INTRODUCTION

The Tupi of Brazil undertook an enormous territorial expansion more than 2,000 years ago. The word Tupi is applied to a linguistic stock that encompasses approximately 41 languages that spread, several millennia ago, throughout eastern South America (Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay). Of those 41 languages, the two most frequently mentioned since the arrival of Europeans have been Guarani and Tupinamba. The term Tupi is also used to refer to the speakers of these languages.

Since the nineteenth century scholars have been interested in the Tupi phenomenon. Today a consensus exists on the two following points. First, there was a common center of origin, from which the Tupi fanned out. Second, the Tupi differentiated through distinct historic and cultural processes while keeping several common features.

But there is no consensus as to where the Tupi center was located and where their routes of expansion passed. Since 1960 archaeological data (site location, radiocarbon dating, thermoluminiscence dating) and linguistic data (glottochronology, relationships among languages) have been brought to bear on the Tupi problem. In this chapter I argue that enough elements exist to link prehistoric and historic Tupian groups, thereby setting the stage for understanding Tupi origins, continuities, changes, and/or extinction. I also argue that chronology can now be based on archaeological and linguistic evidence rather than earlier speculations, which distorted prehistoric events.

Noelli’s paper (1998) included discussion of nineteenth and much of twentieth century research on the Tupi. I do not repeat that information here. Suffice it to say that for more than a century, between 1838 and 1946, hypotheses were developed with historical and ethnographic data and were influenced by theories ranging from degenerationism to racial and geographic determinism to evolutionism. Most theories were based on the historic location of known Tupian people. With the publication of the Handbook of South American Indians in the late 1940s, archaeological information has been interpreted in frameworks of ecological determinism and diffusionism. During the same period, methods

Handbook of South American Archaeology, edited by Helaine Silverman and William H. Isbell.

Springer, New York, 2008

Of historical linguistics were introduced, especially to identify the relationships among kin languages. As with debates about origins and cultural evolution elsewhere in South America, two of the key figures in the Tupi origins and migration debate were Betty J. Meggers (1963, 1972, 1975, 1976, 1982) and Donald W. Lathrap (1970). PRONAPA (Pro-grama Nacional de Pesquisas Arqueologicas) was very active in Tupi archaeology at the same time, 1965-1970 (e. g., PRONAPA 1970) [Note 1]. It was also in this period that Jose Brochado (1973, 1984; Brochado et al. 1969) worked intensively on Tupi archaeology. Brochado subsequently completed doctoral studies at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign under the mentorship of Lathrap (see Brochado 1984).