All study sites were reoccupied during the last 100–150 years by Brazilian smallholder farmers. These communities are situated on five archaeological sites containing TPI along the Urubu River, a northern tributary of the Amazon River, 200 km east of Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil ( Fig 1). We studied the modern floristic composition of 40 homegardens of traditional non-indigenous communities. During European conquest and subsequent colonization most of these sites were abandoned, and many were re-occupied later by modern Brazilians because of their rich soils and favorable locations. Archaeological sites may contain one or more ceramic traditions in different soil layers that generally represent distinct occupations.

The stylistic and technological traits of pre-Columbian ceramics, and the stratigraphy of these sites provide information about past cultures, and are used by archaeologists to map regional traditions and their changes through time. They are extremely abundant in many parts of Amazonia, especially on bluffs along major and tributary rivers, locations that are also preferred by modern communities. TPI are highly fertile anthropogenic soils rich in phosphorous, calcium, magnesium, charcoal and indigenous ceramics, created by the daily household activities of pre-Columbian societies between 2,500 and 500 years ago. In Amazonia, traditional communities and their homegardens are commonly found in archaeological sites that contain terra preta de índio (TPI Amazonian dark earth) within communities homegardens on TPI often have greater species diversity compared to homegardens on other soils. They are found throughout the world where people have enough space, especially in the tropics. Their floristic composition is attributed to a multitude of factors, such as available area, garden age, soil quality, soil seed bank, surrounding vegetation and personal preferences. Homegardens are agroforestry systems and their structure includes several strata combining domesticated crops and wild plants with multiple uses. The aim of this paper is to use these methods to identify legacy effects where nobody has ever looked: modern homegardens in traditional communities. However, floristic compositions found in modern anthropogenic and mature forests may be consequences of a mosaic of management systems, and these signals can be identified in the present by ecological and ethnobotanical methods. In Amazonia some forests contain archaeological artifacts, including crop phytoliths, but many do not, suggesting that those forests were never cleared for food production. Forests that were managed in the past may exhibit different legacies in the present depending on their varying occupation histories, often pre-historic, and their distance from archaeological sites. An increasing number of historical ecologists are identifying biodiversity legacies of long-term landscape domestication near ancient settlements, especially in forests in Europe, Mesoamerica, Africa and Oceania. Studies in archaeology have identified long-term patterns, especially of plant and animal domestications that represent the legacies of long forgotten peoples.

Humans have domesticated landscapes in varying degrees at an accelerating pace as population expanded during the Holocene and into the Anthropocene.

Urubu belem