Working with the Community in Ecuador

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Working with the Community in Ecuador," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The case of the Agua Blanca community in coastal Ecuador is always brought up as an example of a successful (and early-1980s) collaboration, when discussing the country's community archaeology. However, it is not until fairly recently that the topic of community archaeology has attracted more attention from professionals working in Ecuador. Most archaeologists need to be in contact with communities in whose territories we work. Institutions are now encouraging researchers to engage with local populations in the area where they are working. Some interactions have been limited to requesting permission to work in the area and to finding workers to help with the hard labor, as well as housing and food procurement for the research team. Others start as or become a closer commitment, with more or less interest from the community, and longer or shorter duration of that collaboration. This session explores all these kinds of involvements of archaeologists with the communities in different regions of Ecuador and aims at determining what the challenges are and what works (or not) in terms of an archaeology with and for the community.