Welcome
The Brazilian Radiocarbon Database project aims to build and offer an accessible database with all absolute dates currently available for archaeological sites in Brazil. BRC14Database is dedicated to national and international public interested in Brazilian archaeology.
In recent years, the construction of large databases at national and international levels has been increasing aiming to aggregate large sets of information which allow and encourage research on wide temporal and spatial scales. Within this global context, BRC14database was created seeking to contribute to the dissemination of accessible data. The project is developed at the Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Studies in Archeology – Federal University of Santa Catarina (LEIA-UFSC) – Brazil.
BRC14database has a national range, containing archaeological sites from all over Brazil. The time span is also very extensive, covering a chronology of about 40 000 years. The dates range from the Late Pleistocene to the Recent Holocene. By assembling this set of information, we intend to contribute for the dissemination and enhancement of the Brazilian archaeological heritage inside and outside Brazil.
The use of absolute dates as indicators of human occupation, has been a common practice in archeology since the second half of the 20th century. In the last decades, the use of sequences of absolute dates as indicators of long-term processes, either to infer demography and population dynamics or to discuss interaction between paleoclimatic changes and cultural transformation has been more and more frequent.
In Brazil, the use of absolute dates sequences as proxies for discussions on demography, settlement processes, cultural transformation and interactions with environmental dynamics remains a poorly explored field.
In addition to offering a consistent tool of research and dissemination for the Brazilian archaeological heritage, the construction of BRC14Database is based on the idea that archeology is an excellent way to approach deep history, to study processes of socio-cultural transformation in the long-term and, in the Brazilian case, to encourage the construction of millenary indigenous histories, breaking the colonialist barriers that imposed an arbitrary division between history and prehistory and thus removed indigenous peoples from their millenary historical trajectories, resulting in silences and deterritorializations.
The construction and maintenance of BRC14Database is a project that requires constant attention and updating. To keep the base updated and constantly improving, we strongly encourage everyone to collaborate. See how to participate in the Collaborate page.
The systematization of the data presented is a continuous work and depends on the information available in publications and research reports. Despite our efforts to access only data that present minimum reliability criteria, we are aware of the presence of possible mistakes or absences in the database resulting from varied reasons. We greatly appreciate contributions to improve it.