Keywords

1 Introduction

In 1994, in the first issue of our Art History and Archaeology Journal, I published an overview of the discipline (Funari 1994a, b). In the period, Brazilian archaeology has evolved in ways impossible to forecast back then, even though the main thrust for its advancement was very much clear: democracy and social inclusion. Indeed, as we will see in this article, Brazilian archaeology is an early endeavor, starting in the nineteenth century. (Ferreira 2010), but it has changed overtime and the main thrust has been the struggle for justice and equality. The last 20 years has witnessed a revolution in the discipline in the country, with the multiplication of fieldwork and the explosion of publications within and without the country. If there was a cautious optimism in 1994, even the most daring expectations have been surpassed. Before starting to deal with those achievements, I must address two issues: my own stand and a brief overview of the trajectory of archaeology in Brazil .

2 A Word on Brazil

It is useful to introduce the reader to the country. Brazil is a huge country. Its area (8,514,877 km2) is twice that of the European Union (4,324,782 km), the population is now more than 190 million people and the GDP is US$2.493 trillion. The number of archaeologists is difficult to establish, but from a few hundred twenty years ago it is now probably in the thousands, most of them in Cultural Research Management (Schaan and Almeida 2009).

3 A Social History of the Discipline

History of science is always a controversial subject. There is a long and respected tradition of considering science as the accumulation of knowledge, from generation to generation, building on previous achievements and findings. On the shoulders of giants, even small steps may be considered as advancements, as considered our Renaissance masters. This approach has been described by some as putting the main emphasis on internal factors affecting changes in any scholarly discipline. Indeed, Eratosthenes in the third century BC would not be able to calculate the diameter of our planet without the previous experiments and reasoning of earlier mathematicians and geographers (Bozic and Ducloy 2008). He has built on previous ideas and there is no dispute about that. But two main issues are to be added: Alexandrian context and setting, on the one hand, and the destiny of his ideas. The Alexandrian Library as scholarly institution resulting from the Alexandrian imperial move away from the poleis of ancient Greece is a key factor to explain his achievement, much beyond the limited scope of small towns and directly related to empire and world view. It was a move dependent on a shift from town to world, form polis to cosmopolis (Macleod 2005).

In a few centuries though planet earth was no longer considered round or Eratosthenes precise circumference of the earth measures were considered right. For several hundred years, the planet turned flat and no Greek mathematician, geographer or philosopher, even though known, were enough to change a perceived view of earth as a completely difference place. Science was not building on the predecessors, but on changed tenets. So, more important than the accumulation of knowledge, the historical, social, and political contexts are essential to determining and explaining changes in science. This is also called an external approach to history of science, stressing how social circumstances prevail in shaping scientific thought, as put Thomas Patterson (2001) in discussing the social history of anthropology in the United States and the main guide of the approach used in this essay. In continental philosophical terms, taking Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Derrida, and Foucault, among others, this stand can also be considered as a way of focusing on what is possible to think and say in specific circumstances. Whatever the level of sophistication of our understanding, be it the pragmatic one of the Anglo-Saxon philosophical stance or the more intricate and abstruse one of continental, German, and French hermeneutical strings (Hunter 2006), it is clear that there is more than the mere accumulation of knowledge, the main argument of this article. Brazilian archaeology cannot be disentangled from Brazilian history.

4 Brazilian Archaeology: A Historical Overview

Brazilian archaeology is one of the earliest, even though this may seem unreasonable. It is indeed difficult to accept that Brazil was early on concerned with archaeology, but Napoleon played in this respect, as in many others, a special role. Brazil was part of Portugal for several centuries, producing first Brazil wood, and then sugarcane and precious metals and stones in the first three centuries of colonization, starting in 1500. Napoleon’s onslaught in Europe menaced old regime monarchies everywhere and the Portuguese crown decided, with the decisive support of the British, to move the capital of the colonial power from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro in 1808, a unique move from center to periphery in modern times. All the arrays of power were then established in the former colony, elevated to part of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and Algarves and siege of power, as the capital and center of all the other institutions, such as the court, library, museum, and much more. Within a few years though the powerful Napoleon was defeated and the Portuguese court faced the challenge of returning to Lisbon. After some hesitation, John VI decided to go back to Europe, leaving the heir to the throne in Brazil, Peter, who would in 1822 declare Brazil independent from Portugal. Peter I established Brazilian archaeology, bringing to the country the first archaeological artifacts, such as Egyptian mommies and other material (Funari and Funari 2010). Later on, Peter decided to return to Portugal and reclaim his throne, as Peter IV of Portugal, leaving his son Peter II as emperor of Brazil, reigning from the 1830s until 1889.

