FROM THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD TO CONTEMPORARY INDIGENOUS SOCIETIES: CONTINUITY, TRANSFORMATION AND HISTORICAL MEMORY IN THE AMAZON
The Amazon constitutes a privileged setting for examining the relationships between the pre-Columbian past and contemporary indigenous societies. Over the past few decades, archaeological research has documented a long-term human occupation, characterized by complex processes of settlement, landscape transformation, forest management, plant cultivation, the creation of agricultural technologies, ceramic production, rock art production, exchange networks and regional demographic dynamics. At the same time, history, linguistics and ethnography have provided abundant information on the trajectories of Amazonian indigenous peoples from the colonial period to the present.
However, significant fragmentation persists among the different temporal and disciplinary scales used to study the region’s history. Archaeological cultures are frequently analyzed independently of historical and contemporary indigenous societies, which makes it difficult to understand the processes of continuity, transformation, displacement and cultural reconfiguration that have shaped the Amazonian territory over millennia.
This symposium proposes to create a space for interdisciplinary dialogue aimed at connecting archaeological evidence with the historical, linguistic, ethnographic and anthropological data available for the Amazon. The objective is to discuss the scope and limitations of the different approaches to reconstructing the history of Amazonian indigenous peoples and to assess to what extent it is possible to establish links between the archaeological cultures identified in the material record and the indigenous communities documented in historical and contemporary periods.
Archaeologists, historians, linguists, anthropologists, ethnographers and specialists in oral tradition are invited to present contributions exploring, among others, the following topics:
* Relationships between archaeological cultures and historical or contemporary indigenous groups.
* Contributions of historical linguistics and ethnohistory to the interpretation of the archaeological record.
* Continuities and transformations in settlement patterns, territoriality and landscape use.
* Technological traditions, ceramic styles and their possible relationship to ethnographic and historical processes.
* Relationship between archaeological and contemporary cosmovisions.
* Indigenous memories, origin narratives and oral tradition as sources for historical reconstruction.
* Mobility, migrations and ethnogenesis in the pre-Hispanic and colonial Amazon.
* Impact of the conquest and other historical processes on the configuration of present-day Amazonian societies.
* Interdisciplinary perspectives for building long-term histories of the Amazon that integrate different disciplines.
The symposium seeks to promote a critical debate on the methodological and theoretical possibilities of integrating evidence from different disciplines to understand the deep history of the Amazon. It also aims to contribute to the construction of broader historical narratives that recognize both the temporal depth of human occupation of the region and the central role of contemporary indigenous peoples in preserving and transmitting knowledge about the territory.
