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Doctoral Thesis
DOI
https://doi.org/10.11606/T.71.2012.tde-12042013-163726
Document
Author
Full name
Raoni Bernardo Maranhão Valle
E-mail
Institute/School/College
Knowledge Area
Date of Defense
Published
São Paulo, 2012
Supervisor
Committee
Neves, Eduardo Goes (President)
Barreto, Cristiana Nunes Galvão de Barros
Araujo, Astolfo Gomes de Mello
Pereira, Edithe da Silva
Silva, Fabiola Andrea
Title in Portuguese
Mentes graníticas e mentes areníticas: fronteira geo-cognitiva nas gravuras rupestres do baixo Rio Negro, Amazônia Setentrional
Keywords in Portuguese
Baixo rio Negro
Complexo mito-ritual do Jurupari
Documentação visual
Gravuras rupestres
Perfis estilísticos
Variabilidade gráfica
Abstract in Portuguese
Tratamos aqui de um estudo preliminar acerca das gravuras rupestres (petróglifos) situadas no baixo rio Negro, entre os municípios de Novo Airão e Barcelos, Estado do Amazonas. Nesta área foram foto-documentados e geo-referenciados, até o presente, 20 sítios rupestres ribeirinhos, a céu aberto, parcialmente submersos, em afloramentos rochosos areníticos e graníticos contendo gravuras de origem indígena pré-colonial. Estes sítios não apresentam depósitos arqueológicos e, portanto, não podem ser escavados nem inequivocamente associados aos sítios cerâmicos adjacentes na área (o que pecisa ser testado, todavia). Desta maneira, se configuram em variáveis quase isoladas, sem relações diretas com o restante do registro arqueológico regional nem datações de nenhum tipo. Cronologias internas e pontuais de alguns painéis podem, no entanto, ser identificadas sugerindo reuso e reavivamento diacrônico das gravuras. A área amostral apresenta variabilidade geológica (contato do escudo cristalino com bacia sedimentar) e variabilidade hidrográfica (confluência dos rios Negro/Branco/Jauaperi/Unini/Jaú). Propomos que essas características geoambientais podem estar contribuindo para a variabilidade no fenômeno gráfico-rupestre que estamos detectando na área, o que pode indicar diferenças crono-culturais na autoria desses petróglifos. De fato, o conhecimento acerca da conjuntura geológica da área levou-nos à proposição da variabilidade estilística como hipótese preliminar, o que foi confirmado no primeiro contato com essas gravuras e se constitui, portanto, em nosso primeiro resultado de pesquisa concreto, a identificação da variabilidade gráfico-rupestre na área, um quadro marcadamente heterogêneo. Dentre as abordagens teóricas correntes na arqueologia escolhemos utilizar duas delas em conjunto reflexivo. A primeira delas , na primeira parte do texto, se refere ao método formal de estudo de arte rupestre, a partir do qual podemos entender as gravuras rupestres (e pinturas) como sistemas pré-históricos de comunicação visual que funcionariam como linguagens gráfico-simbólicas das comunidades autoras. Nessa perspectiva, seriam passíveis de estudo enquanto uma variável, ou resultante, do comportamento humano no passado inseridas no registro arqueológico, portando características formalmente identificáveis e mensuráveis, estruturadas em perfis gráficos (perfis estilísticos) que, hipotética e simplificadamente, indicariam os perfis sociais dos autores rupestres. Utilizamos aportes da semiótica e da antropologia visual, entre outros, para análise de códigos simbólicos onde se evita a interpretação de significados, apoiando-se exclusivamente na análise formal do significante gráfico baseada nos aspectos materiais, ou seja, aspectos técnicos, morfo-temáticos, cenográficos, tafonômicos e geo-ambientais do grafismo rupestre. A segunda abordagem se traduz por uma tentativa de interpretação de um dos fenômenos gráficos identificados na área, através de associação a um complexo mitoritualístico característico do Alto Rio Negro, denominado genericamente de Jurupari. São identificadas correspondências entre a iconografia deste corpus gráfico e as representações públicas etnografadas relacionadas ao processo ritual e às narrativas míto-cosmológicas respectivas do complexo do Jurupari. Trata-se, pois, de um experimento com o método informado de estudo, em que um conjunto de discursos ameríndios é utilizado na classificação rupestre, neste caso, através, ainda que criticamente, de analogia etnográfica indireta. Se o processo de identificação das formas, desambiguação formal, e classificação (ordenamento de padrões gráfico-espaciais) das diferenças observadas entre formas se convertem na espinha dorsal da pesquisa; a segunda parte se converte numa tentativa de olhar as gravuras pela percepção ameríndia, ainda que indiretamente através de meta-representações etnográficas e testar, em caráter interpretativo, uma correspondência entre fração das gravuras encontradas e mitos e ritos ameríndios, com vistas para além dos modelos formais estilísticos não-indígenas.
