ABSTRACT
The Amazon Basin is currently the area where archaeology has most successfully established significant research problems in Brazil. This is due to the fact that research in Amazonia has been, for nearly five decades now, consistently problem-oriented with a strong anthropological background. Such has not been the case in other parts of Brazil, where archaeology has remained more or less a descriptive undertaking without historical or anthropological concerns. These research problems are both theoretical and methodological, and they have direct implications for the archaeological reconstructions done in Amazonia and elsewhere in the lowlands of South America. Although clearly interrelated, they can be grouped into three general categories.
