Archaeological digs in Amazon provide clues about Indigenous inhabitants before colonization

By Gabriela Sá Pessoa And Eraldo Peres MACAPA, Brazil (AP) — Paving roads in the Amazon rainforest has long brought deforestation that threatens the people who live there. The same roadwork, however, has also allowed archaeologists to get glimpses of the region’s past long before Europeans arrived to reshape it. The construction often requires archaeological surveys before the paving starts, and some of the latest discoveries have emerged along the BR-156 highway in Brazil’s northern state of Amapa. Among the findings so far from nine dig sites: pottery vases that may be funerary urns, as well as small artifacts that resemble human faces. “What we now about the region’s past is also tied to the opening created by these projects, which gives our relationship with them a somewhat ambivalent character,”…

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