Applying OSL Dating to Understand Relationships between the Teotônio Site and Surrounding Populations, Southwestern Amazonia

Summary

This study provides an example of the potential for optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating to resolve chronological questions that cannot be adequately addressed using conventional radiocarbon dating alone. We have applied this method to ceramics from the Teotônio site, located beside the Teotônio waterfall on the upper Madeira River in southwestern Amazonia. This site can be understood as a persistent place, with several occupations ranging from at least 6000 BP to recent times, when the Teotônio village, inhabited by caboclo populations, was flooded by construction of a dam. Occupations by ceramic producers date back to 3000 BP and are related to at least three different ceramic traditions. Teotonio may have been a regional center during the Jamari period; differences in ceramics suggest the presence of material from neighboring sites, but some associations may be due to stratigraphic mixing. Using OSL to directly date ceramics from the Teotônio site, our aim is two-fold: first, assign a chronology to the still undated occupation by producers of ceramics related to the Jamari style, predominant in the thickest layer of the site, and, second, establish the chronological relations between this style and what seems to be material coming from the surrounding sites.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Recent Applications of Luminescence Dating in Archaeology

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