Relationships and movements: an archeology of cropping and mobility patterns in Southwestern Amazon, from 1.000 A.D. to the present

Abstract

The present research is part of an increasing effort to understand the anthropization of the Amazon Forest and its relations with indigenous traditional knowledge systems and networks of interethnic exchange and sociability. Since 14,000 years ago, people, plants and landscapes started to interacted with one another, resulting in a broadly socio-diverse and bio-diverse environment resulting from a gradual increase in knowledge about the use of plants and their production, consumption and storage processes. This theme is directly related to the patterns of mobility and territoriality of the indigenous groups of the past and the present Amazon, and indicates the need to erase the traditional conceptual boundaries established between nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples and sedentary farmers.Through an interdisciplinary research, we will attempt to carry out a comparative analysis between the late Pre-Colonial Period - from the year 1000 AD, which represents a Period Of Socio-Political changes in the Amazon - and the colonial period, until the beginning of the Protection Service to the Indian (20th century). The archaeobotanical remains of the Teotônio and Sol de Campinas do Acre archaeological sites (both occupied until the beginning of the European colonization) will be analyzed. From the analyzes carried out and the reconstitution of the patterns of mobility and cultivation of these areas, we will conduct a broad discussion based on the ethnohistorical and ethnographic record of the region. In this way, it will be possible to construct a comparative picture between the pre and Post Colonial Periods in the Amazonian Southwest. (AU)