Historical map of the traditional place names (PDF 2.2 Mb) Historical Map of the Traditional Place Names in the Diamond Zone

One of the things that most attracted me when I first arrived in the Chapada Diamantina was the fact that there were still dozens of old-timers still living and working in the hills. I've walked through the mountains with almost all of them over the years, learning a bit of their folklore and traditions and picking up a good first-hand knowledge of the geography and geology of the Sincorá Mountain Range.

During all these outings in the hills with miners, hunters, rock-cutters, commercial flower gatherers, hoe-farmers and cowboys ( vaqueiros ) I've carefully noted down the names of all the areas we visited – resulting in a surprisingly long list of names for rivers, mountains, old mines, valleys and trails. These were all available now in a digital map of Historical Map of Traditional Place Names in the Diamond Zone , an area that includes the National Park.

These miners also showed me the ruins of old mining camps, stone houses, stone aqueducts, graveyards, dams, bridges and more. Some of these sites and old stone shelters are still occasionally used, while most are buried under the mountain vegetation or lost in some very remote cranny in the mountains. Started out just noting the sites on my map, but in later years I've marked them with a GPS and documented them with digital imagery.

There is a great deal of accumulated knowledge necessary to mine in the hills – what areas have been mined and which haven't, where the gravel is good and where it is poor, the location of shelters, water, old aqueducts that can be re-used to get water to the mining site, and how to concentrate and then purify the diamonds from the tons of dirt and gravel that accompany them. Traditionally, this chain of mining experience and know-how had been passed from grandfather-to-father-to-son as an oral tradition and in the day-to-day working experience. Now, almost thirty years later, most of my old walking companions have gone to the great diamond strike in the sky, and with the advent of tourism, sons are no longer accompanying their fathers and the chain of traditional knowledge has been broken forever.

The time has come to start putting together the material I've collected and make it available to historians and enthusiasts of mining history, hikers, tourists, or just the curious. The most lasting format is, of course, a written book; but, with so much spatial data involved, a digital presentation would be very appropriate and also easier to disseminate.

As such, resources are needed to pay a technician familiar with web-page production to help publish on-line this information about the Modern Archaeology of the Chapada Diamantina National Park and the Surrounding Region .

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