Echoes from Jabuticabeira II

The people represented at Jabuticabeira Shell Midden II lived along Brazil's southern coast during a broad interval from roughly 410 BCE to 880 CE. Archaeological data indicates they were part of the regional sambaqui (shell mound) tradition: long-lived, often monumental midden deposits built from the refuse of maritime and estuarine resources. These sites are archaeological palimpsests—layers of shell, charcoal, bone and artifacts that record repeated episodes of occupation, feasting, and disposal across generations.

Limited evidence suggests that Jabuticabeira II was a focal place in a network of coastal settlements, where communities exploited rich estuarine fisheries, shellfish beds, and nearby terrestrial resources. Radiocarbon dates from the site bracket occupations across many centuries, but the pace and character of demographic change remain uncertain. The genetic data from five sampled individuals offers a tantalizing, though preliminary, glimpse: maternal lineages are dominated by mtDNA C1c with a single B2, while one male individual carries haplogroup Q — lineages that are broadly characteristic of Indigenous American populations. Because only five genomes are available, any reconstruction of population origins, continuity, or migration must be cautious and framed as provisional.

Ancient DNA recovered from five individuals at Jabuticabeira Shell Midden II provides a focused, yet small, dataset linking bones from the sambaqui to Indigenous American genetic lineages. Maternally, four individuals carry mtDNA haplogroup C1c and one carries B2. Both C1c and B2 are sublineages widely observed across pre‑ and post‑contact Native American populations and are interpreted as part of the founding maternal diversity of the Americas. Paternal data are much sparser: one male sample shows Y‑DNA haplogroup Q, a lineage that is also common among Indigenous peoples of the Americas.

These genetic signatures align with expectations for coastal South American populations, but the low sample count (n=5) constrains robust inferences about population structure, sex‑biased mobility, or continuity with later groups. Archaeogenetic data can be integrated with archaeological context—burial placement, isotopic evidence of diet, and artifact styles—to explore kinship, migration, and community boundaries. For Jabuticabeira II, current aDNA points to local continuity of Indigenous American maternal lineages through the sampled interval, yet broader regional sampling is needed to test hypotheses about gene flow along the Atlantic coast or connections to inland groups.