Speaker: Eduardo Goes Neves, Professor of Brazilian Archaeology, University of São Paulo; CAPES Visiting Professor, Harvard University 

For many years the Amazon was considered to be an area sparsely occupied in the past, due to the supposed environmental limitations. However, archaeological research done in the last few years has been showing that the ancient Amazonia was densely populated and that the indigenous people who lived there left visible marks of their life styles. This presentation aims to provide an overview of these data and to discuss its implications on our own conceptions about life in the tropics.    

Eduardo Neves has a BA in History from the University of São Paulo and a PhD in Archaeology from Indiana University. He is Professor of Brazilian Archaeology at the University of São Paulo and CAPES-Harvard Visiting Professor at the Department of Anthropology at Harvard. He has authored or co-authored around 100 publications among books, edited books, peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, reviews and popular science articles. His research area, where he is active at fieldwork, is the Brazilian Amazon region. He is the former President of the Brazilian Archeological Society and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Society for American Archaeology.