Brazil - Mato Grosso

Prehistoric population development in Mato-Grosso

Around twenty years ago, nothing was known about prehistoric population development in the central South-American plateau of the Mato Grosso region, which is bordered by the Amazon basin to the north and Parana to the south. Only paintings and engravings found in rock shelters and inaccurately referred to as ‘Indian inscriptions’ emerged from the obscurity of time. Based on the scientific expert’s report (1983) on the Ferraz Egreja shelter, close to Rondonópolis - a new town buoyed by the prosperity of agropastoral production - we established the Franco-Brazilian research programme, the objective of which was to understand prehistoric population development, settlements and rock-art sites in their palaeoenvironments and current environments.

Overview

Hunter cultures spanning an entire continent

Systematic surveys conducted in the rugged sandstone landscapes west of Rondonópolis and in the Serra das Araras 300 km away, the upper folds of which (600m) score the Mato Grosso countryside over hundreds of kilometres, have led to the discovery of around a hundred rock-art shelters.

City of stone	Serra das Araras, Cuiaba
Ralador shelter, Rondonópolis

Thousands of images, which are much more often painted than engraved, display thematic and stylistic diversity as well as contrived and differentiated layouts, demonstrating that there were several execution phases. They are several millennia old, pre-dating the cultural memory of modern Indian groups and in particular the Bororo studied by Claude Lévi-Strauss. The rock-art images also demonstrate, by means of common and original features, that regionalisation existed: in this way, we can begin to define cultural territories and establish their close relationships to the landscape.

Excavations conducted in half a dozen of these rock-art sites and in four open-air settlements illustrate a long series of occupations (between 25,000 and 100 years BP) as well as various climatic and ecological changes. In addition, in excavations conducted in the Cipó rock shelter, 10 burial urns were found, two of which were in tact and several of which were patterned, dating to around 1,000 years BP and containing the shattered remains of several individuals and some jewellery. Large amounts of ceramics were found in occupations dating to the same period as Ferraz Egreja and Vermelhos shelters, with a large range of patterns relating to the Ferraz Egreja period.

The earliest occupations currently identified in the Santa Elina rock-art shelter in Serra das Araras date to around 25,000 years ago. Subsequent occupations in the shelter date to the last millennia of the Pleistocene. Humans at that time probably hunted and lived alongside megafauna, the remains of which have been preserved in fossil form. Indeed, human artefacts and a number of Glossotherium remains (with missing teeth) have been preserved in the soils of Santa Elina.

The most recent settlement soils were only a few centuries old when their occupants came face to face with the historic conquistadors.

^{Updated on 01.14.09}