Geographic Setting

The French Guiana coastal zone is part of the broad Quaternary sedimentary plain stretching some 1,600 km between the mouth of the Amazon and the Orinoco Delta. This plain is relatively narrow in French Guiana, where it is 5–40 km wide. Outcrops of the rocky shelf emerge only on the French Guiana coast in the form of small hills in Oyapock Bay, Cayenne Island, and the lower valley of the Kourou River, but the rest of the coast is low and partially flooded. The young coastal plain is differentiated from the old coastal plain. The former is a low swampy plain bordered by mangroves on the mud flats along the seashore. It is subject to tidal influences, and the seawater can flood the mangrove as far as 2 km into the interior. On the old coastal plain, marshes are cut by narrow and elongated sandy ridges parallel to the seashore. These are old beaches that measure some tens of meters wide and can reach more than 100 km long. These dry sandy ridges are preferred locations for Amerindians to build their villages.

At the beginning of the colonial period, Europeans did not favor this landscape, considering it inadequate for settlement and agriculture, with noxious air that provoked lethal fever. In contrast, precolumbian Amerindians intensively occupied this savannah environment and profoundly modified the landscape (Rostain Reference Rostain, Silverman and Isbell2008). For that reason, numerous archaeological sites have been found on these sandy formations along the Guianas coast. After their initial limited occupations on the coast, European settlers progressively advanced into the region during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, chasing away the Amerindian people.

The Maillard settlement was located in the traditional territory of the Kali'na, a Karib group, west of Cayenne Island. During the seventeenth century, the French Guiana coast was divided into two Amerindian territories, with Cayenne Island as a boundary. The eastern coast was the territory of the Palikur, an Aruak group, and the western coast, including Cayenne Island, was Kali'na territory. As late as the eighteenth century, many Kali'na villages were settled just west of Cayenne Island (Hurault Reference Hurault1989). Later, Europeans pushed Amerindians farther to the west, to the Mana River (Collomb Reference Collomb and Rostain2015). These two groups were at war throughout the colonial period, which was characterized by temporary alliances and occasional battles. The present-day territorial situation is still the same, with the Palikur essentially located in the Lower Oyapock and in the neighboring Brazilian state of Amapá and the Kali'na settled in some villages west of the city of Kourou.

The historical Palikur nucleus was located along the Urucauá River in the Uaça Basin, in the northern part of the Brazilian state of Amapá (Nimuendaju Reference Nimuendaju2008). At the time of the European conquest, the Palikur had a trade network that included various ethnic groups settled between the Araguari and Oyapock Rivers. During the eighteenth century, numerous communities found refuge in northern Amapá, leading to cultural mixing and assimilation. This resulted in the formation of the three Amerindian ethnic groups in this region today: the Palikur (who speak an Arawak language), Karipuna, and Uaça (Grenand and Grenand Reference Grenand and Grenand1987). In recent times, some Kali'na also settled in the Uaça Basin. In 1982, 1,026 Palikur were reported to live in French Guiana and the Amapá State in Brazil. Ten years later, this number had risen to 1,480 (Grenand and Grenand Reference Grenand, Grenand and Bahuchet1994).

Today the coastal Amerindians inhabit two main areas at the two extremes of the French Guiana coast: the Kali'na area along the lower Mana River in the west and the Palikur area along the lower Oyapock River in the east. Along the rest of the western coast, only a few small Kali'na villages are found, generally settled on the sandy ridges not far from National Road 1, which runs east-west parallel to the seashore.

The Maillard village was located on a slight elevation in the old coastal plain, 6 km east of the modern town of Macouria and 235 m south of National Road 1 (4° 57′ 59′′ N, 52° 26′ 21′′ W). This site offered an advantageous view of the savannah, easy access to the main coastal road, and proximity to the town of Macouria (Figure 1). Inhabitants were close to various biotopes—forested patches to the south, seasonally flooded savannahs surrounding the village, and mangrove and sea to the north—allowing access to resources from these areas. They lacked only a nearby freshwater source because the closest river, the Macouria, was 7 km away.

Figure 1.

