09 January 2024 - João Saldanha
The Rise of Monumentality in Eastern Amazonia
and its link with the Local Neolithization Process
Following the successful colonization of the globe by our species, new waves of human expansion happened during the Holocene, reshaping cultural, linguistic and genetic landscapes worldwide. Such expansions may have been triggered by the emergence of the Neolithization process. The demographic and technological advantages offered by the onset of agriculture as drivers of Holocene cultural expansions are also supported by the appearance and distribution of new ideological forms of display, such as megalithic monuments. In this regard, Eurasia always played a central role in debate relating the neolithization process and the rise of early forms of monumentality. Lowland South America however has been notably absent. In part, this is due to the substantially smaller and less reliable dataset when compared to what is available for Eurasia.
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Here I want to fill this gap, by comparing the links between increase of food production systems, associated increases in population growth rate and the rise and forms of monumentality between Eurasia and Lowland South America. I will offer a long-term perspective of monumental funerary structures from a specific region of the Amazon, the eastern coast of Guianas. The period comprises from the 3,000 BP, the beginning of the Amazonian “Neolithic”, where the general rule seems to be the use of shallow pits with single burials accompanied by rare and scanty grave goods, until 1,500 BP, when death is associate with highly elaborated funerary urns deposited on earth, stone or wood monuments.
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The social and ritual dimensions of these changes will be regard in the context of transformations and evolving of networks of relationships occurred from the beginning of the Amazonian “Neolithic” Period until the contact with the Europeans. It will be argued that encircling ditches, and megalithic and timber circles containing funerary pits appear suddenly on the landscape from 1,100 BP signaling a significant change, with the initiating of a new labor investment that effectively marked cultural landscape for the future. |
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I will argue that the people that built such funerary structures sought more elaborate forms of expression of identity and group affiliation and, for this reason, not only different types of monuments, but also stylistically hybrid ceramics, with high aesthetic appeal, start to dominate the archaeological landscape of the region. |
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João Saldanha is currently an Associate Researcher at the Centro de História da Arte e Investigação Artística (CHAIA) of Universidade de Évora and a hired Archaeologist at the Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA). His research specialization focuses on the origins of monumentality in prehistoric times, specifically in Amazonia and Iberia, using a comparative archaeology approach. He is particularly interested in integrating various subfields of cultural evolutionary theory and methodology, with a focus on the construction and utilization of relational databases, paleodemography, and computer applications in archaeology. His goal is to integrate different approaches to investigate the connections between demography, population movements, social and cultural patterns and processes, in order to understand the origins of monuments in prehistory. He received his PhD degree in 2017 from the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at the Universidade de Sao Paulo. After completing his PhD, he was mentored by members of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London from 2018 to 2020. In this period, he had the opportunity to work closely and learn how to write successful funding proposals with IoA-UCL staff, including Professors Manuel Arroyo-Kalin, Renata Peters, and Mike Parker Pearson. Later on he acted as independent archaeologist in the Algarve, coordinating commercial archaeological projects in Lagos, Portimao, Silves and Albufeira. He also served as a professor at the Universidade de São Paulo and taught a module in the Erasmus Mundus Archaeological Materials (ARCHMAT) Master's Degree program.
