The genesis of monuments: Resisting outsiders in the contested landscapes of southern Brazil

• New explanation for the rise of burial mounds in the southern Brazilian highlands.
• Mounds are clustered where local groups did not interact with Tupi-Guarani groups.
• Funerary architecture emerged as a response to the Tupi-Guarani expansion.
• Mounded landscapes were key in the organization of local groups to repel outsiders.
• Archaeology can identify political landscapes through material symbols of authority.

In this article, we examine the emergence of the funerary mound and enclosure complexes of the southern Brazilian highlands during the last 1000 years in relation to processes of population expansion, contact, conflict and the establishment of frontiers. We test the hypothesis that such monuments emerged among the local southern proto-Jê peoples as a response to the migration of a foreign group, the Tupi-Guarani. We compared the spatio-temporal distribution of mound and enclosure complexes in respect to sites of interaction between the two groups. The results indicate that the rise of funerary architecture coincides with the first incursions of the Tupi-Guarani to the southern proto-Jê heartland, and that mounds are concentrated in areas devoid of interaction. We conclude that highly monumentalized landscapes emerged in areas where local groups chose not to interact with the Tupi-Guarani, showing that funerary monuments were an important component in the establishment of impermeable frontiers to resist outsiders.

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