O Mundo-texto arqueológico amazônico: do inferno verde ao novo El Dorado

Abstract

In order to better assess and understand the problems of Archeology today, in the Amazon basin, it is necessary to make some retrospective comments on the theoretical trends of contemporary archeology. This work seeks to reflect on certain epistemological questions that guided it. Therefore, we start from a position that we believe to be valid: the archaeologist and his discipline should always be a first topic of debate among us. We must question the intellectual production of theories by archaeologists, in order to propose new questions that can increase their ability to make explicit and to make new and distinctive suggestions. To question the theoretical archeology that we have recently produced is not to defend a new model that could replace the previous ones. It is about “observing” and “putting in doubt”. We can and must examine these trends of yours in a long-term perspective, over the course of two generations of which Roosevelt and Meggers are the examples, put them in doubt to know them better and to ensure their validity and heuristic capacity . To critically analyze the intellectual production of these two great ladies of Amazonian archeology aims, first of all, to critically review the field of knowledge itself. We are very aware today that archeology is a science under construction and that its methodologies and theories are necessarily in constant renewal. For this reason, epistemology has been much more interested in the production of theories by archaeologists themselves than in analyzing possible mega-theories that would explain everything. The work presented here does not intend even a systematic and complete balance of the ideas of an era, nor is it even the manifesto of a “new archeology”. In the considerations presented here, the theoretical reflections of Meggers and Roosevelt are clearer, as Tatiana presents us not only with her ideas, but also seeks to clarify the certainties and doubts of the science of the time.