Hñähño Narratives of San Ildefonso, Mexico: Social Memory in the form of Oral History

Summary

Oral history is the process of audio-recording first person accounts of experiences, stories and memory from living witnesses. Oral history has proven to be a valuable resource for archaeologists. It is argued that oral history research is an important for foregrounding subsequent archaeological research. In the summer of 2015, 10 hours of audio-recorded personal narratives were recorded from five Hñähño/Spanish speakers in the colonial of El Bothe, San Ildefonso, Queretaro, Mexico. Hñähño speakers in Mexico are commonly referred to in the anthropological literature as Otomi indians. In the pueblo of San Ildefonso, local residents continue to speak Hñähño along Spanish and largely practice an agrarian lifestyle. This presentation provides a summary of these interviews and discusses the relationship between personal and social memory.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• "Unless We Remember We Cannot Understand": Archaeological Inquiries into the Act of Remembering

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