Ceramic Production Technology among the Asurini of Xingu: Technical choices, transformations and enchantment

Abstract Several studies in the anthropology of techniques have emphasized that beyond their material and pragmatic aspects, technologies are social constructs that produce meanings. Moreover, technical processes mediate relations between persons (human and nonhuman) and things, as a mode of transformative and symbolic action for the (re)creation of the world. In this article my intention is to present an ethnographic description of the ceramic production technology of the Asurini do Xingu to show the intertwining of the technical choices with the principles and social, aesthetic and cosmological perceptions of this people about the objects, and materials, and their transformations.