New evidence of the Formative in the Amazon: A stilt village culture in Maranhão, Brazil

Abstract

The Formative period (c. 4000 to 2000 BP) in the Latin-American continent was characterized by human occupations along the sea coast, rivers, and lakes as well as in the interfluves and highlands. In Brazil, there is a tendency nowadays to deny the existence of the Formative due to an alleged Amazon population vacuum in this period. Studies in the precolonial stilt villages in the Baixada of Maranhão, along with earlier research elsewhere in Brazil, confirm that the Formative did indeed exist in Brazil and suggest these sites in Maranhão were the last Amazon frontier of the Formative of its eastern portion.