Download Natural Monuments or Cultural Landscapes in Guiana

Staff Seminar Cultural Anthropology & Development Sociology Leiden
Natural Monuments or Cultural Landscapes in Guiana
Renzo Duin (Archeology, Leiden) October 7, 2013: 15.30-17.00
Venue: Room 5A42
Natural Monuments or Cultural Landscapes in Guiana (northern south America)
Ten years ago, Dr. Michael J. Heckenberger in collaboration with Amazonian indigenous
people published an article in Science (301(5640): 1710-1714) titled “Amazonia 1492:
Pristine Forest or Cultural Parkland?” Today, Dr. Renzo S. Duin poses the same question,
albeit slightly altered, for the interior of Guiana. Is the interior of Guiana a natural
monument or a cultural landscape? ... The answer is yes.
The Upper Maroni Basin, frontier zone between Suriname, French Guiana, and Brazil is a
case par excellence to study the dynamic, multifaceted, and historically situated
interrelationships between various nation states and its related territoriality, the
conceptualization of “pristine nature” to be conserved and protected by various national
parks, the question of indigenousness, and how indigenous peoples are situated in the
meshwork of an ever-globalizing world. Rather than providing answers, this talk is
intended to raise awareness of this complexity and carry on the multi-disciplinary
dialogue to one of the least known regions of Amazonia.
………
Renzo S. Duin is a postdoctoral researcher (VENI) in Amazonian archaeology and
anthropology, with a regional focus on the Guianan frontier zone of Suriname, French
Guiana, and Brazil. Since 1996, Dr. Duin has conducted fieldwork among the Wayana in
Guiana, where he observed an integrated and ranked regionality grounded in a ritual
economy. An interdisciplinary approach and multi-scalar theoretical framework—in
conjunction with a shift of the unit of analysis from the village to the relations between
settlements—was necessary to recognize the recorded patterned processes.
Renzo Duin’s VENI project "Beauty and the Feast" examines the role of feasting for
regional cohesion in non-complex societies. Archaeologists and anthropologists often
regard the villages of the indigenous peoples of the Guiana Highlands as autonomous
units. As a result, historical and regional processes of socio-political cohesion remain
underexposed.