This paper intends to examine the available archaeological evidence of the social formations that occupied the Amazonian floodplain from ca. 500 BC to AD 1500. It is based on work done in different South American countries, but it will have a strong focus on the Brazilian Amazon due to the availability of new information for this area, the comparatively larger size of the Amazon basin in Brazil, and the fact that this is my own area of active research. In the Brazilian Amazon, as in other Amazonian countries, the possibility of doing large-scale fieldwork is severely limited by logistical problems such as cost of transport, site visibility, access to Indigenous lands and the increasing danger posed by drug trafficking and guerilla warfare (Oyuela-Caycedo and Bonzani 2005: xviii; Politis 1996). On the other hand, there is a noticeable increase in large-scale regional projects related to contract archaeology, mostly from mining, hydroelectric and pipeline construction, normally in areas located away from the main Amazonian floodplain. Although much of the data remain unpublished, in the few cases that are reported the publications have brought new and insightful information on cultural sequences of poorly known areas (Miller et al. 1992).
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Neves, E.G. (2008). Ecology, Ceramic Chronology and Distribution, Long-term History, and Political Change in the Amazonian Floodplain. In: Silverman, H., Isbell, W.H. (eds) The Handbook of South American Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-74907-5_20
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