Pottery, slaves identities, and creolization in the sugar plantations of Chapada dos Guimarães (MT)

Abstract

This paper discusses the ways in which slave groups in the plantations of Chapada dos Guimarães, state of Mato Grosso, used low-fired earthenware vessels to affirm discrete identities. The analysis explores the dimensions of variation in these pieces taking into account the fluctuations in the origin of slaves between 1790 and 1888. The correlations observed suggest that: (a) low-fired earthenware decorated vessels were used to express different identities among African slaves; (b) some widespread meanings related to the symbolism of pottery common in sub-Saharan African cosmology were reproduced in Chapada; and (c) the level of significance that African slaves ascribed to these items was not maintained by African-Brazilian slaves. These evidences suggest that the process of creolization in this region was generational, as it was consolidated only when an African-Brazilian population culturally more homogeneous than the African became demographically dominant. The article then discusses the distribution of pottery and other categories of artifacts in the plantations as a strategy through which the slaves symbolically reappropriated these spaces according to their own perceptions, impregnating them with memories and representations of African origin.

Key words: slaves material culture, African identities, creolization.