Ancient Amazonian Funeral Urns Found in Brazil

Elaborately decorated in shades of red and black, the nine funeral urns are thought to be at least 500 years old.

A collection of 500-year-old urns is rocking Brazil’s science communities after experts discovered traces left behind from Amazonian Polychrome Tradition, a first in Brazilian archaeological achievements.

Decorated in shades of red and black, nine urns buried 40 centimeters below the surface in the Amazonian community of Tauary were found by archaeologists last month, the Archaeological Laboratory Mamiraua Institute announced Friday.

A researcher with the institute, Eduardo Kazuo Tamanaha, said, "We discovered more than one per day, first came one, we started to clean, there was another next, they were appearing like a domino effect."

Though similar discoveries have been made in both Peru and Ecuador, for scientists to encounter pre-Hispanic Amazonian funeral urns in Brazil is unheard-of, Kazuo explained

“Researchers often receive them from locals, who actually find the artifacts and pull them out of the ground. Now to dig and find a grave with the urns from that culture, the way they were, and to the whole record is unprecedented,” said Kazuo.

Paintings of animals and human faces adorned the collection, which scientists say were found carefully placed with their designs facing away from each other.

“If an urn was buried face up, the urn beside it was ‘looking’ down...it was as if they did not want to look at each other. Clearly they were buried that way and it was intentional,” the researcher said.

The Mamiraua staff also say they believe the vessels were buried at the same time due to the fact that all nine urns were found at equal depths.

“If it were different moments of burial, the urns would be at different heights. It is as if they had excavated a single grave and deposited one urn next to the other," said Kazuo.

Shards of pottery were also found buried among the urns which seem to be from an older group that also once inhabited the same region.

"The Tauary urns are close to the year 1500 AD. But this other pottery found appears to be much older, with a difference of 49 centimeters deep compared to the period of the polls which indicates a greater passage of time," Kazuo said.

The team of scientists hopes the recent discovery can lead to a deeper understanding of the ancient civilization’s traditions, beliefs, and morphology.

Ancient Amazonian Funeral Urns Found in Brazil

Funeral finery of ancient 'Red Queen' restored

One of Mexico's most famous archaeological treasures' funeral finery from Mayan times has arrived in the nation's capital. They belonged to a woman known as the "Red Queen", who is believed to have been a prominent figure in the Mayan world. 

She was found about a quarter of a century ago in an ancient citadel, in a red sarcophagus, in a red room. Archaeologists and historians have reconstructed her features, burial jewellery, death mask and some of the aspects about her life.

Funeral finery of ancient 'Red Queen' restored

Archaeologists in Guatemala uncovered a jade burial mask more than 700 years old

Archaeologists in Guatemala uncovered a jade burial mask more than 700 years old while excavating the tomb of a fourth-century king revered in his time as a god.

The burial chamber, the oldest uncovered in the Mayan city of Waka, was discovered by archaeologists of the U.S.-Guatemalan El Perú-Waka’ Archaeological Project. Previous research at the site revealed six royal tombs and sacrificial offering burials dating to the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries.

“The Classic Maya revered their divine rulers and treated them as living souls after death,” said research co-director David Freidel, professor of anthropology in arts and sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

“This king’s tomb helped to make the royal palace acropolis holy ground, a place of majesty, early in the history of the Wak dynasty,” he continued.

The discovery of the jade mask was key to identifying the tomb as belonging to a member of the royal lineage. It was found in the Waka palace acropolis, in a newly discovered tunnel.

The mask, painted red in with cinnabar paint, was discovered beneath the head of the ruler. Archaeologists at the Mayan period’s most famous site, Tikal, discovered a similar greenstone mask during excavations in the 1960s in a Mayan royal tomb, dating to the first century A.D.

The mask depicts the ruler with the forehead hair decoration of the civilization’s maize god, a common portrayal of Mayan culture’s deified kings. Other symbolic motifs on the mask indicate further associations with the maize god.

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Other artifacts recovered from the tomb included included 22 ceramic vessels, Spondylus shells from a local variety of mollusks, jade ornaments and a shell pendant carved to resemble a crocodile. The remains of the ruler and some ornaments, like the portrait mask, were painted bright red.

The archaeologists said there is evidence the tomb was reentered at least once around 600 A.D., and it's possible that the bones were painted at that time.

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Waka is located some 40 miles west of Tikal, in Laguna del Tigre National Park. At the height of its power, before the Spanish conquest, the royal city commanded major trade routes running north to south and east to west.

Freidel has directed research at the site in collaboration with anthropologists Juan Carlos Pérez Calderon of San Carlos University in Guatemala and Damien Marken of Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania since 2003.

Archaeologists in Guatemala uncovered a jade burial mask more than 700 years old