The association of palaeoindian sites from southern Brazil and Uruguay with the Umbu Tradition: Comments on Suárez et al. (2017)

The Umbu Tradition is an archaeological cultural unit created in late 1960s to better describe the variation observed in sites presenting lithic bifacial points in southern Brazil. Over the years, many Brazilian archaeologists, when studying archaeological sites presenting bifacial points, have associated these to the Umbu Tradition, regardless of region or chronology. Since the 1990s, some authors have questioned the validity of such an encompassing archaeological tradition. This article presents a brief history of the association of archaeological assemblages to the Umbu Tradition and a few comments which clarify some misunderstandings put forward by Suárez et al. (2017). We agree with Suárez et al. (2017) that these criticisms of the current concept of the Umbu Tradition are fair and that more data is still necessary to further explore the relationship between what has been called Umbu and other sites from southern Brazil and Uruguay.