Prof Carla Jaimes Betancourt, an anthropologist focusing on the Amazon, is a researcher at the Department of Anthropology of the Americas at the University of Bonn and co-director of the BASA Museum housed at the university. Her research, promoting collaborative archaeology with local Indigenous People, focuses on the social complexity in the southwestern Amazon and processes of expansion and formation of ethnic groups in the South American lowland.

In a newly published Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology article, she and co-authors present the results of interdisciplinary and collaborative archaeological research conducted in the southwestern Amazon. In the following editorial, she highlights the rich cultural heritage found at the sites and the importance of protecting these landscapes where humans have thrived for thousands of years.

Belonging to more than one marginalized group can make building and maintaining social connections significantly harder, often in ways that go far beyond a simple sum of disadvantages. A new study shows how inequalities in social ties don’t just add up – they can amplify one another.