How it began
Taperinha was a culture of the Amazon dated to about 5500 to 3000 BCE, in the territory of present-day Brazil. Its main site is a large shell heap about six yards deep and several acres in area, overlooking the Amazon flood plain just east of the city of Santarem in the state of Para. Pottery from the mound was dated with fifteen radiocarbon dates on pottery, charcoal and shell, and two thermoluminescence dates on the same pottery. A report on the excavation described it as the earliest pottery yet found in the Western Hemisphere.
How it works
The pots were simple bowls put together from patches of clay. A few had rims decorated with curved incised lines, similar to local pottery made some 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. The makers lived in fishing villages with refuse mounds, feasting areas and human burials. Fish and shellfish were both important foods. Whether these people also practiced horticulture is not certain, because few plant remains were found.
Who pushed back
The site was found by naturalists in the 1860s and 1870s, but archaeologists at first dismissed such early sites. The accepted view was that the craft of pottery making had entered the Amazon basin from the Andes some time after 4,000 years ago. Dates from Taperinha and from a nearby cave contradicted that view, since they put pottery on the lower Amazon well before it appears in the Andes.
What lasted
Taperinha is recorded in reference works as the earliest pottery-age site in the Americas. The find showed that pottery in the Americas began among fishing communities of the tropical lowlands. The curved incised lines on some rims also link the earliest pots to later Amazonian decoration, in which such lines were used in animal images throughout later prehistory.
