Archaeology of the ground: counter-cartographies of Afro-Atlantic memories and territorialities in São Carlos (SP)

• Grant number: 24/08060-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: April 01, 2025
• End date: August 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Architecture and Town Planning
• Principal Investigator: David Moreno Sperling
• Grantee: Fabiana Oliveira Palmeira
• Host Institution: Instituto de Arquitetura e Urbanismo de São Carlos (IAU). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research project analyses the structuring of the socio-spatial relations of black individuals in the face of the processes of colonization and continued expropriation and, more specifically, the meanings attached to houses, backyards and urban quilombos as documentary and archaeological supports of Afro-Atlantic know-how. Recognizing the importance of the ground as the territorialization of their cultural heritages and the reformulation of their organization, the essential latencies of space are revealed as the locus of collective memory and the seat of this dynamic cultural heritage, which can be uncovered through traces and records. The general aim of this research is to draw up a panorama of Afro-diasporic practices in the municipality of São Carlos (SP), based on orality and joint reading between the public and private archives of black families, in order to counter-cartograph territorialities, ways of life and the apprehension of the city by these individuals under the spiral time of Afro-Atlantic matrices, highlighting associations and tensions between the preservation of memory in these two ways. To this end, it uses the instruments of historical research and the field as a basis for questions, namely: [a] how are memory and orality represented in the institutional documentary media? [b] how are urban black territories configured, organized and structured as a territorialization of cultural heritage and resistance? and finally, [c] how can we counter-cartograph the know-how contained in these territories, recognizing orality and the ground as archaeological archives?