Title in English
Granitic Minds and Sandstone Thoughts: Geo-Cognitive Frontier in the Lower Negro River Petroglyphs, Northern Amazon.
Keywords in English
Graphic variability
Jurupari myth-ritual complex
Lower Negro river
Petroglyphs
Stylistic profiles
Visual recording
Abstract in English
This research presents a preliminary study about the petroglyphs from a sample area between Old Ayrão village and Branco river's mouth, at the lower Negro river basin, Western Brazilian Amazon. They comprise a corpus of open air and underwater Rock Art sites, fifteen (15) up until now, located on sandstone and granite riverine boulders and outcrops. Given the absence of archaeological stratified deposits, these sites can neither be excavated nor unequivocally related to adjacent ceramic sites in the survey area (which remains a possibility to be tested). Thus, they are bound in contextual isolation, lacking spatial as well as chronological control, remaining as outsiders of the archaeological record. The area presents geological variability (contact between crystalline Guiana shield and Amazon sedimentary basin) as well as hydrographical variability (confluence among Negro, Branco, Jauaperi, Unini and Jaú rivers). We propose that this environmental set contributes to the graphical variability we are detecting inside the rock art corpus (suggesting discrete corpora), which indicates possible chronological and cultural distinctions in the prehistoric authorship of these petroglyphs. Indeed, the preliminary knowledge of the actual geological context of the survey area, as well as its major fluvial confluence, has led us to first postulate the hypothesis of stylistic variability which was confirmed in the first contact with these petroglyphs. This, in fact, constitutes the first concrete result of our research, the identification of a multi-stylistic rock art zone in the Negro's basin, which we think is deeply related to the environmental set of the survey area, which in its turn was partially responsible for the establishment of different cultural groups, and the development of different cultural ways of representing the cognizable world (visible and invisible) into discrete strategies of visual thinking on the basin along the Holocene. Among the current approaches to rock art study we have chosen to apply two different but complementary general methods, Formal and Informed, as a dialectical reflexive conjunct. The first part of the text is committed to the formal method. Under this token, we are considering the petroglyphs (and pictographs) like prehistoric systems of visual thinking and communication, quasi-linguistically organized graphic-symbolic codes, of the authors' communities. Focus on rock art under this scope (as a variable, or resultant, of human past behavior, culturally organized, inserted in the environment - archaeological record) is a profitable strategy in order to identify and measure formal material characteristics of rock art assemblages, which, we believe, can lead to the identification of discrete sets of structured graphical patterns that, hypothetically and simplistically, could be related to the socialcognitive profiles of those communities. So, we are applying a set of theoretical constructs, basically derived from semiotics, visual anthropology and cognitive archaeology, to the analysis of visual symbolic codes, holding our attention on the graphic signifier (the material object) and avoiding the interpretation of specific meanings over the form (guessing signified concepts deriving from iconic resemblances between forms and "real things" in the non- Indian archaeologist's cosmology). By material signifier in rock art we comprehend those material aspects such like technique, morphology, thematic, syntactical combinations and compositions, taphonomy and other geo-environmental variables. The second approach, informed method, is devoted here to a tentative interpretation of one of the stylistic profiles identified; comparing some of its distinctive iconic patterns to the Upper Negro River Myth- Ritual Complex of Jurupari, devised as a multi-ethnic religious complex that hypothetically pervaded the entire basin during pre-colonial times. We are suggesting by the present evidence that these cultural manifestations (Jurupari and this specific rock art corpus), separated in time-space, could be related to a same system of expressive, ideological and cognitive phenomena in the past, with a specific locational insertion in the surveyed area. So, if identifying forms (formal disambiguation), and classification (ordering of graphic-spatial patterns) of observed differences among forms are converted into the spinal cord of this research, the second part is, nevertheless, equally important in the way it provides a rudimentary tentative of looking to rock art through Amerindian eyes and test the potential of ethnographic meta-representations to illuminate archaeological reasoning about rock art phenomena in the Negro's basin. That is, an interpretive approach targeting some sort of explanation beyond the non-indigenous formal stylistic constructs (but, what remains to be tested in the area is the rock art analysis directly through Amerindian prefrontal cortex, a kind of neural-cognitive otherness experiential approach, which would imply, for future experiments, in direct participative observations, possibly involving an Indian specialist and archaeologist's Caapi - B. caapi - consumption for perceptual and ontological purification and subsequent observation of petroglyphs and dialogue among them and the rocks).
 
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Publishing Date
2013-04-30
 
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