Sambaquis: journey to ancient indigenous dwellings in the Amazon – 03/13/2023 – Fundamental Science

One of the most frequent questions an archaeologist hears is: “Wow, but why are you interested in such old things? What are they for?”. Well, it’s because we, archaeologists, believe that one of the keys to the conservation of ecosystems in the future lies underground. We tried to identify which plants were cultivated in the past, which were the sources of protein for the population at the time and how houses were built.

The art of archeology is teamwork. Ours, made up of archaeologists, biologists, geographers, anthropologists, teachers, mostly women, aims to map and study the sambaquis that extend over a 500-kilometer strip along the Amazon River, from Terra Santa to Porto de Moz , in Pará, in a project called Open Windows for the Biodiversity of the Lower Amazon, JABBA. The shell mounds — ancient indigenous dwellings made of earth and shells, a construction now in disuse in the country — are among the oldest archaeological sites in South America, dating back to 8,000 years ago.

On the coast of Brazil there are several studies on them, but in the interior of the Amazon these sites have still been little investigated. On the lower Amazon River, for example, the last excavation took place in the 1980s, in the Taperinha sambaqui.

The good conservation of these sites is due to the calcium carbonate of the shells, which preserves the remains of animals (fish bones, vertebrae, teeth) and plants (fragments of tree trunks, seeds, pollen). The identification of these species allows not only to reconstruct the surrounding environment, but also to document how these landscapes have changed over time. Now we seek to understand how the sambaquis were formed, when and which people passed through these places. Each archaeological layer is, for us, like a chapter in a book.

Our team of 21 people has just returned from the sambaqui Ponta do Jauari, located between the municipalities of Curuá and Alenquer, in Pará. This site was discovered 83 years ago by the German missionary Protásio Frikel, who collected dozens of tube-shaped ceramic pipes decorated in a very particular way there, the “tubular pipes”. The excavation of this site only took place in 2022 and several of these pipes were found. We lived for 15 days on a liner boat that navigates the Amazonian rivers, sleeping in hammocks tied one on top of the other, forming bunk beds and even bunk beds that made any privacy impossible: when one woke up to go to the bathroom, everyone knew. Our daily life was surrounded by colorful plastic mugs and plates, boots and slippers scattered everywhere. With so many people, it was necessary to set up an organization of teams that took turns in caring for food and cleaning.

On the surface of the sambaqui, we identified bones of manatees, pirarucu, turtles, as well as a huge amount of shellfish — an indication of the population’s diet. Today the region is also made up of various edible plants such as water lilies, aninga and water hyacinth (formerly used to produce salt). Although the current references we have about shellfish consumption come from coastal areas, it is known that until a few years ago shellfish (from rivers) were also consumed in the Amazon, and their disappearance from meals was due to the European invasion, which little by little transformed and even destroyed recipes of indigenous origin. Going back to the past, rediscovering these ancient foods and ways of growing them could be a key to rethinking more sustainable and environmentally conscious strategies, something indigenous peoples have been talking about for decades. Windows of the past that project into the future, the sambaquis hold some lessons for the conservation of the planet.

Since its emergence in the country, archeology has been an elitist and closed discipline. Until the 1980s, excavations were usually led by one or two archaeologists, with the rest being “anonymous” workers. This format of “scientific doing” had to be rethought: an archaeological site is not the property of a researcher, its true guardians are its residents. Today, our team involves university researchers and students, public school teachers, residents and agents from the Environment secretariats.

On the next trip, the group should get even bigger, as we intend to take riverside high school students with us. We believe that the excavations are an opportunity to motivate children and young people in the region to see higher education and a career as a scientist as one of the possible paths. Archeology only makes sense when it is part of the present and is concerned with the future.

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Gabriela Prestes Carneiro is a professor of the Archeology course at the Federal University of Western Pará (UFOPA).

Lana Guimarães and Vitória dos Santos Campos are archaeologists, master’s students at the Federal University of Pará and JABBA scholars.

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