Renato Kipnis

Early Holocene human skeletal remains from Santana do Riacho, Brazil: implications for the settlement of the New World

In this study we compare the cranial morphology of several late Paleoindian skeletons uncovered at Santana do Riacho, Central Brazil, with worldwide human cranial variation. Mahalanobis Distance and Principal Component Analysis are used to explore the extra-continental morphological affinities of the Brazilian Paleoindian sample. Santana do Riacho is a late Paleoindian burial site where approximately 40 individuals were recovered in varying states of preservation. The site is located at Lagoa Santa/Serra do Cipó, State of Minas Gerais. The first human activities in this rockshelter date back to the terminal Pleistocene, but the burials are bracketed between circa 8200 and 9500BP. The collection contains only six skulls well-enough preserved to be measured. The Santana do Riacho late Paleoindians present a cranial morphology characterized by long and narrow neurocrania, low and narrow faces, with low nasal apertures and orbits. The multivariate analyses show that they exhibit strong morphological affinities with present day Australians and Africans, showing no resemblance to recent Northern Asians and Native Americans. These findings confirm our long held opinion that the settlement of the Americas was more complicated in terms of biological input than has been widely assumed. The working hypothesis is that two very distinct populations entered the New World by the end of the Pleistocene, and that the transition between the cranial morphology of the Paleoindians and the morphology of later Native Americans, which occurred around 8-9ka, was abrupt. This, in our opinion, is a more parsimonious explanation for the diversity detected than a long, local microevolutionary process mediated by selection and drift. The similarities of the first South Americans with sub-Saharan Africans may result from the fact that the non-Mongoloid Southeast Asian ancestral population came, ultimately, from Africa, with no major modification in the original cranial bau plan of the first modern humans.

LAGOA SANTA REVISITED: AN OVERVIEW OF THE CHRONOLOGY, SUBSISTENCE, AND MATERIAL CULTURE OF PALEOINDIAN SITES IN EASTERN CENTRAL BRAZIL

Lagoa Santa, a karstic area in eastern Central Brazil, has been subject to research on human paleontology and archaeol ogy for 175 years. Almost 300 Paleoindian human skeletons have been found since Danish naturalist Peter Lund’s pio neering work. Even so, some critical issues such as the role of rockshelters in settlement systems, and the possible paleoclimatic implications of the peopling of the region have yet to be addressed. We present some results obtained from recent excava tions at four rockshelters and two open-air sites, new dates for human Paleoindian skeletons, and a model to explain the cultural patterns observed so far. It is also argued that the Paleoindian subsistence system at Lagoa Santa was similar to other locations in South America: generalized small-game hunting complemented by fruits, seed, and root gathering. Lagoa Santa, un area karstica en Brasil Central, ha sido objeto de investigacion en paleontologia humana y arqueologia durante 170 anos. Casi 300 esqueletos humanos paleoindios se han encontrado desde que el naturalista dinamarques Peter Lund empezo su trabajo pionero en la mitad del siglo XIX. Sin embargo, problemas criticos como el papel de las cuevas en los patrones de asentamiento y las posibles implicaciones paleoclimaticas en el poblamiento del area todavia tienen que ser mejor estudiados. Nosotros presentamos los resultados obtenidos de las recientes excavaciones de cuatro cuevas y dos yacimien tos a cielo abierto, nuevas feches de esqueletos humanos paleoindios, y un modelo para explicar los patrones culturales obser vados. Tambien propone mas que el sistema de subsistencia paleoindio en Lagoa Santa fue, asi como en otros sitios de Sudamerica, bastante generalizado, incluyendo la caza de pequenos animales y la recoleccion de frutos, semillas y raices.

The Oldest Case of Decapitation in the New World (Lapa do Santo, East-Central Brazil)

We present here evidence for an early Holocene case of decapitation in the New World (Burial 26), found in the rock shelter of Lapa do Santo in 2007. Lapa do Santo is an archaeological site located in the Lagoa Santa karst in east-central Brazil with evidence of human occupation dating as far back as 11.7–12.7 cal kyBP (95.4% interval). An ultra-filtered AMS age determination on a fragment of the sphenoid provided an age range of 9.1–9.4 cal kyBP (95.4% interval) for Burial 26. The interment was composed of an articulated cranium, mandible and first six cervical vertebrae. Cut marks with a v-shaped profile were observed in the mandible and sixth cervical vertebra. The right hand was amputated and laid over the left side of the face with distal phalanges pointing to the chin and the left hand was amputated and laid over the right side of the face with distal phalanges pointing to the forehead. Strontium analysis comparing Burial 26’s isotopic signature to other specimens from Lapa do Santo suggests this was a local member of the group. Therefore, we suggest a ritualized decapitation instead of trophy-taking, testifying for the sophistication of mortuary rituals among hunter-gatherers in the Americas during the early Archaic period. In the apparent absence of wealth goods or elaborated architecture, Lapa do Santo’s inhabitants seemed to use the human body to express their cosmological principles regarding death.

