As geoformas, os solos e suas relações com a formação de sítios arqueológicos a céu aberto na região dos Currais de Pedra - Norte de Minas Gerais

Abstract

The Cárstica dos Currais de Pedra Region (RCCP) located in the north of MG, is home to an important archaeological and speleological heritage, formed by numerous archaeological sites under limestone shelters under study. Among the landscape units that characterize the RCCP, environments apparently more favorable to human occupation in the past stand out. Among them is the unit called “inter-mass slopes”, which represents an important space for conception, resources, and territorial opportunities. Therefore, this research has as main objective to detail the physicalenvironmental framework of this landscape unit, focusing on the organization of its geoforms and the interaction with the soils, and how this can be related to human occupation in the past and consequently the formation of sites open-air archaeological sites. The research specifically aims to: i) understand the insertion of the Vertentes Inter-Massif unit in the regional landscape, discussing its genesis; ii) characterize the internal organization of landforms in the unit and their relationships with the territory's opportunities and iii) evaluate the existence of geochemical anomalies in the soils in open-air sites in this unit and that indicate occupation processes in the past. For this, various field and office procedures were adopted, including generation of databases with aerial photogrammetric surveys, mapping of landforms at different scales aiming at their taxonomic approach, collections of surface soils (topsoils) in selected sites and of pedological profiles, submitted to physical and chemical analyses, study of the lithology of lithic instruments in research collections, among others. The results show that there is an appropriation of the landscape by human groups in different ways, with greater circulation in the massifs in the geoforms intermediate levels and slabs. The soils show P anomalies that have different meanings, sometimes associated with human intervention, as at Sitio Conceição Caetano, sometimes associated with faunal intervention through guano, as at Sitio Ressurgência.