The Modern Archaeology of the Chapada Diamantina National Park and the Surrounding Region
During many years of walking through the hills in the company of old miners, or just on my own, I've come across the ruins of old mining camps, stone houses, stone aqueducts, graveyards, dams, bridges, and more. Some of these sites and old stone shelters are still occasionally used, while most are buried under the mountain vegetation or lost in some very remote cranny in the mountains. Started out just noting the sites on my map, but in later years I've marked them with a GPS and documented them with digital imagery. There is a great deal of accumulated knowledge necessary to mine in the hills – what areas have been mined and which haven't, where the gravel is good and where it is poor, the location of shelters, water, old aqueducts that can be re-used to get water to the mining site, and how to concentrate and then purify the diamonds from the tons of dirt and gravel that accompany them. Traditionally, this chain of mining experience and know-how was passed from grandfather-to-father-to-son in an oral tradition and in their day-to-day working experience. Now, almost thirty years later, most of my old walking companions have gone to the great diamond strike in the sky and, with the advent of tourism, their sons had stopped accompanying them into the hills and the chain of traditional knowledge has been broken forever.
The time has come to start putting together the material I've collected and make it available to historians and enthusiasts of mining history, hikers, tourists, or just the curious. The most lasting format is, of course, a written book; but, with so much spatial data involved, a digital presentation would be very appropriate and also easier to disseminate.
As such, resources are being sought to publish on-line this information about the Modern Archaeology of the Chapada Diamantina National Park and the Surrounding Region .
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