Understanding the Tapajó Socio-Political System through the Study of Landscapes and Material Culture

Summary

The socio-political organization of the Tapajó people living in the Lower Amazon region during late precolonial times has been studied through two main sources: contact chronicles and archaeological data coming from the Santarém site located at the mouth of the Tapajós River. Based on these sources, researchers have formulated three models to explain the socio-political organization of the Tapajó. However, recent surveys and excavations conducted in the upland Belterra plateau provide new data on ceremonial and domestic contexts and call for a re-evaluation of these models of social complexity. My project compares landscapes and material culture of riverine and upland settlements in order to challenge previous models of social complexity and formulate a new model that looks at the Tapajó occupation at a broader regional scale. Based on results of the upland Cedro site ceramic analysis and the comparison between riverine and upland sites, I argue that the Santarém and Cedro sites were organized as primary and secondary centers and maintained a heterarchical relationship during the late precolonial period.

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): 21684