Amazonian Landscapes: the characteristics of anthropic landscapes in the Middle Xingu River (Pará, Brazil) from pre-colonial to Contemporary times

Summary

Based on a historical ecology approach, this work aims to investigate interactions between indigenous societies and the natural environment expressed in landscape changes through the analyses of their long term occupation of the Middle Xingu River. My goal is to show the specificities of the indigenous settlements in the region considering the multiple aspects of this process in the human settlement of Amazonia. Although not producing great changes in the landscape, small groups of horticulturalists that settled in the Xingu region left their contribution in cultural and historical terms. Those are expressed, for instance, in the management of plants and forest products in anthropogenic dark earth sites. In a long term perspective, I intend to show the alterations in the landscape that result from: (1) the pre-colonial land management; (2) the colonization of the Xingu Region by the Portuguese since the 17th century, and (3) the impact of Belo Monte hydroelectric plant over both the indigenous culture and the archaeological heritage.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Multidisciplinary Approaches to Amazonian landscapes

Keywords

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