Location of the Maillard village on the central French Guiana coast and oblique view of the savannah from the south with the area (circle) of the Maillard village. Kamuyene village is located to the west. (Drawing S. Rostain; photo Google Earth.)

A soil core from the center of the village showed two main pedologic strata. A layer of brown to yellowish-brown, clayish sand was found between 0 and 40 cm deep. From 40 to 60 cm, the soil progressively became multicolored clay (bright brown, red, and grayish). The soil was very dry in comparison with the flooded surroundings. In sum, the village had been settled on a low coastal formation, with a thin sandy layer lying above a clayish substratum, which may have been formed from a sedimentary origin or from an altered rocky substratum. In inhabiting the savannah, Amerindians opted to settle in dry spots, free of flooding (Figure 2). All the archaeological test pits made between houses and in middens showed a thin superficial cultural layer, reaching a depth of less than 5 cm.

Figure 2.

Aerial views of the abandoned Maillard village, from the north and from the west. Some raised fields can be seen in the foreground in the upper photograph. (Photo S. Rostain.)

The Maillard village was studied in two stages: first, classical archaeological fieldwork at the site was followed by an interpretation of the collected data; then, a knowledgeable former occupant of the village was interviewed. Fieldwork included topographical mapping of various features, several test pits, and an inventory of remains and midden contents.

The Archaeological Approach

Archaeological fieldwork was conducted in November 1990 at the end of the dry season, and several visits were made over the course of the subsequent year. Vegetation was still low and sparse, so remains and pathways were clearly visible. Moreover, a recent savannah fire had cleaned the central part of the village. The settlement stretched over 38 m from north to south and 50 m from west to east, but an additional house was located 22 m east of the eastern border.

More than 100 planimetric measurements were taken using a horizontal alidade in magnetic orientation at scale 1/200. Altitude measurements confirm that the village was located on the highest point of the flood-prone savannah, so that it remained dry even during the rainy season. The first step was to locate posts and postholes in order to reconstruct the map of each individual house and of the latrines. Garbage dumps were then located and measured. A map of internal pathways was drawn. Planted trees were located and their species determined. Two wooden benches, which constituted the largest artifacts, were located. Finally, houses were numbered for the study. A complete map of the settlement was drawn showing postholes, house plans, latrines, pathways, middens, and discard areas, as well as notable artifacts, planted trees, and the central plaza (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

Interpretative map of the abandoned Maillard village. (Drawing S. Rostain.)

Archaeological Interpretation

The archaeological data collected was classified and analyzed using ethnographic references (for instance, Nimuendaju Reference Nimuendaju2008; Roth Reference Roth1924) and known data on comparable modern populations to obtain inferences about the village and its former inhabitants.

The location of the Maillard village—on the top of a sandy ridge, not far from National Road 1 and near forest patches—was presumed to be a careful choice made by its inhabitants when they settled there. The spot was high and thus free of flooding, and was located near natural resources.

The mapping of posts and postholes led to the recognition of seven houses in various conditions of preservation. They were all built on stilts according to the same technique. Such houses resting on short stilts are perfectly adapted to the flood-prone savannahs of the Guianas coast. Simple observation of the architectural style of the wood and palm houses shows that they were neither Western nor creole (the black community predominant on the French Guiana coast, who live in cement houses), but clearly Amerindian (Roth Reference Roth1924). The organization of the village, with a small number of houses, external latrines, a well, pathways, and a central plaza, was typical of many modern Amerindian villages of the Guianas (Rivière Reference Rivière1984). The largest house was located just in front of the central plaza, leading to the inference that the village captain lived in this relatively prestigious building, as is the case in other Amerindian settlements. Using the characteristics of habitation features, house sizes, and indigenous birth rates in French Guiana in the 1980s, I propose that an average family consisted of three to four members. The large quantity of baby bottles in almost all garbage pits suggested the presence of children in each house. On the basis of these estimates, I hypothesized that seven families resided in the settlement, between 21 and 28 persons total.

All the characteristics seen in the village indicate a sudden departure. Benches were left in the ceremonial plaza. Numerous artifacts in working condition were still in house 5 and the red bark dye had not been taken. The fact that the collective bench tail had been sawn off could be interpreted as a ceremonial destruction and a social deposition of the bench. The abandonment was estimated to have been very recent, between several weeks and a few months before the study.

