Pre-historic ocupations humans at Maranhense coast: an study of Bacanga Shell Midden at São Luís Island-Maranhão / Ocupações humanas pré-históricas no litoral maranhense: um estudo arqueológico sobre o sambaqui do Bacanga na ilha de São Luís - Maranhão

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2008

RESUMO

The present dissertation discusses about the pre-historic occupation at São Luís Island-Maranhão, from the archaeological study realized at Bacanga Shell Mound, that appointed material vestiges of the fishing-collecting-hunters and ceramists populations that settled in the region, around 6.600 years before present and remained living this settlement until 900 before present. The research, based in theorical-methodological issues of the Landscape Archaeology and the Technicist Anthropology, united a variety of specialties, that were involved in the archaeological material process of date, in the analyses of ceramics, in the identification of archaeofaunistical vestiges, in the topographical, altimetrical research and in the execution of plants and drawings of this site, in the geoenvironmental characterization, besides the analyses of the archaeological information, mainly the ceramics remains. The description, interpretation and co-relation of the information obtained at Bacanga Shell Mound allowed to build inedited knowledge about the processes occurred in the pre-history of São Luís Island, testifying the existence and permanence, for a long period, of fishing-collecting-hunters and ceramists population adapted to estuary-sea environmental, whose diet involved the gathering of a variety of animals and gathering of some vegetable species, but, the, however, found support in the fishing and in the crustacean and mollusks as food. The focus of analyses was centered in the investigation of the way of life of this population, from the technicist and typological characterization of ceramics, considering that the presence of this kind of evidence in shell mounds has its geographical area really circumscribed in Brazil, involving majorly some regions in Pará, Maranhão, and, in a minor scale, Sergipe and Bahia. Besides that, as aspect of fundamental importance to the brazilian archaeology and that does not have parallel in the literature analyzed related to the discovery of a pre-shell mound ceramist settlement, whose, localization was the same of Bacanga shell mound, being localized in the older layers of the settlement, from 6.600 to 5.5000 years before present, with big concentration of ceramics, without, however, presenting an accumulation of food residues in the settlement floors. Making a summary, the insertion of this site, in spatial, temporal, and environmental scales, and the study of archaeological vestiges establish primary parameters to future researches in Maranhão, finding references of support and considering the long duration history of the first population in São Luís Island.

ASSUNTO(S)

landscape archaeology chronology ceramics cronologia são luís-ma sambaqui são luís arqueologia da paisagem shell mounds cerâmica estratigrafia

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

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