Paisagens narradas

Abstract

This article analyzes the landscape of Minas Gerais as a living archive, investigating rock art as a memory device across three distinct contexts. Initially, it addresses São Thomé das Letras, where colonial appropriation resignified indigenous graphisms into Christian relics to legitimize territorial possession. Next, the study examines the Krenak perspective in the Rio Doce Valley, demonstrating how archaeological sites are reactualized not as ruins, but as abodes of “enchanted beings” and tools for political resistance and ethnic identity. Finally, it delves into the Planalto Tradition in Diamantina, focusing on Lapa das Piabas. By analyzing the relationship between rock art and the Rio Preto, it interprets the “original writing” of hunter-gatherer-fishers as a chronicle of intimacy with nature’s cycles. The article concludes that these overlapping narratives – mythical, political, and ecological – endow physical geography with the symbolic density of a landscape.