O Holoceno médio na Serra Negra: Alto Vale do Araçuaí, Minas Gerais

Abstract

The Cabeças 04 site is located in the city of Felício dos Santos, in the Araçuaí river basin, an affluent of Jequitinhonha River, in Minas Gerais. It is an archaeological site with three well defined stratigraphic layers with five moments of occupation. Primarily at the base of the last layer there are three distinct moments that can be noticed that the site was occupied. By the dates it is presented periods of intervals (abandonments) with a range of up 1000 years. It is geologically located in the Serra do Espinhaço area, called Serra Negra area (east side). The site is in the proximity of the three main state basins: São Francisco, Jequitinhonha, and Doce. For the Plateau Diamantinense there are human occupations that consist of the transition from the Pleistocene-Holocene and to the Holocene-Superior. Recent dates made in the Cabeças 04 site allowed to identify a chronology that appears for the Holocene-Middle period, unpublished for the region. The objective was to analyze the lithic complex dated to the Holocene-Middle of the Cabeças 04 site, following the concept of operative chains. It was necessary to understand about raw material choices, reduction techniques and inferring about their social use. In this way, it cooperated to important new archaeological information in the region. It helped favoring the expansion of the knowledge of the relations of the groups and their environments, especially for the continuous occupations in the Serra Negra region, from approximately 7000 AP