{"id":548707,"date":"2025-06-10T14:25:43","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T17:25:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=548707"},"modified":"2025-06-11T18:55:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-11T21:55:08","slug":"laser-technology-reveals-millennia-of-human-occupation-in-the-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/laser-technology-reveals-millennia-of-human-occupation-in-the-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"Laser technology reveals millennia of human occupation in the Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Hugo Pires \/ University of Porto \u2013 Amazon Revealed<\/span>Lidar virtually removes trees like an X-ray, revealing \u201choneycomb\u201d structures in Terra do Meio, Par\u00e1Hugo Pires \/ University of Porto \u2013 Amazon Revealed<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cIndigenous knowledge is like archaeology: the more you dig, the more you find,\u201d historian Soleane Manchineri, ombudsman at the Acre State Public Defender\u2019s Office, told an auditorium full of researchers from across Brazil, relatives (as Indigenous people refer to each other), and representatives of other traditional Amazonian communities (quilombolas<\/em> and beiradeiros<\/em>). The phrase was emblematic of the meeting, which took place at Museu da Amaz\u00f4nia (MUSA) in Manaus from October 18 to 21.<\/p>\n

The idea was to share the preliminary results of the Amazon Revealed project, led by archaeologist Eduardo G\u00f3es Neves of the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (MAE-USP), which uses a remote sensing technology called Lidar (light detection and ranging) to map the ground by bombarding it with thousands of laser beams. Funded by the National Geographic Society, the study conducted flyovers, with authorization from local communities, in areas impacted by deforestation and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

Lidar can be used to create a detailed three-dimensional image of a forest\u2019s structure, with its trunks, branches, and leaves, as well as showing what is below that structure. This is what interests Neves, who wants to highlight the importance of the Amazon as a type of historical and biocultural heritage formed by the peoples of the rainforest over the last 13,000 years.<\/p>\n

The researcher has worked in the region for almost 40 years and has witnessed deforestation and destruction on a major scale. She has also helped educate archaeologists, many originally from the Amazon region and several now working at universities and research centers in Brazil\u2019s northern states. The project began in five areas where researchers with ties to Neves were already carrying out research in partnership with local communities, who agreed to join the initiative: Acre\/Southern Amazonas, Middle Guapor\u00e9, Tapaj\u00f3s, Terra do Meio, and Maraj\u00f3. Neves runs the project together with Brazilian archaeologists Bruna Rocha of the Federal University of Western Par\u00e1 (UFOPA) in Santar\u00e9m, Cristiana Barreto of the Em\u00edlio Goeldi Museum of Par\u00e1 (MPEG) in Bel\u00e9m, Carlos Augusto da Silva of the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM), Italian director of MUSA Filippo Stampanoni, and Morgan Schmidt, an American researcher currently doing a postdoctorate at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC).<\/p>\n

The project is based at MUSA, which was founded by physicist Ennio Candotti and since 2011 has been situated in a 100-hectare area of the Adolpho Ducke Forest Reserve, just outside the capital of Amazonas. With spaces integrated into the forest, the museum exhibits aspects of the region’s flora, fauna, and human population. It was thanks to the Amazon Revealed project that the auditorium where the meeting took place was built. The space includes a display on Amazonian archaeology and another showing the early results of the project, as well as information about a technical reserve for storing archaeological, ethnographic, and fossil artifacts. \u201cThis has helped MUSA become a hub for archaeological research,\u201d says Stampanoni.<\/p>\n

The aim is to carry out collaborative, co-designed, and co-produced science with local communities. \u201cThe project is not ours, the demand for demarcation studies is theirs,\u201d says Francisco Pugliese, an archaeologist from the University of Bras\u00edlia (UnB). \u201cWe are just the instruments.\u201d The informed consent essential to carrying out the research in each area comes from long and detailed conversations between archaeologists and inhabitants. The Indigenous peoples\u2019 knowledge also guides researchers to locations rich in history and helps them interpret their findings, an uncommon practice in academia.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Christian Braga\u2009\/\u2009Amaz\u00f4nia Revelada | Personal archive Jupa\u00fa Community<\/span>Tupari and Jupa\u00fa delegations at the meeting, held at MUSA, and a community meeting with the village of Alto Jaru, Rond\u00f4nia, as part of the projectChristian Braga\u2009\/\u2009Amaz\u00f4nia Revelada | Personal archive Jupa\u00fa Community<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Laser vision<\/strong>
\nIn Acre, the use of Lidar to see the ground beneath the forest has increased the number of known geoglyphs\u2014enormous geometric figures ancient peoples marked on the ground using ditches and walls, often interconnected by ancient roads (see <\/em>Pesquisa FAPESP issue n\u00ba 299<\/em><\/a>). Flyovers have been carried out in the area, revealing that these archaeological sites, which are well documented in the south of the state, also exist north of the Purus River, including in the state of Amazonas. One of the newly documented geoglyphs is a square large enough to encompass the Maracan\u00e3 stadium with roads spreading out of two sides, as shown by Portuguese topographer and geometer Hugo Pires of the University of Porto, Portugal.<\/p>\n

