Niède Guidon (Portuguese pronunciation: [niˈɛdʒi ɡiˈdõ]) (born 12 March 1933) is a Brazilian archaeologist known for her work in pre-historic archeology of South American civilizations and her efforts to secure the conservation of the World Heritage Site Serra da Capivara National Park.

[1][2] She was the founding president of the Fundação Museu do Homem Americano (American Man Museum Foundation), a non-profit organization created to support the Serra da Capivara National Park, a World Heritage Site.

Guidon has found thousands of artifacts here that could suggest human handiwork, and discovered a structure resembling a bonfire equipped with arranged logs and stones that she believes date back 48,700 years.

In Pedra Furada, Guidon and her colleagues excavated an archaeological rock art site to uncover evidence of a Paleoindian culture they believe to be as old as c. 30,000 years B.P.,[4] significantly predating previous theories of the first habitation of the area by early Americans.

Although such early dates have not been generally accepted, Guidon and her colleagues have shown that the area was occupied by Paleoindian and Archaic rock art cultures subsisting on broad-spectrum hunting and gathering.

From its creation in 1986 until 2020 Guidon was the president of the non-profit organization Fundação Museo do Homem Americano (FUMDHAM) (American Man Museum Foundation) which she and others founded in response to the growing threat to the integrity of local ecosystems and rock art, and to manage and protect the National Park and develop its surrounding rural communities.

[6] In 1990, Guidon moved from Paris to São Raimundo Nonato, Piauí, the gateway community of the Serra da Capivara National Park, where she has lived since.

[citation needed] In 2014, Michael R. Waters, a geoarchaeologist at Texas A&M University, noted the absence of genetic evidence in modern populations to support Guidon's claim.