Vidas entre conchas : dinâmicas sociais na construção de concheiros entre o Fiola da Guiné-Bissau

Abstract

Shells are one of the most present elements in the daily life of the Diola populations of Guinea-Bissau. They are present in almost all social aspects, and permeate the construction of the landscape, mainly through their large accumulations, the shell mounds. From the concept of de Terroir, so present and used by French-speaking Africanist geography, we articulated our research objectives. To understand terroir is to understand the Diola people, and vice versa. Both are builders and built from the interaction with each other, and in this way, we present the shell mounds as privileged places to understand the Terroir in all its complexity, and consequently, understand the Diola people and their occupation in the territory. Since at least two thousand years, the occupation of the territory has been constant, with migrations and conflicts occurring, and what we now understand as Diola populations are an amalgamation of peoples that merged into a common identity, built mainly from an external classification. Through field research carried out in different villages in northwest Guinea-Bissau, we were able to identify and record more than 120 shellfish sites, and current mollusc collection and processing practices. Through interventions and surveys in some shell mounds, we were able to understand their construction, and their chronology, placing them mostly between the 17th and 20th centuries. We identified that these shell mounds have different functions for the populations of the present, with which we can come up with hypotheses for the past. At present, we were able to identify five clear functions: dunghill, barrier, port, paths and monuments. The latter, we formulate hypotheses, seeking to explain the reason for their regional atypicality, arguing that they have a clear character of power and sacredness, resulting from a past activity of massive collection of molluscs for commercial sale. This thesis had as main objective the attempt to study the history of one of the peoples of Guinea-Bissau, the Diola, starting from sources produced by themselves, the shell mounds and different artifacts found, seeking to contrast with most of the works carried out in the region that privilege sources and a dialogue with the Portuguese colonial presence.