The Upper Xingu archaeological settlement tradition

Record summary

Archaeological investigations in the Upper Xingu during the 1970s and 1980s documented or reinterpreted large villages, roads, ditches, ceramics, and anthropogenic landscapes associated with Indigenous societies. The evidence became important for challenging portrayals of Amazonia as sparsely occupied and for examining migration, population aggregation, land management, and the effects of colonial-era epidemics. The lead supports comparisons between archaeological settlement size and oral or ethnohistorical traditions. Site identities, dates, and links to living communities must be handled carefully because much of the regional sequence remains under investigation.