For an anti-colonialist Archaeology: the Southern Kayapó occupation in TriânguloMineiro and the colonization of war

Abstract

Over the last four decades, Projeto Quebra-Anzol has carried out intensive and systematic field research in the Triangulo Mineiro region in order to establish the long-term history of the Southern Kayapó territorial occupation. Particularly, the Santa Luzia site, located in Pedrinópolis / MG, represents the oldest litho-ceramic site, dating from around 1830 ± 183 years AP. Local material culture reveals the great mastery of the landscape, as well as a large population density resulting from agriculture. Thus, it is possible to counteract the colonialist discourse, which sometimes justified the so-called “just wars”, sometimes justified other forms of domination, such as the villages. The analysis of historical documents, such as legislation, charts, or even chorographic surveys, together with archaeological data, allows us to understand long-term history from various moments. Using the agency of objects then a project of decentralization is carried out, from the colonizer to the colonized, from the Portuguese to the indigenous. Therefore, Archeology is constituted as a science of destruction, of death, but also of life resistance of indigenous peoples, who still struggle today against a colonization that persists, for example, in the invasions of indigenous lands by landowners. Colonization which, under the non-colonial perspective, is neither of exploitation nor of settlement, as it appears in the textbooks, but of invasion, of war.