The antiquity of the prehistoric settlement of the central-south Brazilian coast.

Abstract

We discus here the prehistoric settlement of the central-south Brazilian coast, and, more specifically, 1 old radiocarbon date obtained for a coastal shellmound, as well as its implications concerning the chronology attributed to the settlement process. The accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) technique was used to determine the (super 14) C age of charcoal from a shellmound on the southern coast of Rio de Janeiro. The resulting age was 7860+ or -80 BP, an unexpected result that reinforces 2 similar previously obtained dates for the same region. Brazilian archaeologists, however, have questioned those 2 dates, because they would predate by some 2000 yr the antiquity consensually accepted for the settlement of the central-south Brazilian littoral.