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

对与埋葬纪念碑的到来和神圣的建筑景观的创造相关的经济，社会和意识形态作用的研究是研究美洲早期形成社会的核心主题。巴西南部的Je提供了一个特殊的机会，可以了解生态，历史和力量在史前这个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关键时期，标志着文化转型和环境变化，这反映在居住地点的大量增加，高原地区的丧葬/仪式建筑的到来，大西洋雨林悬崖的人为土壤的发展，以及Je葬礼模式沿着大西洋海岸的出现。值得注意的是，这些文化变化与南洋杉森林（巴拉那松）在约100年内的突然扩张大致同时发生，其速度和时间增加了人为原因的可能性。然而，对南部原始Je的综合解释很少，主要有三个原因：i）首先，尽管该地区的考古研究已经超过40年，这些项目的高度局部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零碎的-因此，任何潜在的大规模模式或联系都很难辨别。ii）其次，虽然Je南部地区非常适合研究前哥伦布时期的人类与环境的相互作用（即，Je文化与南洋杉森林扩张之间的潜在关系），但由于缺乏足够接近文化序列的遗址的古生态研究，这种关系迄今为止尚未被探索。最后，南部的Je构成了长期文化连续性的最佳范例之一，将现代土著群体与他们的前哥伦布祖先联系在一起。不幸的是，考古学家和民族志学家之间缺乏合作，这意味着整合现有丰富的民族历史和民族志记录，揭示Je文化的社会和空间组织的基本原则的巨大潜力尚未被利用。为了解决这些重要问题，巴西南部的Je景观项目由埃克塞特，阅读和圣保罗大学的国际跨学科团队构思，作为一项研究计划，整合考古，民族志和古生态学数据源，调查与社会复杂性的出现有关的Je南部景观的创造和转变。该项目将首次将Je南部广阔的生态多样性景观的所有考古数据整合到一个全面的多层GIS数据库中。在选定的地区，共同研究所已经进行了试点研究，我们将进行更深入的考古，地形和地球物理调查，沿着在选定的地点进行挖掘，在不同的环境中，在整个纵向E-W样带，以获取区域，年代和功能数据。所有可访问的和相关的民族历史和人种学数据将被收集和分析，以寻找共同的基本原则Je社会和空间组织，帮助我们解释考古记录。同时，我们将从湖泊/沼泽中检索沉积物岩心，并对土坑剖面进行采样，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）解开自然与人为因素负责的南洋杉森林的扩张发生在上个千年，和ii）重建过去的土地管理实践。

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.