Hunter-gatherers from Southern Brazil: new perspectives

Southern Brazil has had in the past two major archeology projects: the National Programme for Archaeological Research (1965-1970) and the Paleoindigena Project (1971-1978), both sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute –USA.

The results of these projects lead to the formation of a handful of specialized work, on the chronology and dispersion of the archeological cultures. That is valued thoroughly; still, the knowledge of Brazilian archeology doesn't comprise even 10% of the national territory at the present time (more than eight million Km2).

The hunter-collectors of the continental areas were relatively well known, concerning their specific archeological products and their chronology (quite retreated for the continental extent).

If on one side the archeological knowledge developed, for the other, related researches on paleo-climates, paleo-environmental reconstructions, palinology, etc., it didn't pass of the initial stages.

The decade of 1980’s was of an absolute repetition or of stagnation of the researches that were bounded to isolate research centers without an articulation capacity or communication among them.

In the beginning of the nineties, new master’s degree courses in archeology were created and made possible the resume of the studies on the continental hunter-collectors. Most work, by then, was revisionist, however suggesting new approaches, both on theory and practice.

The major outlines set up from historical-culturalist models gave room to more complex subjects.

With the exhaustion of the museums or centers of research collections study, grew the need for resuming projects on specific and well defined areas.

Today, several teams are working in the sandstone plateau hillsides, digging rock-shelters that demonstrated a relevant antiquity of the process of human occupation of the continental areas.

Archeologist as Adriana Dias have contributed to move back the chronologies of sites on the hillsides of the plateau, making clear that an occupational synchrony exists in the whole territory of the south of Brazil. Dates obtained from around the 11th millennium can be articulate with those for the areas of the Southwest plain, close to the border with Argentina and Uruguay.

The continental and depressed area of the Southwest is crossed by great rivers dominating prairies with small areas of forests. It is to such an area that the hunters arrived about the 12th millennium before the present, raising the discussed possibility of coexistence of these groups with elements of the now extinct Pleistocene megafauna.

A common trait of these groups of hunters is the long lasting lithic technology. If we compare archeological materials from the 11th millennium B.P. with materials from the XVI century A.D., we will see that the technological answers have been the same ones, in other words, the conservationism prevails in the lithic production of these groups. Specific studies don't exist on this topic, however projects begin to be articulated with the purpose of the resolution of such problem.

After these considerations, including so old chronologies for paleoindians, traditional outlines from Northern America are no longer acceptable. Diagnostic items such as tip-of-projectiles for megafauna hunting are, to date, totally discarded.

Research has also been developing concerning built sites (mounds) in the continental areas, previously well known in the coast. New research indicates that those sites are linked to middle-Holocene proto-farmers. The material culture of these groups includes ceramics and the construction of graves (mounds) for the burial of their dead. Previous suggestions that those mounds would serve for shelter in times of floods are now discarded. The logic of that idea was that those sites were built in areas that stayed flooded most of the time.

Now it is known that elements of territorial division existed, together with leaderships or even ethnic separations in these groups, occupying a l territory larger than the Iberian Peninsula in Europe. DNA analyses showed parental relationships among the dead buried in those mounds, suggesting more permanent leaderships and with a greater political power than we could first imagine for groups in this period.

The ideological elements and the rituals of daily activities begin to be perceived and to be incorporated into the archeologists’ discourse.

We can say that some of these perceptions are more definitive, because they are based on empiric data: the beginning of the constructions (mounds) by 5.000 BP, the beginning of their use as cemeteries after 3.500 B.P and the start of ceramics production after of 3.000 B.P.

Still, we cannot yet assess these hunter-gatherers neolithization process after their contact with horticulturalists from the tropical forests, which happened between 2.500 and 2.000 B.P. It included elements as the diversity of ceramics decoration and other artifacts techniques, but also, perhaps, other process as kidnapping or inter-ethnic marriages.

If on one side it is complex and difficult to measure the impact of groups of horticulturists on the hunters, it is as difficult to assess the impact and transformations that affected those groups after their later contact with the Iberian societies of the XVI century.

The gaps on the archaeological record are still big. However, the initial and necessary steps are being made so that one may understand the continental hunter-gatherers of Southern Brazil, also emphasizing that this is a territory where prehistory and history meet, thus enlarging the complexity of research.

These gaps and complexity don't discourage scholars working in Brazil; to the contrary, they urge archeology to move forward, away from the old and traditional paradigms and problems already, so many times, solved.