Getting to the Root of the Question: rethinking the role of cultivated plants in t...
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Getthing to the Root of the Question: Rethinking the role of cultivated plant use in the Amazonian past through Ethnoarchaeology amongst the Asurini of the Xingu River
Full text
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| Author(s): |
Leandro Matthews Cascon
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Paulo. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia (MAE) |
| Defense date: | 2017-06-27 |
| Examining board members: |
Rui Sergio Sereni Murrieta;
Cláudia Regina Plens;
Helbert Medeiros Prado;
Veronica Wesolowski de Aguiar e Santos;
Fabiola Andrea Silva
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| Advisor: | Rui Sergio Sereni Murrieta |
| Abstract | |
The present work constitutes an effort in understanding in what ways do the cultivated and lost plants of the Asurini of the Xingu River (Amazon) play important social, symbolic and identitary roles for this people, and how these plants are incorporated by the Asurini in narratives regarding their recent past. Through fieldwork in the villages of Itaaka and Kwatinemu Novo, the research utilized the following approaches: a bibliographical survey regarding Asurini agriculture; the observation of agricultural practices in current cultivating fields and the visiting of old fields; the conducting of semi-structured interviews with Asurini women and men; the analysis of botanical microvestiges (starch grains and phyoliths) from manihot (Manihot esculenta Crantz) processing stages observed in the field, especially of flour production. The data obtained by these different methods are discussed regarding the social role that currently cultivated plants and plants lost in recent history exert on the Asurini in modern days. It is also discussed in what way can the study of agriculture and cultivated plant use amongst the Asurini in the past be a fructiferous approach for reflecting on the present and future of this people. (AU) | |
| FAPESP's process: | 13/22373-3 - Getting to the Root of the Question: rethinking the role of cultivated plants in the Amazonian past through Archaeobotany and Ethnoarchaeology |
| Grantee: | Leandro Matthews Cascon |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate |