PI: Ximena S. Villagran

Financiamento: Gerda Henkel Stiftung

About the project: Ceramics are crucial to understanding the social and political processes of pre-colonial peoples from central Amazonia, one of South America’s hot spots of cultural diversity. In Amazonian ceramics, large cultural complexes were defined using morphological and decorative attributes. The spatial dispersion of ceramic complexes, combined with ethnographic analogies and historical linguistics, was linked to population movements and expansions of Arawak and Tupi speakers. This proposal will advance the study of Amazonian ceramics by applying a high-resolution approach, combining ceramic petrography, Fourier-transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), lipid analysis, ¹⁴C dating on organic compounds, and dating by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). It will offer unprecedented microarchaeological data to identify inter-regional elements in ceramic assemblages from central Amazonia and to articulate macro and microscopic information about iconography, technology, and function in a multi-scalar approach. We will produce novel data to reflect on the existence of technological and cultural matrices common to large areas of the Amazon.

Team: Helena Pinto Lima (Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi); Kelly Brandão (MAE/USP); Marcony Alves (MAE/USP); Tiago Kater Pinto (MAE/USP); Laura Furquim (MAE/USP); Natalia Lozada Mendieta (Universidad de los Andes); Silvia Amicone (Universität Tübingen); Eduardo Góes Neves (MAE/USP).