Archaeology flourished during this period. Peter II was an enlightened absolutist, in the mold of Peter the Great of Russia, his namesake. Inspired by him, he founded his own Petersburg (Petrópolis) and all the arrays of ancient glory, thanks to archaeology. If Moscow was the third Rome, as considered Peter the Great and the Russians, Rio de Janeiro was to be Rome in the tropics, and archaeology was the tool for this. Peter II married to a Neapolitan princess and got archaeological material from Pompeii, Etruria and much more. The National Museum in Rio de Janeiro aimed at rivaling with the British and Louvre Museums and thus sidelining former colonial power Lisbon. The Emperor established the Brazilian Academy (Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, literally the Brazilian Historical and Geographical Institute) a counterpart to the French Académie (Ferreira 1999). In this program archaeology played a special role, aiming at establishing both Old World (Classical and Egyptian archaeology) and New World roots (prehistoric archaeology) . For several decades, archaeology was at the centre of the Brazilian imperial ideology and this explains its early development. The demise of the monarchy led to a steep decline of archaeology during the early oligarchic republic (1889–1930). The imperial thrust was followed by a deep horror indigenae, or fear of native roots, pushing archaeology to a most humble endeavor pursuit. In the 1930s, the strong influx of nationalism gave a new impetus to history and heritage : the colonial ideal should serve to build the nation. The colonial period was chosen as the one defining Brazilian society, particularly during the fascist New State dictatorship period (1937–1945), but archaeology as a scholarly endeavor started in this period as a reaction against this move (Funari 1999).

Paulo Duarte (1899–1984) was a key figure in this move (Funari and Silva 2007). Duarte was a democratic political activist during the later years of the oligarchic republic and contributed to the founding of the first Brazilian university, the University of São Paulo (1934), modeled on a humanist approach to scholarship. Among the scholars in this academic endeavor, the young Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) played a vital role, as did Jéan Gagé (1902–1986) and Fernand Braudel (1902–1985), all of them later to become leading French intellectuals. Democrat Duarte did not stand though dictatorial rule (1937–1945) and preferred the exile. During this period, his humanist ideals led him to American and French anthropology and to the struggle for human rights, particularly concerning native peoples. Musée de l’Homme served as the model for considering indigenous peoples as equally important as any other humans. As a dreamer, Duarte had a dream: setting up a Museum of the American Man, inspired by the Parisian outlet. Upon returning to Brazil , Duarte spearheaded a movement for Indian rights and as a consequence of prehistoric archaeology , during the liberal period between 1945 and 1964. He mobilized ordinary people around popular science courses on prehistory, archaeology, and the American man, as it was then called (but man in Portuguese means, as in French homme, a human being). He was able to set up a Prehistory Commission and then a Prehistory Institute, which he was able to link with the University of São Paulo, a very important move, so that archaeology could for the first time become a scholarly endeavor in Brazil. Due to his friendship with Paul Rivet (1876–1958), Duarte was able to lure for the first time professional archaeologists to Brazil, Joseph (died 1977) and Annette Laming-Emperaire (1917–1977), disciples of Rivet and leading pre-historians who studied rock art as evidence of human culture, as opposed to the traditional high and low art (Poloni 2008). This was part of the humanist move stemming from Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, and André Leroi-Gourhan, all of them stressing, in different ways, how humans are all capable of representing the world through symbols. Again, prehistory was not only a subject worth pursuing for intellectual reason, but also as statement on humanity itself: we are all culture bearers. It is not coincidental, that rock art played a special role in this, for drawing in caves and inscriptions on rocks reveal the most human capacity of communication. All humans master language.

