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Keywords: historical biogeography; zooarchaeology; taphonomy; Amazonia; Upper Madeira River; areas of endemism; Holocene.
This thesis investigates the historical formation of the Amazonian landscape in the Upper Madeira River corridor by integrating Zooarchaeology, Taphonomy, and Historical Biogeography. It takes as case studies the Teotônio and Santa Paula archaeological sites, where remains were identified of large-bodied floodplain fishes (Arapaima, Colossoma), frugivorous characids (Brycon), crocodilians (Caiman), and mammals from forested environments (Tapirus, Bradypus), as well as generalists (Dasypus, Didelphis). The central objective is to test the hypothesis of the persistence of areas of endemism and historical continuity between the Holocene archaeological fauna and present-day Amazonian lineages. Methodologically, the research combines morphological–taxonomic identification with taphonomic control (fragmentation, abrasion, burning/digestion) and an explicit spatial pipeline: georeferencing finds onto a 0.10° grid (5–10 km buffers), constructing presence– absence matrices (taxa × cells/phases), and carrying out biogeographic analyses via Endemicity Analysis (NDM/VNDM) and Parsimony Analysis of Endemicity (PAE), with cross-validation by subenvironments (várzea vs. terra firme) and by hydro-geomorphological sectors (upstream/downstream of rapids). The zooarchaeological results reveal a stable aquatic–terrestrial mosaic at a Holocene timescale, consistent with highly seasonal riverine systems and contiguous terra firme belts; the taphonomic signal is dominated by low-energy anthropogenic discard, which lends reliability to the spatial matrices. From a biogeographic standpoint, the co-occurrence of taxa dependent on the flood pulse and of forest indicators is more congruent with the maintenance of connectivity and patterns of endemism than with scenarios of widespread faunal replacement. The thesis’s main contribution is to propose and operationalize a replicable methodological model for archaeological biogeography in Amazonia, articulating osteological evidence with parsimonious spatial analysis, with implications for debates on species distributions during the Holocene and on biocultural landscapes.