THE WHITE CITIES: LIME AS A COLONAL POWER STRATEGY, FOR THE BUILDING OF ITAMARACÁ AND OTHER TOWNS AND CITIES IN NORTHERN BRAZIL, BETWEEN 1516 to 1800.
ITAMARACÁ; LIME; MATERIAL CULTURE; WHITE CITIES; COLONIAL ARCHITECTURE; SYMBOLIC POWER.
This thesis aims to discuss the formation of the “White Cities” in the Brazilian colonial period, to be defined throughout the text as a condition for the study of representations of material culture and its influence on colonial power structures. Our starting point is the Island of Itamaracá, as a place for the production and disposal of lime, the raw material used to build, coat and give meaning to white cities. To do so, we seek a multi and interdisciplinary contribution between geography, archeology, architecture, anthropology and history as an articulator of our problem. Based on the dialogue between Pesavento, Rolnick, Miller and, above all, Bourdier, among other authors, and on the analysis of iconographies, maps, chroniclers' reports, reading of the geographical environment, architectural surveys, written sources on the history of the captaincy of Itamaracá, as well as as its relationship with the other captaincies of northern Brazil, we will seek to weave a narrative that can contribute to the understanding of material culture in the history of colonial towns and cities in Brazil, and their different symbolic constructions.