Caracterização da Cerâmica Nativa de Engenhos Coloniais Amazônicos

Abstract

The sugar cane industry in the Amazon in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries also employed indigenous labor as compulsory labor on the mills. With the objective of identifying and distinguishing the types of pottery from sugar mill sites dating back to the Amazonian colonial period, this work researched material culture collected in archaeological excavations at the following sites: Laranjeira and Ibirajuba, in the municipality of Acará; Boa Vista, Carmelo, and Mocajuba, in Barcarena; Murutucu and Solar do Barão de Guajará in Belém; Uriboca, in Marituba; Ribeira, in Moju; and Nazaré, in Igarapé Miri. This work makes it possible to understand the peculiarities of the types of ceramic production technologies in the context of the Amazonian colonial mills. The methodology applied included the classification of the fragments, using various attributes relative to the artifacts, such as form, function, raw material, and decoration to define typologies. The results indicate two types of ceramics with a marked distinction in manufacturing techniques, the unturned or caboclo ceramic, related to the indigenous culture, and the turned over ceramic, elaborated with a more sophisticated technique. Both have similar elements of plastic decoration such as: typed, modeled, incised and painted. But between the two types there are also techniques that differ, such as: carved, digitungulated, and engobed, which are more present in unturned ceramics. Although rarely, glazes are exclusive to lathe-turned ceramics. The presence of these differences reveals the coexistence of these technologies and the survival of the caboclo form of making, for this ceramic remained in use, even in the face of technological innovations in the production of ceramics introduced into the region.