South America: Eastern South America (Geographic Keyword)
1-25 (36 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Several papers have discussed the role of rivers in the process of knowledge, occupation, and dispersion of human groups in unfamiliar or inhabited landscapes. Most of the time the rivers are seen as displacement axes, facilitating the connection between distant points in a short time. However, at the same time as connecting elements, rivers can play the role...
Archaeogaming and Shell Mounds (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeogaming is a new found topic in archaeological trends. The publication of the homonymous title by Andrew Reinhart, in 2019, seems to have swung ajar a door that lots of us have been carefully creeping into: the prospect of uniting archaeological theory, methods, and practice with the enjoyment of possible worlds. From that standpoint, we present some...
Assembling the Dead and the Living: Funerary Practices within Eastern Populations of the Southern Andes (Tucumán, Northwestern Argentina) (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Despite extensive archaeological research, surprisingly little is known about regional and interregional mortuary practices in the Southern Andes, specifically in Northwestern Argentina. Large-scale excavation carried out in El Cadillal, undertaken between 1971 and 1972, resulted in the recovery of 44 prehispanic burials associated with Candelaria dated...
Baumgarten’s *Aesthetica and the Rock Art of Northeast Brazil (2021)
This is an abstract from the "From the Plains to the Plateau: Papers in Honor of James D. Keyser" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Alexander Baumgarten’s *Aesthetica gave birth to modern aesthetics. He had in mind a specific relationship between human cognition and sensory perception. Originally, aesthetics was the “science of sensitive knowing” (*scientia cognitionis sensitivae), or the study of how we know the world through our senses (sensing it)...
Biodistance Studies of Riverine Shell-Mound Builders from Ribeira de Iguape Valley (São Paulo and Paraná, Brazil) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "“The South Also Exists”: The Current State of Prehistoric Archaeology in Brazil: Dialogues across Different Theoretical Approaches and Research Agendas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Biodistance studies (craniometrics and aDNA) have been very useful tools to unravel the biological diversity of human populations in the past. In this abstract, we present biodistance analyses based on cranial measurements in order to...
Buenos Aires Estuary Waterfront: The Zen City Wreck and Coastal Urban Archaeology (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Underwater and Coastal Archaeology in Latin America" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This contribution presents the status of research and institutionalization of the underwater and coastal cultural heritage of the city of Buenos Aires. For this purpose, the environmental information and characteristics of the archaeological landscapes surveyed between 1995 and 2019 in excavations carried out in lands "gained from the...
Building Histories of Territory Formation: The Case of Southern Jê Expansion, Santa Catarina, Brazil (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we discuss the expansion process of southern Jê groups since 1400 BP until today. Working with Zedeño´s proposal of territorial history (Zedeño 1997), we explore the available archaeological and ethnographic data to propose phases of establishment, maintenance and transformation of territories occupied by Southern Jê groups since, at least, 1400...
A Characterization of Archaeological Sites in the State of São Paulo: Some Notes (2024)
This is an abstract from the "“The South Also Exists”: The Current State of Prehistoric Archaeology in Brazil: Dialogues across Different Theoretical Approaches and Research Agendas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo, different pottery producers are described ethnohistorically, and the most expansive is the Tupiguarani Tradition. However, pre-European population relationships between the Tupiguarani and other...
Chronological Investigations at Coastal Shell Mounds, Southeastern Brazil (2018)
Shell mounds (sambaquis) are a focus of scientific interest in Brazilian archaeology since the 1950´s and also for interdisciplinary approaches. Located along the Brazilian coast from north to south, they present geographical and chronological variabilities. This paper discusses the chronological aspects of large and small sized shell mounds located on the coast of São Paulo State, Southeastern Brazil. Radiocarbon dates suggest a long occupation of coastal hunter-gatherer-fisher groups spanning...
Color Lines, Material Culture, and the Negotiation of Social Space in the Sugar Plantation Fazenda do Colégio, Campos dos Goytacazes, Brazil (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Afro-Latin American Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This work addresses the dynamic of social relations at the sugar plantation Fazenda do Colégio, in northern Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, through the analysis of the refined and coarse earthenwares recovered from the planters' house midden and from two slave quarters areas. I argue that these ceramic items exerted a central role in the construction and...
Community Ways and Historical Paths in Brazilian Southern Coast (5000–600 BP) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. By presenting isotopic (87Sr/86Sr, d15N, and d13C) data from human bones buried in shell-matrix sites (sambaquis) in Southern Brazil, this paper discusses how different ways of community coordination and organization can lead to alternative historical paths.
The First Record of Tigre and Pay Paso Paleoamerican Points in Southern Brazil: Implications for the Early Holocene Settlement of South America (2018)
The early occupation of Southeastern South America (including Uruguay and Southern Brazil) is an issue that has generated interest in American archaeology. Recent research in Uruguay indicates to the presence of two different designs of projectile points manufactured during the early settlement: Tigre (ca. 12,000-11,100 cal BP) and Pay Paso (ca 11,080-10,200 cal BP), recovered in archaeological sites with chronological and stratigraphic control in the Uruguay River. Given the potential use of...
Forest Use at Te Zulay, an ancient community at the Mouth of The Pastaza River in the Upper Amazonia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The use of plants of ancient Amazonian societies is currently heavily debated. Much of such it concerns the difficulty of finding good paleobotanic evidence in archaeological contexts. Lately, old plant use strategies have been reconstructed mainly based on phytoliths, starch, and pollen evidence. However, the present study is focused on charred wood...
