There is little evidence relating to the material dimension of the homes in the quilombos/mocambos. Generally speaking, the documents available refer only to the existence of 'ranches' (some sources mention only that they were made of straw, and little is known about their size, layout, interior divisions or the material used to build and cover them). Archaeological research on the site of the Ambrósio quilombo has shown that the homes were built from wattle and daub and clay. They were of various shapes and sizes. It has been argued that wattle-and-daub homes covered with leaves were common among black slaves, freedpersons and the poorer populations in the Minas Gerais slave society of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Guimarães et al., 1990). This construction technique may also have been a recreation of an African style. Descriptions of African homes in the kingdoms of Kongo, Matamba and Angola written by Capuchin missionary Cavazzi da Montecuccolo (Cavazzi de Montecuccolo, 1965; Balandier, 1968, p. 141) in the seventeenth century point to constructions of this type and mention houses which were 'interwoven with straw' and whose roofs were made of palm leaves or strong, thin cane. In 1766, a punitive expedition to the interior region of Mogi Guaçu in São Paulo located a large quilombo (which would be burnt down) which included two areas for  
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[^0]:    4 ANRJ, Codex 952, Cartas Régias, Provisões, Alvarás e Avisos (1725-1747), vol. 33, fl. 390.  
iron forging and a 'ranch' with some 90 homes having two, three or four beds each. In Mato Grosso in 1730, the quilombo of Quariterê was described as using agriculture for supplies and cotton and having two ironworkers' stalls. ${ }^{5}$