It Happened Centuries Ago: Using GIS and Spatial Analysis to Map the Quilombo dos Palmares

In Brazil, the largest escaped slave community in the Americas incorporated multiple settlements into a united federation. This was Palmares, named for the palm forests where community members sheltered in the Captaincy of Pernambuco. Encompassing nine individual villages at its height in the mid-1600s, only one known settlement has been extensively studied by archaeologists. The remaining eight have not been definitively located. Through historiography, spatial analysis, and remote sensing techniques, the locations of the eight unknown sites of Palmares may be estimated using geographic information science. Introducing spatial analysis into the current body of Palmares literature offers new insights and further assists in the archaeological study of subaltern agency and communities. Incorporating qualitative historical and archaeological documentation into quantitative geographic research methods illuminates the potential for integrative archaeological work to impact the study of escaped slave communities