PAFSUB
The Franco-Brazilian Archaeological Program in Southern Brazil (PAFSUB) is an international research network on early human occupation in southern Brazil and surrounding areas. It has been in existence since 2013, and receives funding from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an archaeological mission, on the advice of the Commission consultative des recherches archéologiques à l'étranger. Its main aims are to define regional archaeological sequences based on the excavation of well-dated sites, to describe technical production from the Final Pleistocene to the Late Holocene (12,000 to 500 years BC) and its integration on an extra-regional scale, to address the region's settlement patterns and their implications in a continental framework, and to develop our knowledge of societies' adaptations to the surrounding environments and their modes of subsistence. The program is currently developing a research project entitled Prehistoric settlements of the Upper Uruguay River Valley-POPARU, in the western part of Brazil's southern plateau. In addition to a grant from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, this project benefits from the material and financial support of several Brazilian and French institutions, the two main ones being the Community University of the Chapecó Region (UNOCHAPECÓ) and the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (MNHN).
Objectives
Archaeological sequences
Archaeological data on the ancient periods of southern Brazil are plentiful, but those for which a good chronological context is available are still rare. In order to examine archaeological sequences, i.e. the succession over time of cultural manifestations of human societies in a given place, PAFSUB's fieldwork involves extensive surface excavations at great depth, covering the entire thickness of the sedimentary fill of the sites, with meticulous stratigraphic control.
This enables us to define chronologically and culturally coherent sets of evidence (artifacts and structures). The use of geosciences (sedimentology, micromorphology, geomorphology) and geoarchaeology is fundamental, as is the implementation of a geochronological approach using various dating methods.
Settlement processes
Little is known about the early settlement of the central Atlantic coast of South America. The oldest data available to date in southern Brazil date from around 12,000 years BC. They are more recent than the initial occupations known in the north, in central Brazil, and in the south, in Uruguay. In cultural terms, the characteristics of technological production show more links with the Southern Cone (Uruguay and Argentina) than with central Brazil. This suggests a settlement process moving from south to north, a direction rarely emphasized in connection with the first American occupations. It seems that the Rio de la Plata valley (Paraguay, Paraná and Uruguay rivers) played a decisive role in the early dispersal of human groups in the region.
PAFSUB research aims to contribute to a better understanding of these early settlements from a continental perspective, as well as of successive population movements during the Holocene, particularly the arrival of groups associated with the Tupiguarani archaeological unit during the last millennium.
In southern Brazil, as is often the case on the American continent, the techno-cultural diversity of prehistoric societies is primarily apprehended from the characteristics of lithic stone projectile points. The presence of point types over a long period of time has led to the suggestion that non-ceramic-producing populations (indiscriminately referred to as "hunter-gatherers") were culturally homogeneous from 12,000 to 500 years BC. In reality, the study of all weapons, tools and chipped-stone waste reveals local specificities and variations in technological behaviour over time.
Through technological and traceological studies, the PAFSUB identifies the production and use processes of chipped-stone objects for each archaeological ensemble analyzed. It extends this approach beyond lithic artefacts (integrating ceramic techniques in particular) and seeks to integrate the results thus obtained by putting them into dialogue with known data on an extra-regional scale.
Technological
production
As elsewhere, the environments of southern Brazil have undergone profound changes since the end of the Pleistocene. Highlights include the disappearance of the largest mammals and the gradual development of subtropical rainforest (Araucaria forest) on the southern Brazilian plateau, replacing more open landscapes.
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PAFSUB's research aims to contribute to the reconstruction of regional paleoenvironments and to highlight the adaptations of societies to these varied and changing environments, particularly through the study of subsistence patterns.
