AHRC-FAPESP MoU -Je Landscapes of southern Brazil: Ecology, History and Power in a transitional landscape during the Late Holocene

研究与墓葬纪念碑的到来相关的经济、社会和意识形态作用以及创造神圣的、建造的景观是研究美洲早期形成社会的核心主题。巴西南部的JE提供了一个难得的机会来了解生态、历史和力量在这一史前关键时期的景观创造和改造中的协同作用。在巴西南部，公元第二个千年之交是一个以文化转型和环境变化为标志的关键时期，这反映在居住地点的大量增加、高原地区的殡葬/仪式建筑的到来、大西洋热带雨林悬崖上人为土壤的发育以及大西洋海岸出现了人类葬礼图案。值得注意的是，这些文化变化与约100年内阿拉卡里亚森林(巴拉那松)的突然扩张大致同时，其速度和时机增加了人为原因的可能性。然而，由于三个主要原因：i)尽管在该地区进行了40多年的考古研究，但这些项目高度本地化和脱节的性质意味着这些丰富的考古数据是高度分散和支离破碎的--因此，任何潜在的大范围模式或联系都很难辨别。Ii)其次，尽管东非南部地区非常适合研究哥伦布前的人类-环境相互作用(即东非文化与阿拉伯丛林扩展之间的潜在关系)，但由于离文化序列足够近的地点缺乏古生态研究，这种关系迄今尚未被探索。三)最后，南部东非人是长期文化延续的最佳范例之一，将现代土著群体与他们在哥伦布之前的祖先联系在一起。不幸的是，考古学家和民族志学者之间缺乏合作，这意味着整合现有丰富的民族史学和民族志记录的巨大潜力尚未得到开发，以揭示东非文化的社会和空间组织的基本原则。为了解决这些重要问题，埃克塞特大学、雷丁大学和S大学的一个国际跨学科小组构思了巴西南部江西景观项目，作为一项研究方案，综合考古、民族志和古生态数据来源，调查巴西南部江西景观的创造和转变与社会复杂性的出现的关系。该项目将首次将广袤多样的江南生态景观的所有考古数据纳入一个全面的多层地理信息系统数据库。我们会在选定的地区进行更深入的考古、地形和地球物理勘测，并在不同环境下的东西向纵向断面进行挖掘，以取得区域、年代和功能的数据。将收集和分析所有可获得的和相关的民族历史和民族志数据，以寻找有助于我们解释考古记录的社会和空间组织的共同基本原则。同时，我们将从湖泊/沼泽中提取沉积物岩心，并对土壤-坑剖面进行采样，以重建这些地区过去两千年的植被和火灾历史。这将使我们能够：i)理清造成上个千年期间阿劳卡里亚森林扩张的自然和人为因素，以及ii)重建过去的土地管理做法。

The study of the economic, social and ideological roles associated with the arrival of burial monuments and the creation of sacred, built landscapes is a core theme in researching Early Formative societies of the Americas. The southern Je of Brazil provides an exceptional opportunity to understand the synergy of ecology, history and power in the creation and transformation of landscapes in this pivotal period of prehistory. In southern Brazil, the turn of the second millennium A.D. was a critical period marked by cultural transitions and environmental changes, which was reflected in a major increase in habitation sites, the arrival of mortuary/ceremonial architecture in the highlands, the development of anthropogenic soils in the Atlantic rainforest escarpment, and the appearance of Je funerary patterns along the Atlantic coast. Significantly, these cultural changes are broadly contemporaneous with the abrupt expansion of Araucaria forest (Paraná pine) within ~100 years, the rapidity and timing of which raises the possibility of an anthropogenic cause. However, little synthetic interpretation of the southern proto-Je has been carried out for three main reasons: i) Firstly, despite more than forty years of archaeological research in the region, the highly localised and disconnected nature of these projects means that this wealth of archaeological data is highly dispersed and fragmentary - consequently, any potential broad-scale patterns or connections are difficult to discern. ii) Secondly, although the southern Je region is ideally suited for the investigation of pre-Columbian human-environment interactions (i.e., the potential relationship between the Je culture and Araucaria forest expansion), such relationships have thus far been unexplored due to the paucity of palaeoecological studies from sites close enough to the cultural sequences. iii) Finally, the southern Je constitute one of the best examples of long-term cultural continuity, linking modern indigenous groups with their pre-Columbian ancestors. Unfortunately, the lack of collaboration between archaeologists and ethnographers has meant that the enormous potential for integrating the existing rich ethnohistoric and ethnographic records, to reveal the underlying principles of social and spatial organization of Je culture, has not yet been exploited. To address these important issues, the Je Landscapes of southern Brazil Project has been conceived by an international, interdisciplinary team at Exeter, Reading and São Paulo Universities as a research programme, integrating archaeological, ethnographical and palaeoecological data sources, to investigate the creation and transformation of southern Je landscapes in relation to the emergence of social complexity. The project will integrate, for the first time, all archaeological data from the vast and ecologically diverse southern Je landscapes into a comprehensive multilayered GIS database. In selected regions, where the co-PIs have already carried out pilot studies, we will conduct more intensive archaeological, topographical and geophysical surveys, along with excavations at selected sites, throughout a longitudinal E-W transect in different environments to acquire regional, chronological and functional data. All accessible and relevant ethnohistorical and ethnographic data will be collected and analyzed to search for common underlying principles of Je social and spatial organization that help us interpret the archaeological record. In parallel, we will retrieve sediment cores from lakes/bogs, and sample soil-pit profiles, to reconstruct the vegetation and fire histories of these regions for the last two millennia. This will allow us to: i) disentangle natural versus anthropogenic factors responsible for the expansion of the Araucaria forest that occurred during the last millennium, and ii) reconstruct past land-management practices.