Leandro Matthews Cascon is an archaeologist from Northeastern Brazil, obtaining his graduate degree (2001-2004) at the Federal University of Ceará state (UFC). Since 2006 he has mainly worked in Northern Brazil, studying long-term indigenous histories of native Amazonian Peoples. 

His focus on people-plant relations, especially on food-related topics, first led him to investigate, in his Master’s degree (2008-2010) at Brazil’s National Museum (MN/UFRJ), past Amazonian food practices through archaeobotany, studying microscopic plant remains (such as starch grains and phytoliths) on artifacts related to food processing from the Hatahara archaeological site, in Central Amazon.

Such work contributed, alongside those of fellow researchers in a then-incipient but now established area of research into people-plant relations in the Amazonian past, to demonstrate complex and diverse strategies by indigenous peoples which not only allowed the existence of large and stable populations in  Amazonian history, but which ultimately transformed and create the Amazon forest as we know today.

Moved by the need to understand the importance of cultural aspects of plant cultivation and use for indigenous livelihoods in the Amazonian past and present,  during his PhD (2012-2017) at the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology (MAE/USP), he worked alongside the Asurini Indigenous people of Southern Amazon to understand how plant cultivation serves as a narrative thread for their recent history. Plants are forever present in the remembering of difficult histories, for example in nostalgic memories of lost varieties due to forced displacement and violence, but also serve as examples of indigenous agency and resilience, for example in the identitary role that certain still-cultivated plants have for the Asurini, and in  ongoing (and perhaps never-ending) efforts to recover some of the plants that they have lost. 

After concluding his doctorate and working at the Brazilian National Institute of Historic and Artistic Heritage - IPHAN (2017-2018), Leandro moved to the Netherlands and, based in Leiden, has since 2018 conducted research into Amazonian ethnographic collections housed in European museums.

Under the ERC-Brasiliae Project (coordinated by Mariana Françozo, of Leiden University’s Faculty of Archaeology), his postdoctoral research (2018-2021) delved into ethnographic collections from the first centuries of colonization of Brazil, now housed in five European countries, using archive documentation, direct hands-on analysis of museum objects and laboratory methods such as radiocarbon dating and strontium analysis.

Under the Volkswagen Stiftung-Heritage and Territoriality Project (coordinated by Carla Jaimes Betancourt, of the University of Bonn’s Department of Archaeology and Cultural Anthropology), he conducted a postdoctorate (2023-2025) with museum collections in Germany and Sweden from the Tsimane’, Mosetén, Tacana (Bolivian Amazon) and the Waiwai (Brazilian Amazon), in close collaboration with Indigenous academic researchers and craft specialists.

Recently, Leandro has conducted a residence (2025-2026) at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, under the NIAS-NIOD-KITLV Moving Objects fellowship, conducting a study of colonial ethnographic collections focused on food-related material culture, specifically of cassava-related artifacts, and plant and flour samples, from Colonial Suriname. He is also part of a committee of fifty individuals, between non-indigenous researchers and indigenous leaders, selected by the Brazilian government for an ongoing workgroup to elaborate strategies for identifying and assisting in the protecting of indigenous food systems in Brazil.

Now a postdoctoral researcher of the ERC-Trajectories of Taste Project (coordinated by Tom Hoogervorst, of the KITLV), Leandro is overjoyed with the possibility of placing into dialogue two of his biggest academic passions: people-plant relations, and the study of ethnographic museum collections and archives. His research uses the cassava or manioc plant (Manihot esculenta Crantz) as a narrative thread for discussing culinary traditions in the contexts of Indonesian diaspora approached by the TASTE project: the Javanese in Suriname, the Malays in Sri Lanka, and the Cape Muslims in South Africa. The cassava plant, although Amazonian in origin, has made its way to outside of the Americas under colonial systems. Nowadays cassava is the fourth most important crop globally and the third most important in the Tropics, being a staple food for more than 500 million people worldwide. Leandro’s research aims to discuss, through cassava, how the history of introduced plants intertwines colonial projects and impositions, but also native choices and agency, and how beloved culinary dishes can have, as part of their ingredients, realities which are as fundamental for our understanding as they are difficult to swallow.

Selected Publications

Cascon, Leandro Matthews, Laffoon, J.E., Berger, M.E. & Françozo, M., 'Shedding light onto early Amerindian objects of the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden through the use of archaeometric analyses', Journal of Cultural Heritage 71: 145-152, 2025.

Cascon, Leandro Matthews, Rodrigues, I.M.M., Wai Wai, J.X., Souza, A.A. & Jaimes Betancourt, C., 'Sobre arcos que precisam de cordas e artefatos que criam territórios: Reflexões interculturais sobre a experiência de uma comitiva Waiwai em museus europeus', Revista de Arqueologia Pública  20, p. e025004, 2025. 

Cascon, Leandro Matthews & Françozo, M., 'Hoe een Braziliaanse bijl in de patriottentijd belandde', Wonderkamer: Magazine Voor Wetenschapsgeschiedenis 7: 42-45, 2023.

Cascon, Leandro Matthews, Murrieta, R.S.S. & Silva, F.A., 'Cultivando afetos: Uma etnoarqueologia de plantas alimentícias entre os Asurini do Xingu', Habitus 20: 511-535, 2022.

Cascon, Leandro Matthews & Caromano, C.F., 'Swaying on feather-roses and imperial crests: Brazilian feather-decorated hammocks, nation-building, and indigenous agency', Indiana (Berlin) 37: 71-95, 2020. 

Cascon, Leandro Matthews, Caromano, C.F., Neves, E.G. & Scheel-Ybert, R., 'Revealing fires and rich diets: Macro- and micro-archaeobotanical analysis at the Hatahara site, Central Amazonia', Tipiti 11: 40-51, 2013.