Dump areas were very informative as to daily life and the identities of the owners because most of the houses were associated with specific middens. The fact that the majority of remains were from Western industrial societies implied that a cash economy was practiced, probably supplemented by Amerindian products and local food procurement. Snail shells found in the middens indicated that local food sources could include small animals. Inhabitants could also collect wild plants from the surroundings. For their daily use, they could collect fruit from the trees between the houses. Other basic crops were probably cultivated in fields outside the village. It seems reasonable to infer that the former occupants cultivated plants on the raised fields built north of the settlement, while complementary fruits grew near the houses. I supposed that game hunting was probably practiced, although no evidence of this activity had been found.

Each midden included some common kinds of waste. For instance, most contained baby bottles, indicating the presence of infants in many families. The numerous batteries in the garbage heaps could be explained by the absence of electricity in the village, requiring inhabitants to use flashlights. The high volume of metal, glass, and plastic containers confirmed an enduring relationship with the European world and the consumption of various industrial products.

The general absence of alcohol bottles spoke in favor of a religious community ban. That is, most households were Evangelical, Adventist, or Pentecostal. Evangelical preachers’ forbidding stance on alcohol could wield a strong influence on Amerindian populations. The presence of rum and wine bottles at house 5 suggested that its inhabitants did drink alcohol. This could be because the inhabitants of house 5 had not converted to Christianity or were Catholic. It must be noted that because of its location at the entrance, occupants of house 5 would have received most of the visitors to the village. When I was visiting the village in 1989, I always spoke to the male inhabitant of house 5, thinking that he was the captain. In reality, during the day he replaced the captain, who had a steady job outside the settlement. In any case, this distribution of empty alcoholic bottles could represent a religious difference like that in the Lower Oyapock, where the Evangelical Palikur of Persévérance, near Saint-Georges, did not drink alcohol but the Catholic Palikur of the Gabaret River farther north still consumed alcoholic beverages.

Another particularity that was observed was in the house 4 midden, which was full of spare car parts, suggesting that a handyman or mechanic lived there.

No Amerindian product or artifact was found in the middens, so they could not be used to identify the origin of the occupants. Even the village distribution and house characteristics were not clearly identified with a particular ethnic group. For that reason, other clues had to be used, such as the Amerindian furniture and artifacts designed in specific shapes with recognizable decorations. Morphological and stylistic features of the wooden benches were compared with examples from Amerindian peoples of the Guianas to determine a cultural attribution. The Maillard village benches appeared to be of Palikur origin. Palikur benches are generally painted with bright colors and carved in the shape of an animal that represents a spirit, called Karuãna by the Palikur (Instituto de Pesquisa e Formação en Educação Indígena and Museu Kuahí 2009). Individual benches may have the shape of a bird or, rarely, a caiman. The individual bench in the Maillard village was a typical Palikur bird representation, although simpler and coarser in design. There was no decorative paint, perhaps because it had eroded. This bench found on the central plaza was interpreted as having belonged to the captain because the large house 2 in front of the central plaza was assumed to have been inhabited by him.

Palikur collective benches measure from 2 to 4 m in length and may represent a swordfish, caiman, or anaconda. Caiman benches are destined for women while anaconda benches, often longer, are reserved for men (Instituto de Pesquisa e Formação en Educação Indígena and Museu Kuahí 2009). The bench in Maillard village was a representation of an anaconda, and thus probably intended for men. In a Palikur village, individual and collective benches are located on the central plaza and are used during ceremonies. When not in use, they are turned upside down to avoid their use by evil spirits. They are important artifacts for the community because of their essential role in the feasts at the plaza that symbolizes the cultural domain, the center of social life and most important place in the village.

A bowl made from half a calabash was found abandoned in house 4. Its rim was decorated with a row of small squares, each with a central dot made by incision and then painted black. Palikur use the boiled bark of Licania heteromorpha (Chrysobalanaceae) to make this pigment. It was hypothesized that this motif represents the neck feathers of the stork Jabiru mycteria, as found in Palikur iconography (van den Bel Reference van den Bel2009). In the same house, the red bark found in a cooking pot testified to the Amerindian activity of manufacturing pigments for basketry or for decorating calabashes.

