Mundos mesclados, espaços segregados: cultura material, mestiçagem e segmentação no sítio Aldeia em Santarém (PA)

This article discusses the processes of cultural exchange between Portuguese, Portuguese-Brazilian, Amerindians, and mestizos based on the analysis of the material culture from households of Santarém (PA), occupied during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,. Although these social groups manipulated material culture aiming to express different values, related to hierarchy, social segmentation, and affirmation of identities, ambiguity also characterizes these assemblages. This material ambiguity informs about the mixtures of both practices and cultural references that brought about the building of a mestizo society.Com base na análise da cultura material proveniente de unidades domésticas do núcleo urbano de Santarém (PA), ocupadas nos séculos XVIII e XIX, o presente artigo discute os processos de trocas culturais entre portugueses, luso-brasileiros, indígenas e mestiços. Embora esses grupos sociais tenham manipulado a cultura material visando expressar diferentes valores, relacionados à hierarquia, segmentação social e afirmação de identidades, a ambigüidade é uma característica das amostras analisadas, informando sobre as misturas de práticas e de referenciais culturais que levaram à construção de uma sociedade mestiça

Disease: A Hitherto Unexplored Constraint on the Spread of Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) in Pre-Columbian South America

Although debate continues, there is agreement that dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) were first domesticated in Eurasia, spreading from there to other parts of the world. However, while that expansion already extended as far as Europe, China, and North America by the early Holocene, dogs spread into (and south of) the tropics only much later. In South America, for example, the earliest well attested instances of their presence do not reach back much beyond 3000 cal. BC, and dogs were still absent from large parts of the continent – Amazonia, the Gran Chaco, and much of the Southern Cone – at European contact. Previous explanations for these patterns have focused on cultural choice, the unsuitability of dogs for hunting certain kinds of tropical forest prey, and otherwise unspecified environmental hazards, while acknowledging that Neotropical lowland forests witness high rates of canine mortality. Building on previous work in Sub-Saharan Africa (Mitchell 2015) and noting that the dog’s closest relatives, the grey wolf (C. lupus) and the coyote (C. latrans), were likewise absent from South and most of Central America in Pre- Columbian times, this paper explores instead the possibility that infectious disease constrained the spread of dogs into Neotropical environments. Four diseases are considered, all likely to be native and/or endemic to South America: canine distemper, canine trypanosomiasis, canine rangeliosis, and canine visceral leishmaniasis caused by infection with Leishmania amazonensis and L. colombiensis. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which the hypothesis that disease constrained the expansion of dogs into South America can be developed further

Anarchism out west: some reflections on sources

The ‘West’ of the title provides a hook for discussing three contacts with anarchist thought. The first contact is a personal one with Ammon Hennacy and Bruce Utah Phillips, two figures of the small world of Salt Lake City anarchism of the 1960s (way out West of the Rockies). The second contact is with an idealized conception of Amazonians as exemplars of a kind of anarchist sociality imagined as a retrievable model (way out in the interior of Brazil/South America). The third contact is with a strand of rationalist-naturalist thought closely associated with Chomsky, and its exclusion from anthropology (way out in the EthnoWest)

O suicídio Tikúna no Alto Solimões: uma expressão de conflitos Suicide among the Tikúna on the Upper Solimões River: an expression of conflicts

O objetivo deste trabalho é buscar um entendimento a respeito da ocorrência de suicídios entre os índios Tikúna do Alto Solimões (Amazonas), um objeto de difícil aproximação e que aponta para a necessidade de abordagem interdisciplinar. A etnografia realizada preocupou-se em captar a vinculação entre os eventos de suicídio da última década com a exacerbação dos confrontos entre diferentes grupos faccionais que atualizam, em outro contexto histórico, os mecanismos de resolução de conflitos próprios das antigas malocas. Na base desses confrontos está o abandono a que tal população tem sido submetida pelos órgãos responsáveis pela definição e implementação das políticas públicas para as populações indígenas, com especial destaque para a falência do modelo de assistência proposto para a área do Alto Solimões.<br>This study focuses on suicide among the Tikúna Indians on the Upper Solimões River in the Brazilian Amazonia. The very nature of the object requires an interdisciplinary approach. The ethnography is concerned with capturing links among suicides occurring over the last decade, in the process of confrontation between different factions or groups that express, in the present, an older historical context, the mechanisms of conflict characterizing the ancient malocas, or indigenous lodges. At the very base of such confrontations lies the abandonment inflicted on this population, especially the bankruptcy of the health care model proposed for the Upper Solimões area

Mito e arqueologia: a interpretação dos Asurini do Xingu sobre os vestígios arqueológicos encontrados no parque indígena Kuatinemu - Pará

Este artigo visa descrever o modo como os Asurini do Xingu, uma população tupi que ocupa uma aldeia às margens do rio Xingu, interpreta os vestígios arqueológicos existentes em seu território. A partir disso, inicia uma reflexão sobre as diferentes possibilidades interpretativas do passado e ressalta a necessidade de um compromisso interdisciplinar na definição da posse e manutenção dos territórios indígenas e na preservação do patrimônio arqueológico nelas existente.<br>The present article starts by describing how the Asurini of the Xingu, a Tupi population that lives in a village by the Xingu River, interprets the archaeological traces that exist inside the boundaries of their territory. A reflection is then made on the different interpretative possibilities for the past. The article stresses the need of an interdisciplinary commitment concerning the definition of possession and maintenance of indigenous territories, and for the preservation of the archaeological patrimony that exists in these territories