Rolling Stone, 10/17/07
“Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasliens” (1894)
AD1-500
1250
1650
1750
1850
1950
2009
Establishment of PIX, 1961
Late Xinguano
Karl von den Steinen, 1884
Early Xinguano
Early Bandeirante Raids, 1740-1770
Proto-Xinguano
Late Galactic
Columbus/Cabral, 1492-1500
Galactic period
Globalization
Initial occupations
Early
Colonial
Gold
Rush
Rubber
Boom
March to
the West
C/D
north
Morená
southwest
southeast
5 cm
Fish farming
Backyard Trash
Midden
Central House Trunks
Griddle Support (undagi)
Kuikuro (Carib) village (2003)
Earthworks provide key:
Highly visible and datable,
contiguous, and
precisely laid out
Ebenezer Howard’s
“Garden cities of Tomorrow” (1902)
Garden Cities of Yesterday?
Ancient Amazonian Urbanism, or What?
“… the medieval topography was … a collection of greater and smaller
clearings … rather like a photographic negative of the Muslim east which
was a world of oases in the midst of deserts.”
Le Goff 1988:131
What is urbanism in its earliest and most minute forms?
Lost cities of the Amazon, likely not, but what of hierarchical networks of towns
and villages in discrete territorial polities and highly self-organized
landscapes?
What of multi-centric forms, and the implications for the urban-rural?
What of regional planning and design?
kuge
= galactic cluster
(polity/maximal otomo)
Xinguano peer communities
“otomo”
Non-Xinguano (ngikogo)
& White (cagaiha)
telo
= local group
otomo
“telo”
Other clusters (polities) in
Peer-polity
otomo
= relatives within
local group
telo
otomo
telo
ekúgu
oto-hógo
= chiefly kindred or “House”
(consanguines/affines)
Nature : Human : Supernature
Ritual and Ideology
• Accumulation of symbolic resources through ritual actions,
notably chiefly rites of passage, differentiates individuals
• Begins at birth with recognition of hereditary chiefly status,
certain individuals, such as the sons and daughters of principle
“sitting” or named chiefs, are then further recognized
(accumulate more symbolic resources)
• The accumulation of symbolic resources, prestige, through the
course of one’s life provides certain individuals with unique
authority and capacity to accumulate political power (ability to
make decisions for and control others) and economic wealth, at
least temporarily for rituals
• Rituals create metaphorical link with divine creators – Sun and
Moon; they not only represent but perpetuate the social order,
notably social hierarchy
• Ritual co-participation and elite marriage alliances provide basis
of regional social integration, although no community or chief
has been able, as far as we know, to consolidate his regional
prominence across generation – I.e., no paramount village, or
capital controls other villages
O
O
O
Heroic ancestors =
Anetï-intagíñu (Af 1 & 2, Au 2)
Af
=
Au
= =
=
Af
=
=
Au
Ng
= anetï ekúgu
= anetï nsoño
= affine
=
Af
Southern House
=
Ng
=
Northern House
Society and Politics
• Conical clan organization: all social relations
based, in part, on an idiom of hierarchy
• Hierarchy based on primogeniture, which is
basis of ranking kingroups into hereditary
elite-commoner classes
• Elite individuals tend to marry their first crosscousins, rank endogamy, which tends to
maintain distinctions between ranks, although
through time there is mobility between ranks
• Communities throughout region formally
integrated through co-participation in chiefly
(elite) rites-of-passage and exchange rituals
orchestrated by chiefs