The two Amerindian pottery artifacts can be attributed to the same ethnic group, the Kali'na community. The red painted pitcher with a broken handle is only made by the Kali'na. The globular shape of the pitcher is inspired by the European water jug (gargoulette in French); its porous walls are made to keep water cool. Kali'na make many of these containers, which they designate by the Karib name watalakan, created by the association of the Dutch words water and kan (jug). The perforated painted sherd was probably part of a flowerpot. In view of the technological and decorative characteristics—beige porous paste, red and white drawings, distinctive shape (Tricornot Reference Tricornot2007)—there is no doubt that these two ceramics were Kali'na. Such data indicate the presence of a member of this group in the village or trade relations with Kali'na.

From all the collected data, it is possible to infer the presence of one or two ethnic groups in the village. Creoles are the main contemporary inhabitants of this part of the coast, but they can be eliminated because the settlement characteristics are clearly Amerindian. Ceramic sherds and the pottery bottle are typically Kali'na, so it is reasonable to think that representatives of this group lived in this village. Nevertheless, the two wooden benches are clearly Palikur (as is the half-calabash bowl), so it can be inferred that this group also was represented here. This duality of style in the Maillard settlement might reflect the presence of residents from both the ethnic groups, but I cannot determine which one was dominant. Another possibility is that the village was occupied by one group and had trader relations with the other. Thus, not enough cultural features were found to be sure of the identity of the former inhabitants.

Confronting Archaeology with Ethnographic Observations

After completing the archaeological reconstruction in 1990, I immediately invited Jean N.,Footnote ¹ who was the captain of the Maillard village before its abandonment, to the deserted settlement to test the validity of my interpretations. The objective of this exercise was to compare archaeological data against ethnographic facts. Jean was relatively open in his responses, but he remained vague on some points, especially regarding ceremonial artifacts.

The first revelation was the identity of the former inhabitants, who were all Palikur (and called themselves Paykweneh); no resident was Kali'na. According to Jean N., he was the first Palikur to settle in Maillard village in 1986. He was born in Saint-Georges, on the French bank of the Oyapock River, and migrated when very young with his parents to Ukumene on the Urucauá River. When he came of age, he returned to Saint-Georges, where he stayed for two years before flying to Cayenne to work and to seek good health and happiness. In 1986, he decided to build his house near Macouria. The same year, his brothers and other Palikur joined him there.

The captain's testimony enabled us to reexamine several of the archaeological interpretations. First, the location of the settlement was not a choice of the inhabitants. Rather, the municipal government of Macouria decided to place the settlement far from the town, rejecting the Palikur in the same way that numerous other Amerindian groups in the contemporary Americas were treated. Thus, the inference that a precise choice had been made by the inhabitants was invalidated.

The captain made a list of the former inhabitants including the name of the husband (but not the wife) and the number of children in each household. In 1990, 28 people—12 adults and 16 children—permanently lived in Maillard village, in an area of about 1900 m² (this area excluded house 6, which was set back from the settlement). Thus, the evaluation of the number of inhabitants—between 21 and 28—made during the archaeological work was correct, even if the average number of family members per household and the number of houses were wrong. The Maillard village occupants were:

The number of residents had fluctuated over time because sometimes Palikur workers had come from Saint-Georges to labor in the surrounding pineapple plantations. The captain explained that the village was occupied by its inhabitants for only four years because the owner of the land decided to settle a housing project in this area. Banished, most of the Palikur settlers moved away in May 1990 to settle in a new village 3 km closer to Macouria. Three individuals stayed in house 5 until August before moving on.

Kamuyene, the name given to the new village, is interesting because it was the name of a famous Palikur clan. The word kamu means “sun,” and the name signifies that the people's eyes shone like the sun (Grenand and Grenand Reference Grenand and Grenand1987). This clan, which originated in the Maye Hill on the Cunani River in Amapá, were outsiders who joined the Palikur and assimilated into the community by the beginning of the twentieth century (Nimuendaju Reference Nimuendaju2008). I first thought that the inhabitants of Maillard village were survivors of this clan, but further ethnographic inquiry with Jean N. revealed that his family came from a group that had assimilated with the Palikur at a later time. In fact, it seems that he could even be a Marounouyene, which is not a Palikur clan but a Maroni Kali'na group. The claim of membership in the prestigious Kamuyene clan could not be verified, demonstrating the practice of embellishing oral history by members of a community. The symbolic dimension of the search for a mythical past is an important aspect in some Amerindian groups. For that reason, it is important to be cautious in ethnographic interviews when asking for genealogical precision.