Pires joined the project recently, after hearing about it on an episode of the podcast R\u00e1dio Novelo Apresenta<\/em> hosted by Let\u00edcia Leite, who is responsible for communication for Amazon Revealed. He works with documentation of archaeological heritage in several places around the world and has developed a method for processing Lidar data called the Morphological Residual Model (MRM). With this technique, depressions and elevations captured in the microrelief by Lidar are colored, generating an image that reveals the complexity of the terrain with greater contrast, thus highlighting archaeological details.<\/p>\n

The first person to spot geoglyphs in the Brazilian Amazon was paleontologist Alceu Ranzi, now retired from the Federal University of Acre, when flying into Rio Branco on a commercial flight in 1986. It took him almost 20 years to begin studying them. \u201cIn 2000, I realized that archaeologists were not working on this,\u201d he says, and he began flying over the area to look for them. \u201cThen came Google Earth. I spent hours on the computer looking for geoglyphs.\u201d He was approached by Francisco Nakahara, who did not know him but had seen a documentary on the subject and also wanted to look for the designs. Ranzi taught him how to find them, and Nakahara began sending him coordinates. \u201cHe is an 84-year-old man and he has identified more than 300 geoglyphs,\u201d says the paleontologist. Approximately one thousand geoglyphs have been recorded in deforested areas in the state.<\/p>\n

More surprising was a discovery made in the municipality of Costa Marques, Rond\u00f4nia, on the border with Bolivia. The region is home to Indigenous people and people of African origin in the quilombola<\/em> community of Pr\u00edncipe da Beira, descendants of slaves taken to build a fortress to defend against Spanish invasion at the end of the eighteenth century. The importance of the fortress declined over the nineteenth century and was eventually abandoned. According to Carlos Augusto Zimpel, an archaeologist from the Federal University of Rond\u00f4nia (UNIR), the ruins contained European objects, such as crockery and cutlery. The building was listed by the National Institute for Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN) in 1950. Lidar revealed the remains of a Portuguese village nearby, which is named as Bragan\u00e7a on an eighteenth-century map, but the location of which was previously unknown. \u201cI have walked by without noticing the village,\u201d Zimpel said. Images of the terrain\u2019s relief were used to reconstruct the layout of streets, identifying geoglyphs and ditches near the village that indicate a much older occupation, with remnants of ceramics near patches of terra preta <\/em>(dark earth originating from indigenous soil management practices). \u201cThe Amazon Revealed project could stimulate archaeological tourism,\u201d noted Santiago Cayaduro Pessoa, who lives in the community and works as a guide at the fort.<\/p>\n

The Kuikuro of the Upper Xingu are partners in the archaeological study, but at first they did not accept the airplane flyovers because they did not want data about their sacred sites to be made public. Instead, they have been collecting images in specific locations using a drone equipped with Lidar, piloted masterfully by technical geographer Kumessi Kuikuro. \u201cThe Kuikuro have a glowing reputation in the Xingu Indigenous Reserve in terms of mapping and they are often sought out by other ethnic groups,\u201d says MPEG archaeologist Helena Lima. Under the agreement, the data collected belongs to the Indigenous people, who grant varying levels of access to the researchers.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Carlos Augusto Zimpel\u2009\/\u2009UNIR\u2009\u2013\u2009Amaz\u00f4nia Revelada<\/span>Between two circular geoglyphs, the straight lines and slight relief are remnants of the village of Bragan\u00e7a, on the banks of the Guapor\u00e9 RiverCarlos Augusto Zimpel\u2009\/\u2009UNIR\u2009\u2013\u2009Amaz\u00f4nia Revelada<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

