The Paleoindian occupation of São Paulo State: a geoarchaeological approach

Abstract

This project aims to expand the activities developed during the project "The Occupation Paleoíndia in São Paulo: A Geoarqueológica Approach," funded by FAPESP between 2009 and 2012 (Proc. no. 2009/54720-9). The project's overall objective is to contribute to the understanding of the processes related to the occupation in southeastern Brazil by early human groups that came to the Americas. In parallel, we intend to contribute to the development of Geoarchaeology in tropical environments, as well as knowledge of current paleoenvironments in southeastern Brazil during the transition Pleistocene / Holocene and its relationship to human groups. The project is divided into four main lines of action: 1) archaeological prospection explicitly focused on the detection of sites related to the Paleoindian Period, 2) insertion of Paleoindian lithic industries of the State of São Paulo in the panoram of eastern South America; 3) study of formation processes acting in such sites, taking into account climatic variations occurred in the last 12,000 years and its possible consequences in terms of geomorphology and landscapes; 4) data integration, aiming to contribute to the rebuilding of the existing scenarios paleoenvironmental in the region, such scenarios relating to the population dynamics of the first human groups who inhabited the Southeast Brazil at the beginning of the Holocene. While the first two axes refers to archaeological methods and procedures with the interface statistics, the second and third axes dialogue strongly with the Earth Sciences by applying an integrative approach, taking into account the processes of accumulation anthropogenic geomorfogênese and paleoclimatic indicators. (AU)