Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2021
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America," at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
Archaeologists and anthropologists continue to confront the colonialist tendencies of our disciplines and how they center whiteness. Coloniality exists as an undercurrent and series of obstacles to research that encourages bi-directional knowledge exchange with local collaborators. In this session, we address some of the most frequent questions and contradictions that arise when archaeologists, particularly in Latin America, work cooperatively with economically and socially marginalized communities. For example, how do labor and economic relationships that emerge through archaeological practice shape conceptions of culture, heritage, and memory? How does archaeology interact with and exist apart from local understandings of the past? What would an archaeology that forefronts local histories and stories entail? Can today’s archaeology aim to share its power and support a multivocal past? Here, we discuss ideas about what steps to follow to understand the social and political consequences of the past in the present and move archaeological practice forward.
Other Keywords
heritage •
Labor •
community archaeology •
Oral History •
History Of Archaeology •
Oral Histories •
Community Perspectives •
El Tajín •
The Maya •
engaged research
Geographic Keywords
Mexico •
United Mexican States (Country) •
Belize (Country) •
Republic of Guatemala (Country) •
North America (Continent) •
USA (Country) •
Mesoamerica •
La Libertad (State / Territory) •
Puno (State / Territory) •
Republic of Peru (Country)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)
- Documents (7)
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Collaborative Exhibit Design in Yucatán, Mexico, amid COVID-19 (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. During the summer of 2020 we developed a project to consider the opinions of Tahcabo residents about a new exhibit for their community museum. We worked as a binational team to invite participation in the process through digital networks, by means of a survey and asynchronous discussion groups. We...
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Colonialism, Oral History, and Local Archaeology Experts in the Puuc Region, Yucatán, México (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Oral history is a method that contributes to the decolonization of contemporary social sciences. Contemporaneous Maya populations have a link to their ancestral land, and rural lifeways regardless of their colonial disconnection to the past. From 2018 we are collecting oral histories from multiple local...
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Exploring the Perils and Promise of Community Engaged Archaeology at Xaltocan, Mexico (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the small central Mexican town of Xaltocan, a complex web of written and oral histories, material culture, and modern political and social movements have shaped a local heritage that celebrates the town’s long history. Archaeological research, which has intensified at Xaltocan over the past 30 years,...
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Labor History and Worker Visibility in Mexican Archaeology (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The manual labor involved in the production of archaeological knowledges tends to go unacknowledged, and archaeologists have historically had epistemological authority over the interpretation of the past. In Latin America, acknowledging Indigenous labor in archaeology often focuses on restoring...
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Living with Huacas: Reflecting on Community Relationships with the Archaeological site of Tumshukaiko (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Archaeological sites are dynamic spaces that continue to be modified and transformed from their initial construction through the present by their contemporary environments and communities who engage with them. As such, these sites possess a significance that transcends archaeological interpretations of...
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Ordinary Histories of People and Place: Inequality, Belonging, and Community Collaboration in Northern Belize (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. For the people of contemporary Belize, issues of heritage/ancestry are often narrated through binaries of long-term indigenous continuity or sharp, colonial discontinuity. Yet, for ordinary people these are complicated issues tied to histories of forced movement, social inequality, and violence. Today,...
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The Work of Studying Labor: Archaeological Taskscapes and Community Engagement in the Andean Highlands (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper will examine labor relationships between a mostly North American archaeological project, Proyecto de Histórico-Arqueológico-Santa Bárbara (PIHA-SB) and the local descendent community of Santa Bárbara. Since 2013, PIHA-SB has worked collaboratively with Santa Bárbara through an archaeological...