Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2024
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America," at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.
Historical archaeology is still an ambiguous category in Latin America. In part, this reflects a history of European and North American researchers who prized the prehispanic cultures of the region and left the understanding of subsequent colonial and republican era histories to documentary historians. In addition, "historical" has often been a term interpreted in the colonial and republican contexts as solely about documents, especially those in European archives. These two developments have contributed to problematic outcomes: the creation of an artificial discontinuity between pre-colonial indigenous histories; a lack of attention to the complexity of indigenous strategies and tactics of survivance under colonial and republican governance; and silence about the ways that African descendant people shaped colonial and republican society and culture. This session brings together participants working on these complex histories in Mexico and Central America, using a range of archaeological data to explore how contemporary research in historical archaeology is transforming understanding.
Other Keywords
African Diaspora •
Mexico •
Maya •
Climate Change •
Guatemala •
Gender •
Landscape •
Household Archaeology •
Materiality •
haciendas
Geographic Keywords
Mesoamerica •
Central America •
Mexico and Central America •
Yucatan Peninsula (Quintana Roo, Mexico) •
Mexico, Latin America
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)
- Documents (7)
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Building Community Networks and Food Systems Research to Do Archaeology Differently (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The history of archaeological practice in Mexico and Central America reveals strong imperial desires to claim artifacts, monuments, and heritage for foreign powers. As a still emerging area of study, regional historical archaeology has the potential to help forge a different path for archaeological...
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Colonial Archaeology at a Regional Scale: Linking British and Spanish Settlements in Caribbean Coastal Honduras (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. No settlement is an island. This paper presents results from ongoing research on the historical archaeology of Central America, showing how understanding one site on Honduras's Caribbean coast, the fortress and town of Omoa, requires investigation of settlements in other areas. Our excavations of the...
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Everyday Lived Realities at Indigenous Conqueror Tepeticpac, Tlaxcala, Mexico (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Historians and archaeologists of colonialism in the Americas have increasingly sought to interrupt conqueror:conquered and European:Indigenous binaries, yet to date we have learned little archaeologically of the Indigenous groups who enabled Tenochtitlan’s defeat. This talk presents findings for a...
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Historical and Contemporary Archaeology as Border Thinking? Coloniality, Materialisms and Survivance in Guatemala’s Colonial and Recent Pasts (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. As noted the uncertain position of historical archaeology in Mesoamerica, particularly in Guatemala, has reified the divide between prehispanic and later colonial native histories in the region. At the same time, the archaeology of the recent/contemporary is especially neglected, obfuscating how...
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Life Experiences in an African Diaspora Community: Archaeology of Omoa, Honduras (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Drawing on field excavations conducted in 2008 and 2009, and extensive research in documentary archives, we present an overview of the lives of people who were residents of the Spanish colonial town of Omoa, which developed adjacent to the Fortaleza de Omoa in the last half of the eighteenth century. Omoa...
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The Social Lives of Landed Estates in the Yucatecan Hinterlands (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. For scholars studying colonial Latin America the hacienda institution has become an index for certain sets of land and labor relations. This indexing enables scholars to make broad statements about processes such as indigenous dispossession and commercialization even though estates historically...
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Subtle Ground: The Material Memories of a Contemporary Oaxacan Pueblo (2024)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Obsidian prismatic blades are routine ‘prehistoric period’ finds. While not prevalent, blade fragments and flakes nonetheless form part of the material memory of Amapa— a contemporary Oaxacan pueblo that was also, in another past present, a pueblo de cimarrones. Obsidian blades are only one object from...