provided an influential estimate of the Pre-Columbian population of the Americas which he placed at between 43 and 65 million in the second edition. His research often concerns with how pre-1492 native peoples of the Americas modified their landscapes. This is in contrast to what he calls "The Pristine Myth" (1992), the idea that these people had minimal or no impact on the environment <ref> Charles C. Mann, 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus(2005). He discovered Pre-Columbian raised fields and other earthworks in Amazonia, reported in Science (1970). His book ("an epic account") on native cultivation in South America was published by Oxford (2001). He contributed to a reconsideration of the achievements of native Amazonians.

Works

Books and monographs

  • The Upland Pine Forests of Nicaragua: A Study in Cultural Plant Geography (1961)
  • The Aboriginal Cultural Geography of the Llanos de Mojos of Bolivia (1966)
  • The Native Population of the Americas in 1492 (ed., 1976, 2nd ed. 1992)
  • Swidden-Fallow Agroforestry in the Peruvian Amazon (ed., with Christine Padoch, 1988)
  • Hispanic Lands and Peoples: Selected Writings of James J. Parsons(ed., 1989)
  • Cultivated Landscapes of Native Amazonia and the Andes (2001)
  • Carl Sauer on Culture and Landscape: Readings and Commentaries (ed., with Kent Mathewson, 2009)
  • To Pass on a Good Earth: The Life and Work of Carl O. Sauer (by Michael Williams, revision by David Lowenthal and

William M. Denevan (2014).

  • Forest, Field, and Fallow: Selections by William M. Denevan (ed. Antoinette WinklerPrins and Kent Mathewson, 2021)

Notable articles

  • "Aboriginal Drained-Field Cultivation in the Americas." Science 169:647-654 (1970)
  • "Development and the Imminent Demise of the Amazon Rainforest." Professional Geographer 25:130-135 (1973)
  • "Terrace Abandonment in the Colca Valley, Peru." British Archaeological Reports, International Series 359:1-43 (1987)
  • "Stone vs Metal Axes: The Ambiguity of Shifting Cultivation in Prehistoric Amazonia." Journal of the Steward Anthropological Society 20:153-165 (1992)
  • "The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492". Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82:369–385 (1992).
  • "A Bluff Model of Riverine Settlement in Prehistoric Amazonia." Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86:654-681 (1996)
  • "The Native Population of Amazonia in 1492 Reconsidered." Revista de Indias 63:175-187 (2003)
  • "After 1492: Nature Rebounds." Geographical Review 106:381-398 (2016)

Notes
  1. UWM Department of Geography Emeritus Faculty Listing
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.