Ancestral Waters: Material Culture, Notion of Transformation and Shamanism in the Stilt Villages in Eastern Amazonia

Abstract

This work aims to apply the theories of new materialities to the study of the material culture of the Formoso stilt village, a pre-colonial settlement from the ninth–tenth centuries ad, located in the Baixada Maranhense. Appliqués of the pottery bowls at this archaeological site present cosmological information regarding the transformation or metamorphosis of bodies, aspects that are fertile for the discussion of shamanism in the lowlands of South America, especially the Amazon. Classic concepts of anthropological ethnography applied to archaeology are used, contributing to the discussion on the diversity of ways to manufacture the body in the Amazon in its easternmost portion, such as that of the Master of Animals, a supernatural entity metamorphosed by the shaman and who could also have been part of the cosmology of the lake peoples of Maranhão, Brazil. Two artifacts depicting beings that have their feet turned backwards may be associated with the Curupira, thus evidencing a long-lasting history of this supernatural being that was recorded both in colonial documentation and in indigenous ethnography.