Kuhikugu

Kuhikugu was one of the major settlements of the upper Xingu, in what is now Mato Grosso. The name can refer both to the particular settlement known archaeologically as X11, beside Lake Kuhikugu, and to the wider network of towns and villages. During the centuries around 1250–1650, large communities here occupied a deliberately organized landscape of roads, plazas, fields and forest.

Central plazas served political and ceremonial purposes. Broad roads connected settlements several kilometres apart, while defensive ditches and palisades enclosed some communities. Dark soils formed by long occupation preserve traces of intensive land use; manioc cultivation and the management of wetland resources helped sustain the population. The settlement network was not a single continuous city: cultivated and inhabited areas alternated with stretches of high forest. Its earthworks record a form of Amazonian settlement in which construction, food production and landscape management extended far beyond individual houses.