In making the list of inhabitants, Jean N. omitted two houses (6 and 7), so I asked him who lived in these houses. He answered that no houses had been there. When I showed him the postholes, he explained that people had begun work on the two houses but had never finished them; at the time Maillard village was abandoned, the houses had never been inhabited. This was not obvious from the available evidence and features. An indication of this fact might have been the absence of garbage dumps associated with these houses, but a dispersed midden located just in front of house 7 resulted in the conclusion that these houses had also been occupied and abandoned. Although no discard area was associated with house 6, it is common in Amerindian villages to sweep out the garbage against the neighbor's house, so that a dump near one house could have come from another house. Moreover, Jean N. told me that there was a house east of the settlement that I had not recorded. The inhabitants of house 8 had left long before the others.

In the majority of Amazonian villages, the captain's house is the largest and is usually located in front of the central plaza. It was inferred that the large house 2, just east of the ceremonial plaza, was the captain's house. “Oh no!” answered Jean N., “Mine was the small one far away [house 1], at the end of the western pathway of the settlement.” The inference of social significance of the central location of the captain's house was thus invalidated. The captain said he had not wanted to live in front of the plaza because of the noise. Instead, his brother, Lucien, lived in house 2. The captain did confirm that the owner of house 4 was a handyman, but not a professional mechanic.

The analysis of the distribution of postholes and posts to reconstruct the plan of the buildings seemed like a straightforward interpretation. Nonetheless, the multiple errors in the conclusions showcase the missteps an archaeologist may make while analyzing remnant architecture. I saw two inhabited and abandoned houses when in fact they had never been finished nor occupied, and I missed a house that had actually been used in the periphery of the village.

The two abandoned benches were clearly of Palikur origin, based on their shape and decoration. According to Jean N., the collective bench had been manufactured in Saint-Georges, in the Lower Oyapock. It was then brought to Maillard village by canoe, a difficult voyage by sea of more than 100 km. The captain would not give a clear explanation for why the bench was abandoned, and argued that he did not know that the tail was cut or why. Perhaps the children did it, he explained. This explanation was doubtful, as I learned later that the community split to form two groups in 1990. So it can be assumed that the bench was ceremonially “killed” by amputation. The individual bench was abandoned because it was partially cracked. Nevertheless, it did not belong to the captain. My attribution of ownership of this bench was thus incorrect.

In fact, few archaeological elements of the settlement had offered concrete clues to the identity of the former occupants. Moreover, most objects, like the wooden benches, would have been destroyed by time, and the few nonperishable artifacts, such as pottery and glass, would have led to the wrong conclusions regarding identity. The identification of an ethnic group or an archaeological culture is frequently based on the pottery, in spite of many arguments against a simple correlation (Hodder Reference Hodder1982; Jones Reference Jones1997). The presence of Kali'na pottery in Maillard village could be explained by the absence of ceramic manufacture in the village. No women manufactured pottery in the settlement; this craft had almost completely disappeared among the Palikur by the 1980s (Rostain Reference Rostain1992). The closest Amerindian potters were Kali'na, and the Palikur had to trade with them to obtain Amerindian ceramics. This ethnographic evidence is very interesting for archaeologists because similar phenomena surely occurred in the past. For example, until recently in the Upper Xingu, only one group made pottery, which they traded to neighboring communities; these communities represented four different linguistic families (Steward Reference Steward1948).

Work activities were divided by gender at Maillard village: all men were employed in neighboring pineapple plantations and worked in their own fields, while women manufactured and sold basketry. In addition to agriculture, men hunted various animals in the nearby forest, including agouti (Dasyprocta agouti), deer (Mazama americana), tapir (Tapirus terrestris, locally named maïpouri), toucan (Ramphastos sp., locally named gros-bec), and others. They also fished and collected shellfish (called mantouni in Palikur) in the Macouria River. The piles of snail shells were correctly interpreted as food remains.