Duarte and his humanist archaeology flourished for a while. Thanks to his efforts and to allies engaged in similar pursuits, congress approved the first and only law protecting archaeological remains, in 1961. However, the country would suffer under military rule for long 21 years (1964–1985) and humanism, prehistory, and archaeology would direly be affected. The country faced a wave of persecution, exile, killings, missing people (Funari 1994c). Former liberal presidents were persecuted (two of them died almost simultaneously (Juscelino Kubitschek the August 22, 1976 and João Goulart the December 6, 1976), three of the most recent presidents were persecuted during the period (Fernando Henrique Cardoso went into exile; Lula was harassed; Dilma Rousseff was put into jail and tortured). Duarte and the Pre-History Institute he founded were also victims: Duarte was expelled from the University in 1969 and the Institute was assigned to an ally of the authorities.

Soon after the military coup (April 1, 1964), a National Archaeological Program (Pronapa) was set up in Washington, DC, in close coordination with the new Brazilian military authorities and under the leadership of the Smithsonian Institution, under Clifford Evans and Betty Meggers. Pronapa set up a surveying program active all over the country, particularly concerned with strategic areas, contributing to the effort of controlling the territory in the context of the Cold War. The empirical and theoretical tenets were most reactionary and anti-humanist, promoting the concept that natives were lazy and the country dully poor, due to natural conditions (Noelli and Ferreira 2007). The first 5 years (1965–1970) were followed by a second period in the Amazon basin (Pronapaba), where there were guerilla fighters against the dictatorship . During the long dictatorial rule, a network of archaeologists brought up in those dire circumstances shaped the field, hindering freedom and humanism.

The struggle against the dictatorship gathered pace in the 1970s and in 1979 an amnesty conceded by the military enabled several exiles to return, political parties were soon legalized and direct elections for state officials in 1982 enabled a wider range of political and scholarly activities. The end of military rule in March 1985 thus marked a new phase for the country and for archaeology. The discipline had an odd position within academia. During the last few years of dictatorship , the humanities and social sciences played an increasing role in developing critical thinking and independent-minded scholarship. Sociologist Fernando Henrique Cardoso, upon returning from exile, contributed with several others—economists, anthropologists, political scientists, and philosophers—to the development of independent and well-informed scholarship. Cardoso later on would be twice elected president of the republic (1994–2001). Archaeology, however, was affected by two factors: the need for funding and for permission by state offices to carry out fieldwork. This meant that funding was channeled to fieldwork concerned with empirical and government-friendly approaches and subjects. Permission for fieldwork was also biased. It is interesting to note that anthropology faced similar constraints, considering that both disciplines dealt with natives (dead or alive) and with areas with guerrilla fighters, but anthropologists never shunned from confronting power and indeed were at the forefront of the democratic movement inside and outside academia. Archaeologists trained under military tenets and sponsorship or simply sympathetic to dictatorial rule, sometimes actively taking part in the persecutions of scholars tainted the discipline and still today, 40 years after the heyday of their power, some of them are around hovering over the discipline. This is no surprise, considering that several political supporters of the military are still in key positions in parliament and ministries and other positions of power. However, archaeology is an odd example in Brazilian academia, for there is no such senior persecutors and military allies in power positions in other social and human sciences (Funari 1994d).

Duarte was expelled from the university but he established a strong intellectual position in favor of humanism, the respect for human rights and a discipline in close relationship with anthropological interpretation of material culture. The influx of French archaeology was thus particularly relevant for both theoretical and practical reasons. In terms of interpretive influence, the anthropological and semiotic approaches enabled the flowering of interpretive frameworks emphasizing native ingenuity, in clear opposition to the official line of Pronapa that Indians were backward inhabitants of a stagnant rain forest environment. Furthermore, field methods introduced by the French included attention to natural archaeological layers (in opposition to artificial ones used by Pronapians) and to elaborate methods of recording rock art (in opposition to the lack of attention to this evidence by Pronapians, who were not at ease with symbols at all). Then again, in terms of practical issues, the French had a democratic context back home and fostered the collaboration of Brazilian scholars with a wider intellectual setting and last but not least providing much needed funding. This explains the early innovative work of Niède Guidon, a former pupil of Duarte, who was exiled in Paris, got in touch with a plethora of intellectuals and was able to return to Brazil in the 1970s and set up a pioneering Museum of the American Human in the most remote and poor area of the country: this was a scholarly and political move at the same time. Others were also exploring the opportunities opened by the demise of authoritarian rule, as the case of maroon archaeology developed early on by Carlos Magno Guimarães in the early 1980s in Minas Gerais or the study of Jesuit Missions in Rio Grande do Sul by Arno Álvarez Kern in the same period. French humanist archaeology was also important in the development of classical archaeology in Brazil , thanks not least to Haiganuch Sarian, Brazilian member of the French School at Athens, who introduced a plethora of French-speaking leading archaeologists and scholars as lecturers contributing to bringing up a new generation with critical thought, again from the 1980s. A few names reveal a lot about the importance of those influences, such as Jean Bottero, Elena Cassin, Renée Ginouvès, and Tony Hackens.