Rock Art at the Pleistocene/Holocene Boundary in Eastern South America

Background Most investigations regarding the First Americans have primarily focused on four themes: when the New World was settled by humans; where they came from; how many migrations or colonization pulses from elsewhere were involved in the process; and what kinds of subsistence patterns and material culture they developed during the first millennia of colonization. Little is known, however, about the symbolic world of the first humans who settled the New World, because artistic manifestations either as rock-art, ornaments, and portable art objects dated to the Pleistocene/Holocene transition are exceedingly rare in the Americas. Methodology/Principal Findings Here we report a pecked anthropomorphic figure engraved in the bedrock of Lapa do Santo, an archaeological site located in Central Brazil. The horizontal projection of the radiocarbon ages obtained at the north profile suggests a minimum age of 9,370±40 BP, (cal BP 10,700 to 10,500) for the petroglyph that is further supported by optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dates from sediment in the same stratigraphic unit, located between two ages from 11.7±0.8 ka BP to 9.9±0.7 ka BP. Conclusions These data allow us to suggest that the anthropomorphic figure is the oldest reliably dated figurative petroglyph ever found in the New World, indicating that cultural variability during the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary in South America was not restricted to stone tools and subsistence, but also encompassed the symbolic dimension.

Hunting practices among the Awá-Guajá: towards a long-term analysis of sustainability in an Amazonian indigenous community

Indigenous Reserves have played an indispensable role in maintaining forest areas in the Neotropics. In the Amazon there is a clear correlation between these reserves and the presence of forest cover; however, the simple presence of uninterrupted vegetation is no guarantee for the conservation of biodiversity, especially where hunting is practiced. This study describes hunting practices among the Awa-Guaja people from 1993 through 1994, also identifying sociocultural, technological, and demographic changes that have influenced their resource acquisition strategies over the last two decades. The data was obtained through ethnographic fieldwork, recording 78 days of foraging returns, with follow-up visits through 2010. This work provides useful information for an effective diachronic analysis of hunting in this community, by revealing foraging patterns of the early to mid-1990s, and describing community transformations over the last two decades in this locale.

Early Holocene ritual complexity in South America: the archaeological record of Lapa do Santo (east-central Brazil)

Abstract Early Archaic human skeletal remains found in a burial context in Lapa do Santo in east-central Brazil provide a rare glimpse into the lives of hunter-gatherer communities in South America, including their rituals for dealing with the dead. These included the reduction of the body by means of mutilation, defleshing, tooth removal, exposure to fire and possibly cannibalism, followed by the secondary burial of the remains according to strict rules. In a later period, pits were filled with disarticulated bones of a single individual without signs of body manipulation, demonstrating that the region was inhabited by dynamic groups in constant transformation over a period of centuries.

Long-term Land Tenure Systems in Central Brazil

My goal here is to look at the land tenure system based on reciprocal access to foraging areas, as this relates to spatial and temporal resource variability in central Brazil. The theoretical perspective I employ is based on evolutionary ecology and risk-management theory. The approach takes into account both technoenvironmental and social constraints and was first suggested by Eric Smith (1991b)

The Origins Project and the First Americans’ Controversy

The arrival of Man in the New World has long been occupied a prominent position in studies of the fields of archaeology and related sciences, such as biology and biological anthropology. The debates on the subject were intensified, however, since the discovery of the oldest cultural manifestations of the Americas, the Clovis points, in the late 1920s. In South America, the study of the human occupation of the Lagoa Santa region has generated controversy since the early works of Lund in the nineteenth century. Recently, the project “Origins” deepened the archaeological research in Lagoa Santa, focusing its actions in thematic axes that resulted in extensive scientific production about the origins of the first Native Americans.

Aplicação das tecnologias de modelagem 3D conjugada às técnicas tradicionais para o registro das gravuras rupestres do rio Madeira, Rondônia, Brasil

In the past few years, rock art studies in Brazil have had important advances in constructing interpretative models of this poorly known, and seldom exploited archaeological record. Despite the challenges of discovering, registering, and preserving rock art along the vastness of the Brazilian territory, a few but devoted researchers have recorded and studied thoroughly thousands of rock paintings and engravings in many regions, by employing traditional techniques. We here present a case study carried out in the Madeira River, in the state of Rondonia, where we combined traditional methodology with new technologies for recording rock engraving, the terrestrial laser scanning and the structured light photogrammetry. These new techniques, among other advantages, significantly increase precision, acuity, and celerity in engravings documentation, as well as its surrounding landscape. Ultimately, the work of archaeologists is constructing interpretative models of the archaeological record based on the most reliable documentation, so the models can be tested and revised. The 3D modeling technologies raise our methodological parameters to a level above.

Secondary ritual or peri-mortem body manipulation during early Holocene in South America: the case of Burial 21 from the site of Lapa do Santo, Lagoa Santa region, Brazil

Supplement: Program of the 81st Annual Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (2012)The catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus located in the south-east of Rome approximately contains 25 000 graves dated from the 3rd to the 5th century AD. Seven newly discovered rooms having an unusual organization in the heart of the catacomb were investigated in 2003. Excavations of these rooms revealed a mass grave, where 3000 corpses were laid together. These individuals were stacked in rows apparently following a common fatal incident. Presumably, this epidemic crisis occurred between the 1st and the 3rd century AD. The specific funerary treatment (textile wrapping and plaster) recalls mummification and might be related to exogenous practices, possibly connected to Early Christians. Moreover, the presence of rare and expensive materials (e.g., Baltic amber, resins and gold threads) may indicate a high social status. Stable isotope analyses (carbon, nitrogen and oxygen) of bone collagen, bone apatite and tooth hydroxyapatite were carried out on 111 individuals to obtain further information on their diet and residential mobility. Additionally, a study of dental nonmetric traits was conducted on 200 individuals to define the biological distance between the deceased and to assess their phenetic similarity. The combination of these two approaches will bring new insight into the homogeneity of the Early population of the catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus and the relationship between funerary practices and geographical origin of buried individuals.