Pessoas, corpos e lugares: estudo de gênero no Baixo São Francisco pré-colonial

Abstract

This research proposes to bring the gender perspective to the archaeological discussion, that has been characterized along the years by the androcentric discuss and social role hierarchy linked to the biological individual sex. Justino site, object of study of this paper, was identified in the city of Canindé de São Francisco, state of Sergipe, and is characterized by being the largest pre-colonial Brazilian necropolis. The dense amount of burials can provide information about the presence – or absence – of social differentiations based on individual sex, supporting gender discussion applied to native people. The methodologies employed in this research have encompassed the study of ethnographic data regarding the current indigenous society and the burial analysis with estimated biological sex and their respective funerary characteristics, an instance of the types of deposition and accompanies. The results indicate a relationship between funeral offering and social differentiations that go beyond biological sex and that confront models applied to pre-colonial period. Thereby, new discussions and perspectives about the indigenous societies from the Lower Sao Franciso River are now possible.