Geoarchaeology, Geochemical and Spatial Distributions of the Obsidian Source in Southern Mendoza (Argentina): The Case of Coche Quemado Source (2018)
During the last twenty years, four primary obsidian sources have been recorded in southern Mendoza province. The archaeological record indicates that all were used from the Holocene until pre-hispanic times, however many obsidian artifacts still are assigned to unknown sources. Recent surveys allowed discovery a new obsidian source called Coche Quemado. It is located in the western margin of the lower basin of the Rio Grande, in the Mendoza Andean piedmont. The obsidian from the source appears...
Geometric Morphometrics on the Spot: When Artifact Shape Tells Us More of Prehistoric Lithic Variability in São Paulo State, Brazil (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This presentation contemplates the application of a method of analysis for the study of artifact shape named geometric morphometrics (GM). GM is a quantitative method originated in the biological sciences with a large application in evolutionary biology for the analysis of organismal form. Evolutionary archaeologists have been employing this approach to...
Gruta do Gentio II: data on the new excavations and isotopic signals from the site (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Gruta do Gentio II is an iconic site in the archaeology of Central Brazil because of its early occupation and rich excavation history. Situated in the interfluvial region of the Central Plateau, renewed investigation (after 35 years) offers new perspectives for the site. Data produced during the 1970s and 1980s revealed a wide variety of remains dating...
Heritage and Territoriality: Past, Present, and Future Perceptions among the Tacana, Tsimane, and Mosetén in Bolivia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Politics of Heritage Values: How Archaeologists Deal with Place, Social Memories, Identities, and Socioeconomics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Preliminary results of the collaborative methodologies applied in two years of intense fieldwork in the Bolivian Amazon will be presented, and we will reflect on the different roles played by archaeological and sacred sites in the Tsimane, Mosetén, and Tacana indigenous...
Late Pleistocene / Early Holocene Human Occupation along the Tietê River, São Paulo State, Brazil (2024)
This is an abstract from the "“The South Also Exists”: The Current State of Prehistoric Archaeology in Brazil: Dialogues across Different Theoretical Approaches and Research Agendas" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Tietê River is historically known as one of the main human displacement axes between the eastern portion of SE Brazil and the inner portions of the continent, being navigable for most of its course. The use of this waterway back to a...
Long-Term Cultural Persistence in Modern Humans: Some Case Studies from Early and Mid-Holocene Archaeological Traditions in Eastern South America and Theoretical Implications (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. We will present chronological, morphometrical, technological, and subsistence data coming from eastern South America related to four Paleoindian cultural traditions occupying different areas since the beginning of the Holocene. All these four traditions present a remarkable cultural stability that shows few parallels in the archaeological record. Using these...
A Major Hiatus in the Mid-Holocene Archaeological Record of Eastern South America: Reassessing the "Archaic Gap" (2018)
A decade ago, we suggested that the low frequency of archaeological sites dated from the mid-Holocene in several portions of Lowland South America (what we have called the "Archaic Gap") was due to an increase in the magnitude of dry periods. Since then, data regarding paleoenvironmental reconstructions for Lowland South America, coupled with an increase of the archaeological knowledge, allows us to reassess the idea of the "Archaic Gap" and redefine both the areal extent of the phenomenon and...
New Records of Pre-Hispanic Dogs (Canis familiaris) in Argentinean Northeast (2018)
Canis familiaris has a limited record in pre-Hispanic archaeological sites of Southern South American, but in the last decade, more specimens were published. In this context, we present new remains of domestic dogs from five archaeological sites along the Paraná and Uruguay Rivers in the Northeast of Argentina, an area with few published records. We also discuss their roles within human societies. The studied sample includes seven cranial and one postcranial specimens corresponding to seven...
New Surveys along the Middle Basin of the Quequén Grande River, Pampas Region (Argentina) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the last 30 years, archaeological research in the middle course of the Quequén Grande River, Pampas region (Argentina), has provided a wealth of data, both in the density of recorded archaeological sites, and in its chronological representation, which spans from the Late Pleistocene to Late Holocene (10,250--1500 14C years BP). This is true of the...
On the Role of Bifacial Points in the Construction of Past Identities and Boundaries in Southeastern and Southern Brazil during the Holocene (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological sites presenting bifacial points dated from the Holocene are common in southern and southeastern Brazil. Our studies have pointed out that the morphological and technological diversity of these bifacial points was much greater than it had been postulated in the past, indicating the presence of potential past boundaries and territories. However,...
Paleo-Indian Evidence from Rock Shelters of the Pains Region, Southeastern Brazil: Typology, Technology and Chronology of the Lithic Material and Its Classification in Three Horizons (2018)
This presentation describes the archaeological context and the lithic variability for the paleo-indian period of the Pains region, an extensive karst situated in the upper São Francisco river valley, state of Minas Gerais, Southeastern Brazil. It gives an overview of what is known for the region using evidence from four limestone rock shelter sites, with a total area of 28m² excavated, the most important site being the Gruta do Marinheiro cave (20m²), and propose the separation of the lithic...
People and food: investigating the diet through isotopic analysis in a pre-colonial group from Piaçaguera shell mound (sambaqui), Brazil (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this study, we aim to present new evidence on the diet of pre-colonial individuals excavated in the Piaçaguera sambaqui (7,151-5,668 years cal. BP), one of the oldest shell mound found on the Brazilian coast. Previous isotopic analysis has shown that, although there is a general preference for consuming marine fish, there are regional variations in the...