Human paleoecology, social and cultural evolutions among first Settlements in South AMErica (SESAME) – SESAME

SESAME will link archaeology and paleoclimatology. The project will combine excavations, technological and cultural interpretations of the analysis of lithic industries, anthracology, traceology, archaeozoology, dating, elemental, isotopic and organic geochemistry, palynology and paleomagnetism. In order to better understand the interactions between past societies and their environment on the one hand, and the relationships between environment and climate on the other hand, and to be able to extend the model onto other geographical areas, paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic reconstructions will be carried out on the scale of sites, the region and the continent. For this last component, SESAME will collect and analyze marine and lake cores and will also exploit sedimentary profiles (outcrop). The comparison of archaeological and paleoenvironmental/ paleoclimatic data will be possible thanks to independent chronological frameworks built on 14C and OSL dating and Bayesian chronological modeling. The model established for Northeast Brazil will be confronted with the intersecting analysis of archaeological temporalities (SESAME database) and paleoenvironmental and paleoclimatic reconstructions available in the literature for the 3 Americas.

Understanding the earliest chronology and settlement patterns of the Americas cannot be achieved without studying human-environment past relations. Adapting, moving or even disappearing in response to climate fluctuations are the expected reactions. In order to characterize these different scenarios, SESAME proposes to focus on North-East Brazil, where the human presence has been documented for at least 40,000 years. By reconstructing past climatic and environmental variations in NE Brazil and revealing the cultural and technological identity of past societies, SESAME aims at revealing the evolution of the relationship between people and their environment through Pleistocene and Holocene. This human paleoecological reconstruction will allow, in a comprehensive way, to formulate hypotheses on the potential routes of intracontinental diffusion and implantation. They will be derived from the NE Brazil model and the recontextualization of literature archaeological data into a paleoclimatic scheme on a continental scale.