Foraging societies of eastern central Brazil: An evolutionary ecological study of subsistence strategies during the terminal Pleistocene and Early /Middle Holocene.

This dissertation concentrates on the development of a frame of reference grounded on evolutionary ecology theory and based on ecological, paleoecological, and ethnographic data in order to examine the archaeological record from eastern Central Brazil for the Terminal Pleistocene and Early/Middle Holocene epochs. Particular emphasis is given to the diet breadth model, which is used to generate expected values for comparison with empirical data from three sites (Santana do Riacho, Lapa do Boquete, and Lapa dos Bichos) in order to understand and explain the postglacial foraging economies in this part of Brazil. In this study I examine the hypothesis that when the first Terminal Pleistocene hunter-gatherers settled in eastern Central Brazil some of the highest-ranked resource types (e.g., megafauna) were already scarce or absent, and based on optimal diet breadth models it is predicted that those foraging societies would have employed a generalized gathering and opportunistic hunting strategy that included several low-ranked resource types. Analyses of faunal remains show that small- and medium-size animals predominate in the assemblages. The absence of high-ranked items like giant anteater, giant armadillo, capybara, and very low frequencies of other high-ranked species such as tapir, peccaries, and even deer, together with the presence and high frequency of several low-ranked resource types including cavies, opossum, and reptiles, indicate subsistence stress. Diet diversification and more labor-intensive processing strategies, predicted to be the first risk-buffering mechanisms against environmental stresses, were already being employed, and could not be substantially increased. Thus, higher level risk-management strategies, notably the development of social networks, the most inclusive risk-management strategy, is expected to have been employed by hunter-gatherer societies in eastern Central Brazil during Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene time. Some indirect evidence such as lithic technology, exotic raw materials, and notably rock art, supports the prediction of the development of social networks on which interlocking, widespread foraging groups could rely during periods of extreme stress.PhDArchaeologySocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/129778/2/3042099.pd