The restoration of civilian rule (1985), the new constitution (1988), and the devolution of powers to states and municipalities led to new developments in academia in general, with strong effects in archaeology. During the dark years of discretionary rule, consultation with the people was not in the agenda, but one of the first symbolic acts of the new civilian government was to declare the archaeological remains of Palmares , the large seventeenth century maroon, national heritage . This was a clear hint of the new compromises of democratic rule with society and particularly with those left out of official history, particularly those exploited, such as Africans, Indians, but also other persecuted people, such as witches, Jews, and Muslims, all members of the famous seventeenth polity. This move was a shock for Brazilian archaeologists trained in the Pronapa school , but the message that times changed did not escape them. The new democratic constitution established a series of general principles affecting environmental and heritage protection and thus concerning archaeology in new and revolutionary ways. During military rule, dams, roads, highways, nuclear stations, and everything else were built with no injunction protecting the environment or heritage. Freedom led also to the passing of an increasing array of legal requirements for any public or private building intervention and this resulted in a huge increase in the number of archaeological surveys, and tests and digs mandated by law. In the last 15 years or so, field archaeology has multiplied as never before and several private cultural research management (CRM) firms sprouted in the country. This means that archaeology is now a practice reaching all the 27 states and the Federal District of the Union, a most popular endeavor, as attested by its presence in a number of publications available in newsstands all over the country.

The second revolution resulting from freedom has been in scholarly archaeology. Higher education was very late in Brazil, in relation not only to Europe, but even considering Spanish colonies: the first Universities in the Spanish America were founded in the sixteenth century, while the first two Law schools in Brazil were set up as late as the 1827, a few years after independence (1822). Strange as it may be, even when Rio de Janeiro was capital of the Portuguese Empire (1808–1821), no higher education plan was set up, for the Portuguese court was from the start keen to return to Portugal as soon as the menace from Napoleon was over (1815), even if it stayed in Rio several more years deciding what to do. The Brazilian monarchy (1822–1889) was grounded on slavery and higher education developed late, with some isolated schools of medicine and engineering. The oligarchic republic (1889–1930) continued this tradition of isolated schools, the first university was founded in 1934, as already mentioned, thanks to the efforts of some intellectuals, including Paulo Duarte. Other universities followed, supported by the Union, states, and religious denominations (such as several Pontifical Catholic Universities, and later Protestant ones). Graduate courses were established during military rule, following the American system of MAs and PhDs, so that when civilian rule was reestablished in 1985 scholarship was already gathering strength. Archaeology was established as a graduate course, first within history or other sciences, such as social sciences. The first graduate course on archaeology as such was established at the University of São Paulo in 1990. Academic archaeology has increased exponentially and several hundred MAs and PhDs have been produced, several of them in close contact with archaeology abroad and well acquainted with both theoretical and empirical discussion in Europe, the USA, and beyond.

5 Recent Trends

It is difficult to discuss in any depth archaeological research topics and issues, considering the high number of publications and the huge variety of subjects. Perhaps the most useful way of discussing them is addressing a series of main subjects, such as early human settlement, rock art, other prehistoric issues, historical archaeology , classical archaeology , underwater archaeology , and public archaeology . A note on the role of women in Brazilian archaeology is also relevant, as we shall see.