The proximity of raised fields and settlements suggested a connection between the two activity areas. Nevertheless, Jean explained that the village residents had never cultivated these raised fields, nor had they even known their function. In reality, the raised fields were built and used around 800 years ago by Arauquinoid people (Rostain Reference Rostain2010). Similar raised fields are known along the Guianas coast, in an area 600 km long, from Cayenne Island in French Guiana west to the Berbice River in Guyana (Rostain Reference Rostain, Silverman and Isbell2008). They are mostly precolumbian, built between A.D. 300 and 1400 by Barrancoid or Arauquinoid societies. They were used to cultivate crops, mainly maize, in flood-prone areas such as the coastal savannahs and swamps. This agricultural technique almost disappeared after the European conquest, but recently small groups, including Haitian migrants and Saamaka (descendants of escaped African slaves), have built and cultivated similar raised fields along the western French Guiana coast (Rostain Reference Rostain2012). The inhabitants of the Maillard village had, conversely, cultivated three fields using slash-and-burn technique in the forested patches south of the settlement. The chance spatial association of ancient raised fields and the remains of a modern settlement led to a false conclusion about activity areas (see Supplemental Information 4).

During the study of the Maillard village, some aspects were difficult to register and I missed some remains. The abandoned and ruined house 8 was covered by grass and some postholes were not visible, so only three postholes had been located during the topographical survey of the site. I did not find the posthole of the ceremonial pole that had been removed from the central plaza. This was a pity, because this pole is very important for the feasts and dances that were organized twice a week in Palikur villages (Instituto de Pesquisa e Formação en Educação Indígena and Museu Kuahí 2009). The central pole generally measures between 4 and 6 m, but can reach 7 m high. It is decorated with grooved motifs, painted figures, and feathers that were spirit emblems. One to four poles, simple or equipped with arms, may be planted on the ceremonial plaza. During the Turé feast, strings tied to the beams of the pole symbolize a house roof. The central plaza is an essential space for the community, because the pole connects spirits and humans through the efforts of the shaman. The ceremonial pole is the passage taken by the spirits to participate in the feast, when all the village members are present around the pole. The Turé is the most important feast for the Palikur, because it serves to thank invisible spirits living in the Other World for the cure during shamanistic practices (Vidal Reference Vidal2009). Jean N. told me that the ceremonial pole was not the only element missing from the central plaza. Former inhabitants had taken another large collective bench and four individual benches, those of Lucien, Jean, and Elie N., and one reserved for guests.

Finally, I did not see the remains of the soccer field, which was under the grass at the southern edge of the village. I did not look for the goal postholes because they were outside the settlement and hidden in the vegetation.

In fact, I failed to detect two essential parts of Palikur community life: sports and ceremonies. I did not pay attention to the discreet—but present—traces of these domains of village life because I was not aware of the practice of these activities.

Over the course of the year following the initial study of the Maillard village, I returned to make regular observations to see what artifacts were taken by Amerindians when they came back to their ancient village (Figure 8). The abandonment of various usable artifacts, such as sheet metal, toys, basketry, and pottery, had suggested that they had moved rather abruptly. Consequently, the ease of access to the settlement and its proximity to the new village allowed them to return frequently to retrieve objects that could be put to use again. The Amerindian people of the Guianas have been noted to possess an indifference to objects and a lack of attachment to material assets (Rivière Reference Rivière1984). For instance, during my visit with the captain, he took advantage of my car to carry sheets of metal to the new settlement. He noted the well-preserved posts, planning to return to take them later, and one of his children took the tricycle that had been left in house 5 (Figure 7E). Thus, former inhabitants tended to visit their abandoned settlement for the purpose of reclaiming some of the resources that the area contains.

Figure 8.

The top photograph shows Maillard village one year after abandonment, with houses that had almost completely disintegrated, as illustrated here by a fallen roof. The lower photograph shows that 20 years later the village exhibited no visible human-related features and no relictual planted trees. (Photos S. Rostain.)