Travels through a counterfeit paradise: notes on Betty Meggers’s expedition to the Lower Amazon region and her collaboration network (1948-1949)

Abstract

Betty Jane Meggers’s (1921-2012) work had a fundamental importance for Amazon archeology studies, also boosting the development of new studies in Brazil. Her first trip to the country was an expedition carried out in the Lower Amazon region, while accompanied by her husband and work partner, Clifford Evans (1920-1981), in collaboration with the Museum Emílio Goeldi, in Pará, and the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, between 1948 and 1949. In this article, Betty Meggers’ trip is described based on her field diaries. These documents allowed me to map her collaboration network in all its diversity, in addition to revealing the subjective and personal aspects involved in her field work. The collections gathered by the couple and their distribution among different museums are also discussed in this paper. The detailed descriptions written by Meggers in her notebooks include daily notes on the periods she spent in Rio de Janeiro and Belém, on the incursions to the Islands of Marajó, Caviana and Mexiana, and to the territory of Amapá, as well as a short period she spent in Belo Horizonte. They also include many names of Brazilians present in her narrative, revealing a large structure of collective work around the couple of researchers that allowed the production of that knowledge.