Prehistoric studies are the oldest in Brazil and the earliest one were concerned with very early human remains, carried out by the Dane Peter Lund (1801–1880) in Minas Gerais. Due to Lund’s Christian stand, the evidence linking humans and extinct fauna was too much for him and he decided to abandon fieldwork. However, today discussion about the early presence of humans in Brazil is the most popular archaeological subject both within and outside academia. This is no wonder though: there is nationalist stint in the interest toward the subject. The search for the earliest human presence in the New World has gained traction during the heyday of military rule, when two early proposals were set up by two ladies of very different outlook: Conceição Beltrão (b. 1933?) and Niède Guidon (b. 1933). While Guidon went to Paris during the dictatorship , the young Conceição married to Minister Hélio Beltrão (1916–1997), a leading member of the establishment, who signed the infamous Institutional Act number 5 (AI5), 1968, clearing the way for open dictatorship. As a colleague minister declared in the occasion, Colonel Passarinho, “let’s put aside any restrain from our conscience.”

Beltrão has studied with Leroi-Gourhan and Laming-Emperaire in Paris and got degrees in Rio de Janeiro, before the introduction of the modern graduate courses in Brazil (her doctorate was granted in 1969 in Niterói). She worked with a French mission in Minas Gerais (1970–1977), at Lagoa Santa, then worked in other early sites in Bahia, and today she is senior emeritus research of the Brazilian CNRS (CNPq). Her name has been made in two main areas of prehistoric research, being her interpretations controversial in both of them: early human settlement and rock art. Her long-standing work at Central, Bahia, since 1982, has produced evidence, according to her publications, of homo erectus presence. Beltrão proposed that homo erectus came from Southern Africa during a Glacial period, walking over a ice bridge, as she called it, so that humans were in South America at least 500,000 years ago. The evidence has never been convincing enough, so that her proposal has not been included in mainstream archaeological narrative in Brazil , scholarly or otherwise.

This is not the case with two other scholarly fieldwork and interpretive proposals, grounded on very different evidence and theoretical frameworks. At the deep Brazilian northeast, in the poorest backland and backward area of the country, Niède Guidon led a French mission in a very charming natural haven, the Serra da Capivara, a hilly region. The French mission went there to study rock art, but one of the first amazing results of the fieldwork in the 1970s were the very early carbon dating of fires possibly associated with human remains. Those finds run counter the then accepted view that humans entered the Americas in the last few thousand years, considering the so-called Clovis evidence from the North America and dated some 10,000 years BC. This meant that any earlier dates, particularly in South America, were putting into question the whole model for the settlement of the Americas. Guidon and her team were able to study a whole series of lithic artifacts and to gather momentum in Brazil , in the wake of the decline of authoritarian rule in the country and then with the restoration of civilian rule. This overall context fostered Guidon’s claim that Brazil produced the earliest human settlement in the Americas, dated from the 40,000 s BP and beyond. In the late 1980s, Guidon was for a while research associate of the University of Campinas (Unicamp), already the second best in the country and the most innovative, research oriented and concerned with reaching out and popularizing science. This meant that in a few years, Guidon and her stand fostering Brazilian national pride led to the general acceptance in Brazil of the fact that Brazil has produced the earliest human archaeological remains. Today, in a mere three decade period, all Brazilian school textbooks refer to the very early Serra da Capivara site . It is not only the most popular archaeological subject, but the only one widely known by every child and most adults. However, several Brazilian archaeologists and the overwhelming foreign ones do not accept that the early dates refer to human settlement or that the rocks studied by her team are lithic artifacts. No recent volume on the settlement of the Americas by English-speakers accepts those dates. Guidon’s theories for the possible arrival of humans in Brazil, via sea-fearing in Pacific as early as 70,000 BP have also been subjected to criticism.

The other scholarly study of early human settlement stem from a biological approach. Walter Alves Neves (b. 1958?), a biologist and expert in human skeletons, has been studying for quite several years actual human remains from the earliest period (that is some 9,000 BC). He decided to study the oldest skeletons and to use a series of statistical tools to understand the possible origins of those most ancient inhabitants of Brazil (beyond dispute, as the bones were dated around the 9,000 BC period). In the last few years, Neves was able to publish a series of papers on those skeletons and propose a new understanding of the dynamics of settlement of the Americas. According to his studies, skeletons prove that there has been an earlier population of people with African features, substituted completely later on by the Asiatic migration of the ancestors of American Indians. He was able to introduce the second most popular feature of Brazilian archaeology , after Guidon’s early Brazilian: Luzia, the Brazilian Lucy , represented as an African woman. Even though his studies are supported by the most prestigious Brazilian scholarly agency (São Paulo State Science Foundation) and he has published in several English-language journals, again his theories are absent in most recent foreign volumes. Furthermore, in postmodern times it is not widely accept that it is possible to discern skeletons that accurately. Politically then it is also difficult to accept the idea that Indians replaced Africans, implying indirectly that Indians exterminated Africans and they were not the first inhabitants of the Americas (and thus no less foreign as the modern colonizers). Whatever the case may be, there is no doubt that the early settlement of Brazil is a most relevant and popular topic.

