Funari, Pedro Paulo A. (Indigenous Archaeology)

Basic Biographical Information

Pedro Paulo A. Funari (1959–) was born in São Paulo, southeast of Brazil, to a family of humble origins but adept to reading and to culture in general (Fig. 1). Influenced by the family environment, he became, at a young age, interested in the humanities, specially philosophy, politics, and religion. Philosophy would have been his choice for ingressing in higher education, but the political context of Brazil in the 1970s – the military dictatorship – forced him to choose another path: history. The undergraduate major in history at the Universidade de São Paulo/USP, between 1977 and 1981, however, allowed his insertion in a forum of reflections on the social injustices, in particular, on the political panorama of Latin America (one of his constant concerns) and, at the same time, granted him the right to lecture history. For Funari, the teaching of history at the time fulfilled two roles: the chance to share with his students a more critical view of...