This article approaches the methodological strategies in the use of sources of different natures, considering the use of signs and the construction of data in the interdisciplinary academic production. The interest is to approach the production, circulation, acquisition, use and meaning given to pipes, considering the experience and behavior of Africans and Afro descendents of the Diaspora. The sources we work with are iconographic, archaeological and written (criminal processes and lists of goods).
material culture; Africans; southeast Brazil; Nineteenth Century.