Rock art is also a most important topic and for two different reasons: people do enjoy rock paintings and it is a most elaborate archaeological topic. Again, all school textbooks do reproduce rock art to illustrate the chapter on the most ancient Brazilians and rock painting is also considered beautiful by Brazilians living in shanty towns and palaces alike. It is a difficult subject to study though. It is not easy to document it, and it was much more so until recent introduction of digital technology. It is even trickier to interpret it. Conceição Beltrão was a pioneer in proposing interpretations grounded on the possible use of hallucinogens by those painting the walls. Even though this was probably the case in several cases, it is a difficult avenue of interpretation for obvious reasons. The most enduring influence came from the French structuralism of Leroi-Gourhan and other linguistic interpretive schemes. Two leading schools developed since the 1970s, one in Minas Gerais, led by André Prous, and another one in the Northeast led by Guidon and Anne-Marie Pessis (b. 1952?), but also with other important scholars, such and Dénis and Águeda Vialou in Mato Grosso and Edithe Pereira in the Amazon basin. Guidon and Pessis fostered the establishment of so-called rock art traditions, trying to establishing styles over specific areas. Prous has mixed his training as classical ancient historian and his penchant for cataloging (a classical archaeology feature) to foster the production of a mass of documentation. Vialou represent the best French linguistic schools, as he stressed in an interview: L’art préhistorique est la manifestation de la pensée (L’Express, 13/12/2004). Indeed, prehistoric art is an expression of articulate human reasoning, in the best humanist French tradition and a most relevant approach for humans in general and for Brazilians in particular.

Other prehistoric issues are also relevant. In recent years, the Amazon basin is a most hot topic, for all the reasons and not least for environmental aspects. Since the 1950s and 1960s, Betty Meggers (1921–2012) and Donald Lathrap (1927–1990) were disputing the rain forest as hell for her and as just right for him. Meggers who died recently defended until her death not only that Latin American would always be backward and underdeveloped, but also that the rain forest was a false paradise, luring hardworking people to become lazy Indians. Lathrap first and then Anna Roosevelt (b. 1946) would challenge this and propose the Amazon as an environment fostering huge settlements. Roosevelt from the 1990s added gender issues to the equation and proposed an increased role for women in Brazilian prehistoric past. Others, as Eduardo Goes Neves (b. 1964?), have been focusing on fieldwork and tracking possible settlement patterns and migration routes, while Denise Schaan (b. 1962) focused on symbolism and Denise Cavalcante Gomes (b. 1962?) on fine tuning ceramic analysis and settlement patterns. Otherwise, the two traditional fields of lithic and pottery studies have been developing in a haphazard way. Both fields have been forged during the hay day of dictatorial rule and the culture history approach of finding out so-called traditions, equating sometimes lithic style with supposed ethnic groups, such as Umbu and Humaitá. Mutatis mutandis, the same applied to pottery studies, inventing Tupi-Guarani pottery and linking it to a linguistic group (Tupi-Guarani) and supposed ethnic groups. However, in the last few years there has been a steep increase in studies avoiding such traditional approaches in favor of more fluid and nuanced ones, taking into account social theory.

