and the regional offices usually are run by political appointees, sometimes aided by archaeologists, architects, and other scholars, who are mostly underpaid and unable to enforce technical decisions. Officially, all excavators should ask for authorization from the Brazilian Heritage regional office, but most fieldwork, even that carried out by staff from universities and museums, is not recorded by Brazilian Heritage. Among other reasons, this is because the bureaucratic character of this office inhibits archaeologists. Some states have their own state heritage foundations, the most effective probably being the São Paulo State Heritage (Conselho de Defesa do Patrimônio Histórico, Arqueológico, Artístico e Turístico do Estado de São Paulo). Brazilian and state heritage offices are under direct political influence and are thus subject to very acute changes from time to time (usually after a change of government). IBPC, for example, became extinct in 1990 as a result of the new government and was reinstated some months later. The offices occasionally produce books and journals, but unfortunately, such works are mostly used for political propaganda. Journals such as Revista do Patrimônio Histórico e Artístico Nacional are not regularly published, and useful books (e.g., Arantes 1984) are seldom published. More recently some major cities, among them São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Porto Alegre, introduced their own local heritage offices but again their activities are overly dependent on political parties and loyalties.

The development of historical archaeology is a good example of the way in which political and scientific trends have affected the history of archaeology in Brazil. The study of historical material culture has been carried out by three kinds of practitioners: nonarchaeologists, nonacademic field-workers, and archaeologists working in scholarly institutions. Until the 1960s colonial and postcolonial artifacts, buildings, and monuments were studied by architects and art historians (e.g., Arroyo 1954). However, it was only from the 1960s that architects, art historians, and heritage managers developed a scholarly approach. Architects were at the forefront of the interest in historical buildings; good examples of literature in this area include papers by Yves Bruand (1966) on the colonial buildings in Minas Gerais State, by Benedito Lima de Toledo (1966, 1981) on the road between São Paulo and Santos. These works were mostly descriptive and concerned with the restoration of monuments.

Two books perhaps best illustrate the achievements and limitations of the architectural trend. Nestor Goulart Reis (1970) attempted to study Brazilian historical heritage by “emphasizing the importance of our artistic and historical heritage for the proposition of creative cultural activities” (Reis 1970, 11). His survey of Brazilian houses, trying to track their origins and social functions in different periods, is an interesting starting point for the study of housing from colonial times until the present. Luis Saia (1972) studied housing in the State of São Paulo and tried to relate architectural features to specific social groups, such as the bandeirantes (pioneers) who were interpreted as feudal in character (Saia 1972, 132). The weakness of all these works is the scholars’ lack of interest in collecting a large sample of artifacts (in this case, buildings), which could substantiate their impressionistic analyses.

Some art historians were also approaching material culture with the same disregard for actual evidence. Enrico Schaeffer (1965), studying colonial painting, and Oliveira Ribeiro (1968), analyzing pottery statues of Catholic saints, considered it more important to quote the existence of “hundreds of copies” (Ribeiro 1968, 25) than to actually collect, publish, and study them! It is true that the detailed material study of artifacts is the specific task of archaeologists, and as such, this disregard for the actual artifacts is not surprising. But the importance of the contribution of archaeology should be recognized.

Some very useful studies can be considered as para-archaeological or as hermeneutic tools for archaeology. A case in point is the work of Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz (1969,1974), who, in two seminal studies on slums and the perception of space, was able to provide archaeologists with real insights, albeit via sociological and thus nonarchaeological analysis. Similar insights were provided in studies on immigrant housing (Segawa 1989), on national identity and