Improving the techniques used by hillside farmers on marginal land may be part of the story.
They terraced their hillsides, practised crop rotation, and used animal and vegetable waste to enrich their soils.
This region is characterized by three agro-ecological zones: the valley floors, the lower hillsides, and the upper hillsides.
Even if better, more cost-effective techniques for hillside farming are developed, these will at best be a palliative.
An electrical resistivity survey was conducted on a large part of the hillside in the hope of revealing untouched funerary structures.
An interesting detail about this hillside site is the fact that the same funerary space was used at two very different points in time.
This resulted in a reallocation of time away from forest clearing and hillside farming in the uplands, thereby reducing rates of deforestation.
What little 'trickle-down' there was trickled mainly into provincial capitals, and local people themselves were often left with little but denuded hillsides and poisoned rivers.
