Rethinking households, communities and status in the southern Brazilian highlands

Disparities in domestic architecture are a potential correlate of emergent status inequality between households. In the southern Brazilian highlands, pit house settlements exhibit significant variations in structure size and site layout. Particularly relevant are the oversized structures whose function has been debated but remained unresolved. Here, I present data from Baggio 1, a large site including an oversized structure (cal CE 1365-1790). I show how the oversized pit house emerged earlier and was distinguished not only by its dimensions, but also by its privileged hilltop position and practices of floor renewal. When the settlement expanded with the addition of smaller pits, some of which were small houses, whereas others were specialized facilities, the precinct around the oversized structure continued to be the focus of activities of the settlement. Based on ethnography of the Jê peoples of Brazil and cross-cultural relationships between household size and status, I argue that the dwellers of the oversized pit house could have derived a higher status from their more numerous kin and connection to the founders of the site. Finally, the appearance of oversized pit houses must be understood in a broader context of landscape and social transformations in southern Brazil after the turn of the second millennium AD, which was also reflected in other material signs of emergent status inequalities.