Juliana Salles Machado Bueno

This project seeks to understand the relationships between plants, humans, and non-humans among indigenous populations of the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon, through the analysis of technology and materiality, focusing on the “marico” – a bag made of plant fibers, which embodies women’s practices from different indigenous peoples experiencing territories in what we call the Southwestern Amazon. The crafting of “marico” involves various networks of ancestral knowledge, marking the past-present relationships of women with certain plants that compose the Amazonian landscapes, qualifying our long-term understanding of human management on forest biodiversity. This research will highlight possible technological sharing, the know-how resulting from accumulated interethnic exchanges throughout their historical trajectories, among some of the peoples currently living in the Guaporé Valley in the Brazilian Amazon, including the Akuntsu, Makurap, Tupari, and Djeoromitxi, and Harakmbut peoples of the Madre de Dios region of the Peruvian Amazon. The research engages a set of interdisciplinary and intercultural collaborative practices, integrating Ethnoarchaeology, Linguistics and Indigenous Oral History involving non indigenous and ethnically different indigenous researchers.