XXVI Congreso Internacional de Americanistas

New Pottery types from
Santarenl, Brazil
BY
J. ALDEN MASO1\'
Despite its immense ,xtent, lne Amazonian region is without doubt
the area least known in America from an archeological point of vievv.
The largely unexplored nature of the region, the sparcíty of population,
both native Indian and white, ancl the difficulties of transportation al!
make this unavoidable. It is the more lamentable, how,~ ver, inasmuch
as such archeological researches as have been made ther,:', and such archeological
objects or collections as have come from Amazonia, indicate
that the: region is far from being a homogeneous unit, nearly every si te:
having its individual characteristics and peculiar culture which may be
of little wider distribution than those in the better known and more
densely settled parts of America. Moreover, the objects themselves
demonstrate a high degree of technical skill and artistic sense.
Especially, however, is the region important as a key to culturehistory,
migrations and the spread of influences. The many large river:;
afford facile means for primitive 111igrations ancl travel; the linguistic
lamilies are on the >vhole 'widesprcacl ancl often broken up into several
or many insolat~d groups, some of which are found peripherally outside
of the Amazonian region, ancl all indications point to a long periocl oE
tribal migrations, conquests, replace111ents ancl ebb and flow. As would
be. expectecl, therefore, Amazonian archeological objects display, more
ar less strongly, resemblances to distant cultural areas, to southern Cen·
tral America, the AntiJles, the l\ndean region, ancl the far south of South
America. V_ ry probably Amazonia halds buried the solutions of many
knotty problems of American culture history.
Very few careful and scientific excavations have been made on th,
c\mazon River, and most of the~e by one man, the pioneer in A111azo­