Crônicas de Terra e Água: arqueologia espacial e paisagens cosmológicas dos abrigos/grutas com sepultamento Jê do Sul.

Abstract

This dissertation aims to be a unified study of the burial caves and rock shelters sites in the Southern Jê archaeological context. Based on the bibliographic review of 51 archaeological sites and the data collected about them, treating them as a unit, the chronologies of these cemeteries were analyzed in comparison to the Southern Jê occupation. I created maps to perform spatial and landscape analyzes of these sites through geoprocessing. I make ethnographic analogies to understand the contexto of artifacts in the funerary practices. And, finally, I identify how these sites and their landscapes configure and materialize the Kaingang and Laklãnõ cosmologies. These aforementioned groups are the direct descendants of that archaeological past. The chronological and spatial analysis indicates that, in the period before the year 1000 A.D., these cemeteries are concentrated in the region of the eastern edge of the Southern Plateau, configuring a eastern Southern Je practice, which are the direct ancestors of the Kaingang and Laklãnõ people, and also that after 1000 A.D. there is the dispersion of these groups, demonstrated by the archaeological sites, towards the West of the territory. In these vestiges of the period after 1000 A.D., changes in funeral practices appear, such as: the appareance off ire and ceramics in the mortuary contexto. According to the spatial and landscape studies, I found that in 88% of the cases there are waterfalls, rivers or streams in situ or nearby, demonstrating the agency of these landscapes and the intentionality in the search for these factors in the landscape to configure the place as a cemetery. When studying the Southern Jê cosmologies, in relation to the Kaingang, the context of the rock shelters and caves presents the home of Kamé and Kanhru, their mythological and founding heroes, in addition to being also social boundaries social boundaries between the living and the dead, as well as gates to the nügme, Kaingang world of the dead. The water materializes the flood and death waters, which mainly killed Kamé and Kanhru in the mythical flood. This contexto in the landscape also represents the Laklãnõ founders: the caves and rock shelters materializes the klẽdo, who left the mountain, while the waterfalls and rivers materialize the vãjẽky, who left the water.