One person who first dug a pit was thought to be a bit proud.

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Serra Pelada, at its peak in the 1980s, saw as many as 80, 000 artisanal miners (called garimpeiros) mine roughly 2 million ounces of gold as well as platinum and palladium from a hand-dug open pit.

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An attendant dug a sand pit for me.

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But the discovery of a bag of bones in a pit being dug for a swimming pool at his former residence gave new life to the missing persons case in 1994.

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He'd tossed Jessica's survey of art history, his Norton Shakespeare, and somebody's copy of Derrida's The Gift of Death into the fire pit they had dug in their backyard.

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The plan, Patton said, is to drill 15 holes in the pit, twinning holes already dug.

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