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An Archaeology of Social Jê Landscapes at Urubici, Santa Catarina

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Historical Ecology and Landscape Archaeology in Lowland South America

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology ((IDCA))

Abstract

This paper summarizes recent archaeological research at the upper Canoas valley, Santa Catarina, also known as the Urubici region. This area constitutes a long-term focus of occupation by Southern Jê speaking societies, where archaeological sequences overlap with historical and ethnographic accounts, from circa 1800 BP to the beginning of the twentieth century. While mapping a wide range of settlements across the regional landscape, a basic chronological control for the Southern Jê long permanence in the area has been established. Furthermore, some referential sites have been excavated in greater detail, to refine settlement chronology and explore their internal configuration. In this sense, Jê landscapes are composed of a diversity of places and spaces of coexistence and circulation with different functionalities, which interact with one another through a socio-cosmological structure of their own. All along this period, Jê societies thrived and expanded, having created ingenious earthworks and a proper cultural landscape, full of symbolic references, which can be perceived to this day. It has been an history of expansion, but also of resistance and fight. It is our hope that archaeology might help original peoples to recover their dignity and their rights.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This is another typical Jê archaeological feature, reported in several other locations (La Salvia, 1968; Beber, 2005; DeSouza, 2018). This kind of pit oven also appears in ethnographical reports, as used for roasting (Paula, 1924; Lavina, 1994).

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Acknowledgements

The archaeological research at the Urubici region has been part of the Jê Landscapes of Southern Brazil: Ecology, History and Power in a Transitional Landscape during the Late Holocene, a research project coordinated by the University of São Paulo and the University of Exeter, with participation of several other Brazilian and British institutions. We thank the Fundação de Auxílio à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP), Brasil, and the Arts and Heritage Research Council (AHRC) from United Kingdom, for their support (grants FAPESP 2012/51328-3 and 2014/07754-3 and AHRC AH/K004212/1). We also thank Manoella Souza Soares for Fig. 7.4.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ciências Humanas – UFPel, Pelotas, Brazil

    Rafael Corteletti

  2. Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia Oswaldo Rodrigues Cabral – UFSC, Florianópolis, Brazil

    Bruno Labrador

  3. Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia – USP, São Paulo, Brazil

    Paulo Antônio Dantas DeBlasis

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  1. Rafael Corteletti
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Correspondence to Rafael Corteletti .

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  1. Department of Prehistory and Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    André Carlo Colonese

  2. Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Federal University of Pelotas, Pelotas, Brazil

    Rafael Guedes Milheira

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Corteletti, R., Labrador, B., DeBlasis, P.A.D. (2023). An Archaeology of Social Jê Landscapes at Urubici, Santa Catarina. In: Colonese, A.C., Milheira, R.G. (eds) Historical Ecology and Landscape Archaeology in Lowland South America . Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32284-6_7

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