From prehistory to indigenous history: (re)thinking aschaeology and the canoeist peoples of the pantanal – re-edition

Abstract

In this PhD dissertation, the author analyzes critically the history and historiography of the archaeology of the Pantanal area, from the second half of the 19th to end of the 20th century, and focuses on the process of indigenous occupation of the low lands of the Pantanal, from the first fishers-hunters-gathers of the pre-colonial period to the current canoeists Guató. The larger objective is to contribute to the composition of a total indigenous history, in its multiple space-time aspects and perspectives, from an interdisciplinary approach that uses theoretical-methodological procedures common to archeology, anthropology, and history. To that end, data from several textual sources, information collected from the Guató oral tradition, and the results of archeological, ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological research were used. It was possible to demonstrate that the archaeology of the Pantanal area has been ruled by the study of fishers-hunters-gathers people – associated to the ceramic microtechnology known in Brazil as Pantanal tradition and the embankment-type mounds – which settled down in the area several centuries before the beginning of the Christian Era. Nowadays, the archaeology of the Pantanal area reflects the same changes of trends that are common to the Brazilian archeology since the 1980s. In the 16th, 17th, and 19th centuries, period of many disputes between Spain and Portugal for the control of Upper Paraguay river, several reports were produced that attest the existence of an extraordinary sociocultural mosaic in the center of South America, besides that of a complex of canoeist peoples formed by cultural and linguistically different societies. Of all those societies, the Guató are best known from an ethnohistorical and ethnologically point of view, and is traditionally organized in domestic groups linked by blood relationships, descent, and likeness, related to a particular patrilocal and patrilineal system.