According to Meggers (1954), the tropical forest, evaluated in terms of its agricultural potential, is a limiting environment which only permits or gives rise to cultures existing at a subsistence level. The agricultural system is based on the cutting and burning of small areas to prepare plots for planting. Major crops are manioc, and in A.D. times, corn. Villages were small, located on the river banks, and were frequently moved as the fields were exhausted after four to six years. There was no permanent architecture and no elaborate social organization or religion. Transportation was by dugout canoe on the network of rivers.
The pottery continues the tradition of incised decorated wares. Other artifacts include basketry, textiles, and implements of ground stone. The mixed hunting and gathering economy was also continued. Fishing employed the use of poison. The house type was pole and thatch and included single family units as well as large rectangular communal houses. There was some preference for secondary burial in pottery urns. For the most part tropical agriculturalists date after A.D. 500, although some pottery manioc griddles in Venezuela are dated as early as 1000 B.C. About A.D. 500 there began the spread of tropical agricultural peoples to the Antilles where they replaced the earlier shellfishgathering littoral inhabitants termed Meso-lndians.
In general we may summarize South American cultures as possessing little in the way of elaborate social organization, architecture, and crafts in all of those areas lying beyond the Andean chain.