Glass Artefacts in the Colonial Amazon
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.55695/rdahayl14.02.132Keywords:
Murutucu Sugar Mill, glass artifacts, technological analysisAbstract
Since the colonial times African presence in the Amazon has been subject of several historical and anthropological studies. However, there are few studies about African material culture, all of them focusing on some archaeological sites in the Amazon region. Our paper aims to analyze the physical evidence of the enslaved people life at the slave quarters of sugar mills in the Amazon. We focus on glass artifacts recovered from the historical archaeological site of Murutucu sugar mill, located in Bele?m, State of Para?, Brazil.
We analyze glass artifacts with negatives of withdrawals at its edges. 30 fragments were isolated due to the physical evidence of their creative use as instruments. These instruments were recovered from many areas of the site: in the slave quarters, in the landowner great house, and in the midden area. Grounded on technological analysis and in the diacritical method, we could realize that the instruments have variability in their edges, with some differences in its designs, angles, and supports. There are instruments with multifunctional and unifunctional dimensions, indicating enslaved people’s agency process. We conclude that the glass artifacts had a variety of functional and symbolic potentials, and they were made and used by enslaved people from their own technical- cultural consciousness.Downloads
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