Colonial process in the Portuguese America: Tupi settlement at the Brazilian Southern shore

Summary

This represents a preliminary paper about the colonial process in Portuguese America and the development of the historical archaeology of indigenous peoples in Brazil. It uses as reference the archaeological remains of a Tupi settlement, on the south shore of the state of Sao Paulo, called Peruíbe. For many years Brazilian historiography built a history of America’s discovery and European colonization with indigenous peoples treated as passive victims of colonial encounter, fated to disappearance. In the last decades this perspective was overcome by works that sought to demonstrate the agency of indigenous people in the construction of their own history. Historical archaeology, in turn, dealt with the study of contexts of interrelation between indigenous and colonizers, trying to understand processes of acculturation. In recent years archaeologists have been criticizing this perspective and reevaluating a recent periods of indigenous people. Investigations have been done to show indigenous resistance strategies against colonizer the maintenance of their ways of life when faced with colonialism and capitalism. Therefore, my ongoing research aims to contribute to this new research agenda and, more specifically, to the construction of a critical and post-colonialist history of the Tupi people from the pre-colonial period until the 19th century.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Breaking Boundaries: Exploring Colonialism in the Modern World and Beyond

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