Historical archaeology developed late in Brazil . While it started in the USA as the study of WASP material culture in the 1960s, it was imported into Brazil in the late authoritarian period as the study of material culture after the arrival of the Portuguese (1500 to the present). The discipline started as in the USA as a conservative eulogy of the elites, ceramics, high architecture and beyond and in some quarters it is still so. However, from amnesty (1979) onwards there has been an increasing movement from the elites to ordinary people. The pioneering archaeological studies were carried out in the Jesuit missions in southern Brazil, aiming at recovering the way ordinary Guarany Indians and priests lived together. Maroon archaeology has started in the same period of the mid and late 1980s, exploring runaway settlements in the eighteenth century mining districts in modern day Minas Gerais. As democratization gathered pace, historical archaeology paid attention to the most iconic maroons, seventeenth century Palmares and late 19th c. Canudos . Brazilian archaeology was increasingly challenging the old-established narrative of an irenic Brazilian people, only too happy to accept the social order, including the slave one. Palmares has been the most enduring maroon, active for several decades (1605–1694). After the restoration of civilian rule in March 1985, the site was soon established as national heritage. Archaeology started in the early 1990s and the results were astonishing, for it fostered a social discussion about the Brazilian society. Archaeological evidence of native Indian wares, as well as other ordinary pottery, led to a discussion about the social fabric of the rebel polity and as consequence of Brazil : a multi-ethnic democracy, an African polity. More recently, gender issues have also been studied in the same move to socially relevant issues. Canudos, the most famous late nineteenth century rebel polity, was an independent Catholic religious community (1893–1897). The Brazilian army was sent to conquer the area in Bahia state, destroying it and killing several people, including the leader of the community, popular preacher Antônio Conselheiro. The area was later to be submerged by the construction of a dam, so that in the 1990s, during a long draft, Paulo Zanettini (b. 1961?) was able to carry out fieldwork there, contributing to better understanding both the rebel polity and the attacking forces. It again contributed to the discussion of the Brazilian society, particularly of some features such as religiosity, community mores, but also violence and authoritarian rule, thanks not least to archaeology.

Since then, historical archaeology has been exploring several other subjects, such as the study of dictatorship and repression, but also pottery, architecture and more in relation to gender, ethnic and other issues relevant for present-day society. Probably the most socially and scholarly relevant recent trends refer to the study of dictatorship, within a wider Latin American context. Other particularly relevant studies refer to maroons and slavery, gender, and identity issues. Historical archaeology is now the most practiced endeavor in Brazil, overcoming prehistoric and classical archaeology . It is no coincidence the fact that Brazilian scholarship has contributed to expand historical archaeology worldwide as the study of material culture of any society with written texts, not only the modern, capitalist ones, as was the original concept in the USA.

Classical archaeology and art history have started in the 1960s associated with the French School at Athens, but if flourished since the 1980s in the new open political and scholarly environment. Thanks to the leading activities of Professor Haiganuch Sarian, several scholars, particularly French speaking, lectured in Brazil, and then received Brazilian students and scholars. A generation of classical archaeologists in touch with the international community has grown up, publishing books and articles abroad on a range of subjects. The main original and enduring thrust comes from the study of pottery, not least iconography. From this early trend, numismatics, the study of wall painting and drawings, and much more followed suit. The most relevant feature though has not been the mastership of scholarly techniques, even if this is not a mean feat in itself, in particular in such a traditional field of study as classical archaeology . The most relevant contribution has been in exploring new subjects and perspectives, such as popular mores and expressions, postcolonial and peripheral outlooks, contributing thus in unique ways to the discipline in the former colonial powers.

Underwater archaeology has again developed only recently and thanks to the French-speaking world. Portuguese settlements in South America have been for centuries centered on the coast, so much so that the late dean of historians in Brazil , Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1902–1982), describe Portuguese towns and hamlets as coast settlements in close contact with the sea and strange to the backlands. The only exceptions were again those few settlements in waterways. In any case, maritime or fluvial life has been at the heart of Brazilian social life from the start and until very recently. Underwater archaeology has developed recently worldwide, after WWII, not least thanks to Jacques Cousteau and French pioneering diving improvements. In Brazil , Gilson Rambelli (b. 1965), thanks to his training in France, Portugal, Spain and Mexico, was able to set up the field in Brazil since the late 1990s. Underwater archaeology has studied boats, but also shell middens and other less usual subjects, such as illegal slave trading ships. It has been particularly active in exploring such issues as piracy and illegal practices, but also paying attention to heritage issues, as there is still no heritage legislation protecting underwater sites.

