Práticas econômicas e sociais no sertão cearense no século XIX: um olhar sobre a cultura material de grupos domésticos sertanejos

Abstract

Archaeological research in two peasant households, located on the sertão do Cariri /CE, furnished important information on both the social and economic practices of the Brazilian backlands population. Using an economic anthropology conceptual framework, based on the idea of artifacts as commodities (Orser 1992), the artifact variability in these sites was understood as indicating different spheres of social interaction, going from the local scale, related to inner group social relationships, to the international, regarding the role played by imported items in these communities. The economic logic of these communities seems to have been predominantly non-capitalist, typical of those societies characterized by Dumont (1977) as intrinsic. The diachronic analysis, in its turn, pointed out to a remarkable maintenance of these groups’ material life patterns, indicating that the regional hierarquical social structure kept unaltered throughout the nineteenth-century.