From polychrome unity to Tupi-Guarani Fragmentation:

long term and isolation in the Upper Madeira River archaeology

Abstract

The aim of this article is to offer a reflection on the idea of isolation from an archaeological perspective. The idea of isolation in Archaeology is complex. In a way, it is opposite to a discipline that is used to grouping cultural assemblages. Specifically, we reflect about different types of isolations, and how they can offer tools to interpret the deep history of southwestern Amazonia, a context with a strong link to populations speaking Tupian languages as well as to a series of different peoples. We focus on the Madeira River, with special attention to its last rapids downriver, as well as the Jamari River, a tributary of the former. Historical linguistics pinpoint the Upper Madeira region as the geographical centre of the Tupi language stock, from where it started to branch around 5000 years ago. We identify for this region possible relations between Tupi linguistic families and ceramics from the Jamari and Polychrome traditions. The latter is somehow related to a series of Tupi-Guarani dispersion processes during the millennium preceding the European invasion in the region. These movements involved multiple strategies which often resulted in the assimilation and displacement of culturally distinct populations and ultimately included the dismantling of a multicultural system which operated by the end of the first millennium AD. During the beginning of the European colonization, the Tupi-Guarani populations adopted different resistance strategies vis-à-vis the invaders and the diseases they brought with them, including fragmentation. These populations were often incorporated by other emergent indigenous collectives.