Tapajó Group Routes Networks, Santarém and Belterra Region, Lower Amazon, Brazil

Summary

From the 10th until the 18th century, the Tapajó Indians inhabited the present city of Santarém and the surrounding region. The material culture associated with this group is distributed between the Trombetas and Xingu rivers - west/east - and Almeirim until the middle Tapajós Rivers – north/south. Archaeological and ethnographic data demonstrate that the Tapajó produced the elaborate Santarém pottery. This particular region is characterized by a rich and varied archaeological modified landscape consisting of inland wells, Amazonian Dark Earth (ADE), anthropogenic forest and trail networks. For this presentation, archaeological sites located on the Belterra Plateau and inside the National Forest of the Tapajó are considered. The presence of old indigenous paths connecting archaeological sites on ADE soils on the plateau to the riverine environment and between settlements on the plateau suggest that archaeological sites located on different landscape types were interconnected and complemented each other in the Tapajó domain. In addition, a model created using ArcGIS spatial analyst toolbox proposes how the settlements in these peripheral areas were integrated and connected through a network of pathways and river to the Porto site, the heartland of the Tapajó group, in Santarém.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 18693