Feathered weave: sources on feather arts in the context of cultural exchanges between Europe and America (16th-18th centuries)

Abstract

This Scientific Initiation project aims at investigating the material and symbolic use of the Amerindian Plumeria in Brazil between the 16th and 18th centuries. Inserted in a theoretical-methodological panorama of decolonial historiography, it will be carried out the systematization of a specific documentation that records the use of the Plumeria, facilitating, through this object category, a better view of the Brazilian Amerindian culture in their own categories, specificities and meanings. Bearing in mind the connections established with European society and indigenous culture, it is also made necessary to understand the mean by which they dialogue to one another. In that sense, Amerindian culture is centered on the debate, performing new configurations, encounters and cultural shocks that asserted themselves or were erased through the sojourners and ruptures on this new colonial society that had been forming. Therefore, the amount of plundered objects from this vast and diverse Amerindian society, which is spread in many museums and collections, are tangible examples of these intense and diverse encounters. The Plumeria is, therefore, a utilitarian and symbolic mean, loaded of interior significations to the Amerindian culture and that, being intensely referenced in the chronicles as well as being effusively represented in iconography, might be useful on demonstrating both the meeting between different social strata and on highlighting the importance of aspects of Brazilian indigenous culture in exchanges, plots and connection in local and global scale.