From the Marajoara mound to the carnival parade: Agency and resistance of Amazonian archaeological artifacts

Abstract

This article focuses on archaeological artifacts from Amazonia beyond their original contexts to introduce the concept of resistant objects based on the analysis of some of their agentive attributes. Considering the agency of Marajoara objects and images it seeks to understand which material and visual qualities allow them to be re-signified across times and cultures in diverse identity-building narratives. Among the elements identified as ‘technologies of enchantment’, we highlight the complexity of decorative fields and graphic motifs and the particular means of representing beings and their bodies as the technologies that were reutilized and adapted to occidental, historical, and contemporary contexts. We argue that such exercises are necessary as archaeological practice, as a tool to improve our understanding of the agency and resistance of certain archaeological objects, and as means to reclaim the protagonism of indigenous arts from the past that have been reappropriated through historical times in both colonial and decolonizing narratives.

Keywords
Amazonian archaeology; Agency; Iconographic analysis