The “Sambaqui landscapes” project: Brief report

Abstract

Since at least 10.000 to 1.000 years BP, the Brazilian coast was occupied by sedentary communities that built monumental shellmounds interpreted as burial and ceremonial places, the sambaquis. One of the most intriguing aspects concerning sambaqui builders is the way they managed their landscape. Archaeobotany, the study of plant-people relationships in the past, is at the center of this debate. However, in 2018 a fire struck Museu Nacional (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro), the institution that introduced and leads archaeobotanical research on sambaquis, threatening to create a hiatus in this discussion. In the tragedy, one of the most important archaeobotanical reference collections in Brazil was destroyed. In this research, we aimed to build archaeobotanical reference collections related to sambaqui landscapes, contributing to the recovery of Museu Nacional’s investigative capability in the area. So far, 39 samples have been collected for the wood and charcoal collections, 47 for the phytolith collection, 27 for the fruit and seed collections and 22 for the pollen collection, accompanied by 72 exsiccatae.