South America: Amazonia and Orinoco Basin (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (68 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ecological studies in the Amazon increasingly report groves of economically useful tree species thought to be legacies of past human occupation and management practices, in contrast to an inherent composition with high species diversity and low species concentration. Brazil nut (Bertholletia excelsa – Lecythidaceae) trees occur in grove-type forest formations...
From the First to the Last Amazonian Dark Earths: The Longue-Durée of Landscape Management at the Teotônio Site, Upper Madeira River, SW Amazonia (2018)
The Teotônio site, situated on the right bank of the Madeira river near Porto Velho, Rondônia, is a key location for understanding the deep history of human-environment interactions and landscape management in southwest Amazonia. Its archaeological record stretches back to the early-mid Holocene and includes vestiges of 6,000-year old Amazonian Dark Earths (ADE) belonging to the Massangana Phase, hypothesised as marking the beginning of widespread landscape transformations in the Upper Madeira...
A Historical Perspective on the Nature of Precolonial Settlements in the Middle Xingu River Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In order to understand the processes that generated the rich, complex, and diverse cultural and environmental history present in Amazonia, and specifically along the Xingu River basin, it is crucial that we generate information on when, where, and how small-scale foraging societies...
A History of Knowledge of the Amazonian Dark Earths (2018)
The anthropogenic origin of the Amazonian dark earths (Terra Pretas) has been a methodologically assured fact for 70 years. Especially during the last 30 years, Terra Preta have been scientifically investigated with increasing intensity and in an ever-widening context. Currently, the dominant concept guiding research is the idea of binding atmospheric carbon which artificially produced dark earths. The large-scale production of terra preta is said to be an efficient instrument to combat global...
Identifying Past Vegetation Dynamics in Xingu Indigenous Territory Using Soil Phytolith Analysis (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents the preliminary hypotheses of a soil sampling programme aimed at mapping precolumbian and historic vegetation dynamics in the Xingu Indigenous Territory (TIX), Brazil. Research carried out with the Kuikuro during the last three decades has resulted in the archaeology...
An Independent Center of Early Ceramic Production in SW Amazonia (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Monte Castelo has one of the earliest records of ceramic production in the New World. Occupation of the site dates to between 6000 and 700 BP and demonstrates covariances between technological changes and environmental scenarios since the beginning of its chronology. We present petrographic, chemical, and isotopic data on ceramics from different periods to...
Indigenous Land Use and Cultural Burning in the Amazon Rainforest Ecotone (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Subsistence Crops and Animals as a Proxy for Human Cultural Practice" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The southwestern Amazon Rainforest Ecotone is the transitional landscape between the tropical forest and seasonally flooded savannahs of the Bolivian Llanos de Moxos. These heterogeneous landscapes harbor high levels of biodiversity and some of the earliest records of human occupation and plant domestication in...
Is There a Public Archaeology?: an approach from Brazil (2018)
This presentation aims to discuss Public Archaeology (PA) from a Brazilian approach. Based on a study that includes a bibliographical survey, and the analysis of the papers presented at scientific meetings in Brazil, I examined: a) the role of PA in the contemporary agenda of the archaeology in Brazil; b) the connections between PA, Heritage Education (HE), and the development projects, and c) its relationship with the decolonizing perspective of the discipline in Latin America. In addition, I...
Landscapes of the Mid-Low Xingu: Archaeology, Temporality, and *Longue Durée Indigenous Stories (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation deals with the archaeological research carried out in the indigenous land Koatinemo, together with the Asurini do Xingu Indigenous people. From this experience, a reflection on the temporality of the landscapes and on the *longue durée Indigenous stories of the mid-low...
Large Centralized Fired-Clay Cooking Stoves of Communal Households on Marajoara Mounds at the Mouth of the Amazon c. AD 400–1100 (2018)
Rarely does the New World a thropological literature mention the existence of large centralized, multi-unit fired clay cooking structures of some prehistoric or recent indigenous Amazonian households. Yet these large, highly patterned features have been informative for archaeology from several points of view. Their existence and common presence as permanent structures built into the floors of prehistoric mound sites on Marajo Island have demonstrated that the mounds they occur in had sizeable,...
Living Things in the Landscape: Gendered Perspectives from Amazonia (2018)
Santos-Graneros writes about persistent places in Amazonia, places that have been used by generation after generation of people, because of their special qualities—waterfalls, mountains, caves. The current interest in the ontology of objects, inspired by the work of Ingold, Latour, Gell, and others has opened the door for archaeologists to consider how we can investigate the meanings of places and objects in these ways, as living things. Like objects, places are alive. The headwaters of the...
Making the Case for “Zombie Trees”: Intangible Cultural Heritage Management in Guyana (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent discoveries of substantial offshore oil and gas reserves and large-scale international development projects highlight the need to identify and preserve Guyana’s poorly documented cultural heritage. At particular risk of destruction are some of Guyana’s Silk Cotton (Ceiba pentandra) trees, which serve as tangible markers of one aspect of the...
Mapping Marronnage: Creating, Managing, and Visualizing Archival Datasets (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Adventures in Spatial Archaeometry: A Survey of Recent High-Resolution Survey and Measurement Applications" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the nineteenth century, captive Africans in Guyane, a French colony and overseas territory in northeastern South America, increasingly sought their own freedom leading up to definitive abolition in 1848. Colonial administrators recognized the practice as a problem and began...
