Tupinambá, Dutch and Portuguese in Colonial Brazil: preliminary thoughts on the Guaibituguçu archaeological site, Alagoas

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Ventures and Native Voices: Legacies from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The study of colonial entanglements in northeastern Brazil is an underdeveloped area of historical archaeological research which has reinforced, or at least not questioned, indigenous histories as marked by conflict, acculturation, and subsequent absorption into society, leaving government administered ancestral lands as locales of surviving traditions. Such a vision is problematic not only for discounting the agency of these groups in the past, but also because the archaeological record from ‘contact’ sites in the region often reveals evidence of temporal continuity in colonial contexts. The Guaibituguçu site, located on the northern coast of the state of Alagoas, has revealed artifacts of Indigenous technologies, saliently pottery, and European material culture in stratigraphic association beginning in the 16th or early 17th century. While the research is ongoing with much to explore, the data uncovered might testify to a community that existed on the margins of yet was essential to colonial society.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Colonial Ventures and Native Voices: Legacies from the Spanish and Portuguese Empires   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow