Diversity of Pre-colonial Earthworks in the Brazilian State of Acre,Southwestern Amazonia

Amazonian earthworks, which are an important testimony to ancient anthropogenic landscape modifications, have a significant variety of structures and sizes, and are found in different geographical and ecological locations that indicate separate time periods, distinct cultural affiliations, and diverse purposes. We introduce data from diverse archaeological earthwork sites, geoglyphs, mound sites, and walled enclosures situated in the interfluves of the Purus River in the Brazilian state of Acre and propose a type definition for these sites. The abundant anthropogenic landscape features and their associated material culture indicate considerable human-induced environmental alterations and diverse earthworking traditions that are characteristic of the region of eastern Acre from at least ca. 2000 b.p. onwards.     

How Prophecy Became Literature

Prophecy—the transmission of divine messages to human recipients—is essentially an oral phenomenon. However, all knowledge of ancient prophecy is based on written sources. The Hebrew Bible forms a special case, since it includes the only extant collection of prophetic books, a genre otherwise unknown in the ancient Near East. The article investigates the process of the literarization of prophecy, proceeding from the late sociohistorical context of the biblical prophetic literature towards its hypothetical beginnings. It is argued that the literarization of prophecy required the support of the literate circles of any given community in both pre‐ and post‐exilic times.