ON CONTACTS AND BORDERS: AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL APPROACH

Abstract

This article proposes a debate on cultural contacts in the Amazon region in pre-colonial times. Ethnohistorical information and archaeological data obtained through surveys conducted in the lower Tapajós river are confronted with other contexts in the lower Amazon, in order to substantiate the hypothesis that the wide distribution of the Incised-and-Punctate ceramics indicate regional cultural interaction between social groups in a cultural network of shared cosmologies. This is realized through the study of material culture socially produced and signified, which is understood as an indicator of social ties that transposed geographical boundaries, were vehicles of cultural identity, and active agents of social belonging. Similarities and differences between groups that occupied the region are examined through landscape use patterns and material culture, using the ceramics from the Alvorada archaeological site in the city of Itaituba, Pará, as a case study. Keywords: Archaeology of the lower Tapajós river, material culture, cul­tural interactions and boundaries.