One archaeological site near the village features mounds, ditches, squares, and roads. The ditches run to the river and connect all the sites in the Upper Xingu, according to Schmidt, who has been working in the Amazon since 1998. Due to the presence of terra preta<\/em>, the intentional creation of which he recently described in coauthorship with Kuikuro Indigenous people (see <\/em>Pesquisa FAPESP issue n\u00ba 333<\/em><\/a>), he believes the mounds arranged in a circle were trash piles behind each of the houses. The houses, made of clay and wood, were unable to withstand the test of time. But the compost heaps were.<\/p>\n

In the spirit of joint research between archaeologists and Indigenous groups and in support of decolonialism, all material excavated on Tupari land is being kept in the village of Palhal, Rond\u00f4nia, where there are plans to create a museum. Replicas will be made for researchers based on three-dimensional scanning. One of the struggles faced by the inhabitants of Palhal is demarcation of their land, since the village is not within the contiguous Rio Branco Indigenous Reserve. \u201cOur ancestors are buried there,\u201d explains Adilson Tupari.<\/p>\n

It will be a challenge to transform the findings into meaningful ways to protect the rainforest and improve the lives of those who reside there, since archaeological sites are protected by the Brazilian constitution. \u201cWe gave IPHAN a good problem to solve,\u201d jokes Neves, from MAE-USP. The dilemma is that there is no mechanism to register archaeological sites based solely on Lidar images and the technology has already begun to reveal more areas of interest than can feasibly be visited and excavated. The rules and regulations for registration need to be adapted and expanded, and even then, the problems will not be over. \u201cRegulatory protection does not necessarily mean physical protection,\u201d says archaeologist Thiago Berlanga Trindade, head of IPHAN\u2019s Data Registration Service. The community and society need to be involved in oversight.<\/p>\n

People living in the rainforest\u2014whether Indigenous, quilombola, or riverside communities\u2014are facing urgent, violent threats. There have been reports of genocide, rape, deadly epidemics, roads being built through protected lands, river pollution, destruction of sacred sites, illegal farming (with monocultures of soy, maize, or rice), land grabs, logging, mining, and droughts resulting from climate change and hydroelectric dams. Climate change has been a more unexpected blow, in addition to the succession of violence experienced ever since Europeans arrived in the region. \u201cWe are experiencing a drought that my grandparents never thought they would see,\u201d says Marquinho Castro dos Santos of the Mayoruna people. Santos teaches at the school in his village of Maraja\u00ed, located on the banks of the Solim\u00f5es River in the municipality of Alvar\u00e3es. Through this erosion of basic rights, they also lose access to their heritage. The beiradeira<\/em> community\u2014resulting from marriages between Indigenous people, descendants of enslaved people from Africa, and riverside people\u2014from Terra do Meio, in the south of Par\u00e1, is losing its history, with little access to education and no acknowledgement of the local culture. There is also a beiradeira <\/em>community living on the banks of the Tapaj\u00f3s River in Montanha and Mongabal, as well as a representative of the Munduruku Indigenous people. Archaeologist Vinicius Honorato of UFOPA highlights that archaeology helps strengthen traditional knowledge.<\/p>\n

Ant\u00f4nio En\u00e9sio Tenharin, municipal secretary for Indigenous Peoples in Humait\u00e1, in the south of Amazonas, says that in the quest to recover and preserve their heritage, his people filed a civil suit in 2014 demanding the creation of a heritage center and the publication of educational material on the impacts that construction of the Trans-Amazonian highway had on the Tenharin and Jiahui Indigenous peoples.<\/p>\n

The meeting in Manaus brought all of these groups together and reinforced archaeology\u2019s position as an ally. \u201cWe are in this battle together,\u201d said Vilson Tenharin, from the village of Marmelos in southern Amazonas. The four-day event was crucial to the formation of a network that the leaders intend to strengthen by promoting further meetings. Archaeological work, they say, needs to come from the peoples of the forest, including through the training of archaeologists of Indigenous, quilombola, and beiradeira origin.<\/p>\n

The journalist traveled at the invitation of the Amazon Revealed project.<\/p>\n

The story above was published with the title “The Amazon revealed<\/strong>” in issue 346 of December\/2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers meet with people from the rainforest to discuss how laser scanning can provide information about the region\u2019s past and contribute to its future","protected":false},"author":781,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[159],"tags":[202],"coauthors":[5464],"class_list":["post-548707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-archaeology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/781"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548707"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":554783,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548707\/revisions\/554783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548707"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=548707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}