Rethinking stereotypes and the history of research on Jê populations in South Brazil: An interdisciplinary point of view

Abstract

During the last 120 years, many researchers have tried to define the human populations that inhabited southern Brazil and neighboring areas, including the state of São Paulo in Brazil and the Province of Misiones in Argentina. Certain archaeological assemblages were tied to hunter-gatherers (i.e., Umbu and Humaitá traditions; Dias, 1994; Hoeltz, 1997) and generalized hunter-gatherers and ceramists (i.e., Vieira tradition; Brochado, 1984; González, 1998) as well as Jê-speaking (Taquara, Casa de Pedra and Itararé traditions; Brochado, 1984; González, 1998) and Tupi-Guarani speaking (Guarani groups; Brochado, 1984, 1989; Noelli, 1993, 1996a, 1998) tropical agriculturalists and ceramists. In the last 35 years, data were coherently tabulated, synthesized and ordered into sets called archaeological traditions (Terminologia, 1976), strictly defined according to cultural-historic, diffusionist, cultural and ecological determinism. This program was coordinated by Betty Meggers and Clifford Evans for South and Central America (see critical analysis in Barreto, 1998; Faria, 1989; Funari, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1998; Lathrap, 1970a, 1973; E. Neves, 1995, 1998; W. Neves, 1988; Noelli, 1993, 1996a, b, 1998; Roosevelt, 1991a, b, 1995). © 2005 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.