This thesis is a contribution to the debate about the emergence of politically
complex societies in the southern Brazilian highlands from a regional, community
and household approach. At the regional level, I compare settlement patterns of
the Southern Proto-Jê (Taquara/Itararé Tradition) in different areas, developing
a model of territories structured around central places – represented by dense pit
house villages and oversized pit houses. I test this model with new survey data
from a yet unexplored region. At the centre of the pilot area, the site Baggio 1 –
a dense, well-planned settlement focused around an oversized pit house – was
chosen for excavations.
I frame the discussion about the function of oversized structures in the broader
theoretical debates about aggrandising vs corporate strategies in early complex
societies and their archaeological correlates. Thus, the excavations at Baggio 1
were targeted at understanding community organisation, functional variation
between pit houses of distinct sizes, and inter-household differentiation. I
demonstrate how the oversized House 1 emerged as the founding structure in
the settlement, hosting ceremonies of house renewal during the first part of the
site’s history. Later, as the settlement grew, House 1 persisted as the social
epicentre of the community. However, major differences emerged between the
hilltop, formally arranged residential sector around House 1 and the periphery of
the site. Although the earlier house renewal ceremonies were no longer practised,
the inhabitants of House 1 asserted their presence in the same dwelling for over
two centuries, maintaining the oversized structure as a conspicuous mark in the
landscape and potentially deriving special status from their descent of the site’s
founders. The excavations at Baggio 1 reveal a complex interplay of corporate
and aggrandising strategies to power in the southern Brazilian highlands
