A Brazilian Classical Archaeology: the coming of the Greeks in the Aegean and the comparative study of the origins of Indo-Europeans and Tupis

Abstract

"The coming of the Greeks" brings to discussion the events related to the arrive of the Greek speakers in the Aegean. When, why and how these events taken place form the archaeological, linguistic and genetic question about the Indo-European origins and its infiltration route in Eurasia. The linguistic identity of past people studied by means of its archaeological remains is a topic that congregates very actual concerns of a multitude of scholar around the world. In Brazil, the archaeology of the Tupi origins maybe is one of the most thought-provoking in views of the difficulties in dealing with archaeological sources of people long dead (and who have left no written documents), as well as the high linguistic variability along its historical trajectory, the Babel Tower attested by the Portuguese colonizers that landed here in 1500. A Brazilian classical archaeology is a proposal of rooting a classical conundrum of European pre-history in the debates surrounding the origins and expansion of Tupi people in South American lowlands in order to settle a situational dialogue of a research initiated far of the European research centers. Adopting a semiotical reading linked to Charles S. Peirce, two archaeological contexts located East and West of the Aegean basin which show continuos human occupation during the Bronze Age has been selected, Troy (northwest seashore of Anatolia) and Lerna (southwest region of Argolid, mainland Greece). The analyses will focus in the ceramic repertoire, domestic architecture and stratigraphy in the built-up area center of these localities to locate the debate always in the pendular alternatives longue durée/histoire evéntuelle concerning cultural ruptures (the archaeological indices of the coming of the Greeks) and the material-stylistic identity sedimented in the assemblage of artifacts, behaviors e cultural traditions over the long span. Lastly, working with some of the archaeological contexts excavated by precursor of the discipline in the nineteenth century as Heinrich Schliemann, the search of the Greek arché also insinuates in the research of the roots of the archaeological thought to "discuss antiquities or things out of date" (Th. 7.69) both of the history of European archaeology and the history-written of the Greek past.