This leads us to public archaeology , a most recent field in the discipline, worldwide, but one in which Brazil has been at the forefront. Public archaeology is the direct result of the awareness of the political character of the discipline. The creation of the World Archaeological Congress, in 1986, was a landmark in this respect. It has shown that the archaeology is as much the study of power as the study of the past, as stressed a year later Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley. This reversal of meaning of the discipline has been epoch making: from the study of the past to the study of the present, from remembrance to reenactment. It is beyond dispute that archaeology has been from the start a dreaming endeavor, a unique way of voyaging in time and in space and this is still the most enticing aspect of the discipline. But this fuga temporis is no more relevant than it was in Virgil’s time: Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus, singula dum capti circumvectamur amore, “But meanwhile it flees: time flees irretrievably, while we wander around, prisoners of our love of detail” (Georgics, 3, 284-5). Present-day concerns are at the root of archaeology as of everything else, even if we may always dream of moving to the most ancient past and circumstances.

Public archaeology is thus a consequence of the realization by scholars that scholarly disciplines, including archaeology, are relevant to the present and to contemporary social issues. Public archaeology has been a growing pursuit worldwide since the 1990 and it has developed fast in Brazil in the last few years, putting school kids, the wider adult population, maroon, and Indian populations not only in contact with archaeology, but contributing to forge the discipline itself. Archaeology has been active in fostering the interaction of archaeologists with ordinary people, aiming at producing scholarship relevant to society at large and to specific groups. Brazilian archaeology has been very active in this area and is now recognized worldwide as a leading contributor to the advancement of the discipline in public archaeology and this is linked to the social conditions in Brazil, whose mixed features reveal more than sometimes foreign observers realize. Publication such as “Arqueologia Pública” and several books, PhD dissertations and articles attest to the achievements of public archaeology in Brazil and its contribution to the discipline beyond Brazilian borders.

A note on the role of Brazilian women is also a must. Archaeology worldwide has been a male preserve, not to say a military and imperialist practice. The discipline started this way and continued so for several decades, until the mid twentieth century at least. The first leading women archaeologists , such as Kathleen Kanyon (1906–1978) and Annette Laming-Emperaire (1917–1977), were aves rarae, as would say Juvenal in his Satires, exceptions in a male world. Only after the revolution of 1960s and the introduction of the contraceptive pill women played a more significant role in the discipline, even if most leading archaeological positions are still dominate by males, as in most other dominating social positions. It is thus not an exclusive archaeological feature, but due to the military overtones of the discipline, this is still particularly acute in archaeology . The role of women in Brazilian archaeology has run counter to this overall trend though. Niède Guidon is of course the most obvious example of the leading role of women, but others must also be mentioned, such as Maria Conceição Beltrão and Haiganuch Sarian (b. 1940), but probably a majority of archaeologists in Brazil are women and several of them are in power positions and recognized within Brazil and abroad, even if they are young, as Márcia Bezerra de Almeida (b. 1963) and Denise Schaan (b. 1962). Brazilian archaeology has been widely shaped by women and they played and still play a leading role in shaping the discipline. It is not easy to explain this unique feature, in contrast to the developments in countries near and distant alike. Has this contributed to shape the discipline itself? It is not easy to say. But, it is most probable that the female predominance has contributed to the fact that archaeology in Brazil has been more democratic in the last decades and less authoritarian. Furthermore, it may have contributed to the international stance of the discipline in the country.

6 The Outlook

What are the possible conclusions and the perspectives for the future? The outlook for the discipline in Brazil is bright. From a fringe activity, archaeology has been able to be at the same time a scholarly and a socially relevant endeavor. It started as an aristocratic pursuit in the nineteenth century and only in the mid twentieth century it begun its trajectory as both scholarly and socially relevant. In the last twenty years or so archaeology in Brazil has expanded exponentially. The number of archaeological sites explored has exploded. Publications in Brazil and abroad attest to the huge advances. If we then turn to the outlook of the discipline, it is worth returning to my own assessment almost twenty years ago, when I notice that the new generations were prone to change. Two decades on, it is possible to say that archaeologists have changed the discipline beyond recognition. It is now part of the struggle for both scholarship and social commitment. If it was able to shatter the heavy heritage of dictatorship in such a short period, archaeology has a bright future, as part of the struggle for freedom, justice, and scholarship, in Brazil and beyond.