Materiality of Amerindian Human Bodies in the Mouth of the Amazon River: Life and Death at the Curiaú Mirim I Site, Around the Second Millennium AD (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Individual Bodies to Bodies of Social Theory: Exploring Ontologies of the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. These paper aims to show an osteobiographical approach to read human bodies like a special kind of material culture which was inspired by the concepts of Amerindian ideas of construction of bodies and persons in the interpretation of the data analyzed. The Curiaú Mirim site is formed by funerary...
Mayo Chinchipe-Marañón Complex, the Unexpected Spirits of the Ceja (2018)
The fringes of the eastern Andean slopes that conform Ecuador’s Ceja de Montaña are a steep transitional zone between the cordillera highlands and the Amazonian lowlands, where altitude varies from 1800 to ca.-400 masl, The ceja is covered by a dense humid tropical forest that has been traditionally seen as unfit for the development of social complexity. In spite of the apparent adverse ecological conditions this region became an important cultural area around 5000 years ago. A precocious...
Monte Castelo Shellmound and Early Ceramic Technologies in Amazon: A Perspective on Long-Term Landscape Management and the Origins of Pottery in the Americas (2018)
Recent research has confirmed that the some of the oldest ceramics of the Americas are associated with Amazonian shellmounds. Excavations at Monte Castelo site produced a representative assemblage of these early technologies, and has also demonstrated a long history of ceramic production and use, with significant changes during the Middle Holocene that accompany the intensification of landscape management and the emergence of several other cultural innovations in that period. In this...
Monumentality and Social Complexity in the Ecuadorian Upper Amazon: Mound Builders in the Upano Valley, Ecuador (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Upper amazon frequently was conceived as a transitional area where social development was limited for the scarce resources and the harsh environmental conditions. In the last decades studies in the ceja de selva, pie de monte and the upper amazon reveal that this region hosted an intense cultural development. Wide discussions in the academic forums...
My Grandfather’s Castanhal: Plants, Community, Territory, and Memory in the Brazilian Amazon (2018)
In contemporary Gurupá, a rural municipality in the Brazilian Amazon, life is largely shaped by movement of, and among, plants. Plants here are mobile, but spend most of their lives stationary. In this paper, I examine the relationship between people and plants – as living, but nonetheless spatially rooted elements of the landscape – in these agroextractivist communities. I explore the significance of planting and plant life in regulating territorial use and notions of rights, access, and...
OCA—Culture, Origins, and Environment: Archaeological Collaborative Research in the Lower Xingu (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeology in the Xingu River Basin: Long-Term Histories, Current Threats, and Future Perspectives" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The project investigates the historical ecology of a poorly studied area: the confluence of the Xingu and Amazon Rivers, in the lower Amazon region. By investigating distinct lines of archaeological evidence on a regional scale, it addresses, as an underlying research theme, the...
Organic Inclusions in Amazonian Ceramics: A Petrographic Approach (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Step by Step: Tracing World Potting Traditions through Ceramic Petrography" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Organic inclusions, such as freshwater spicules (cauixi) and tree bark ash (caraipé) are one of the most diagnostic elements of pottery production in the Amazon basin. At the Monte Castelo shell mound (southwestern Amazonia), Bacabal pottery represents the widespread use of sponge spicules in the ceramic paste,...
The Origin of the Amazonian Ceramic Diversity Seen from the Monte Castelo Shell Mound (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Andean and Amazonian Ceramics: Advances in Technological Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation we will bring the latest archeological data from the Monte Castelo shell mound, one of the most important ceramic sites of the Amazon. Some of the oldest ceramics of the continent are found there and in this symposium the characteristics about the emergence of Bacabal phase and the new data about the...
Palisades, Ponds, and House Gardens: Phytolith Analysis on the Functionality and Importance of a Ring Ditch in Llanos de Mojos, Southwestern Amazonia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Southwestern Amazonia, the seasonally flooding, anthropogenic landscapes of Llanos de Mojos may be associated with the domestication of several important crops such as manioc (Manihot esculenta), peanuts (Arachis spp.), peach palm (Bactris gasipaes), and chili pepper (Capsicum baccatum). These landscapes, which increased the productivity of the...
Petrographic and Technological Analysis of Ancient Polychrome Ceramics from Upper Madeira River, Amazonia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Andean and Amazonian Ceramics: Advances in Technological Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several researchers have been showing that the southwestern Amazon is a center of cultural innovation and diversity in lowlands South America. Archaeological studies carried out in the last decades have also revealed that the region has ancient centers of ceramic production. At the upper Madeira River, southwest Amazonia,...
Precolonial Ceramic Tradition and Cariban Language Family in Amazonia: Do They Match? (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Andean and Amazonian Ceramics: Advances in Technological Studies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The origins and the dispersal of the most widespread language families in the world is one of the enduring problems that bring together archaeology, linguistics, and genetics. In Amazonia, archaeological research has tentatively associated ceramic traditions (grouping different technological styles) and the expansion of...
Predation and Production in the Rock Art of the Middle Orinoco: Food for Thought (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Intangible Dimensions of Food in the Caribbean Ancient and Recent Past" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The interpretation of rock art is fraught with difficulties, even when images may appear to be easily identified with cultural objects or elements found in nature. When considering the possible meaning of images of animals, plants, and artifacts depicted in the rock paintings and petroglyphs in the Middle...