Moctezuma, King David, and a Gentile Meet on a Mountain: Religious Factionalism and Indigenous Perceptions of Archaeological Sites, Archaeology, and Archaeologists

Summary

The state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico has long been famous for its archaeological tourism, aimed mostly towards urban-based national and international publics. But while this is also the state with the largest indigenous population in Mexico, the contemporary descendents of those archaeological and historical cultures present an important yet mostly unrecognized public whose perceptions of their own past remain poorly studied. Concomitantly, the complex relationships between cultural heritage and stewardship within this dynamic and multicultural landscape often transcend a simplistic dichotomy between ‘academic’ vis-à-vis ‘public’ audiences. This presentation will draw from a decade-long archaeological and ethnographic research in the Chontal highlands, where archaeological sites, archaeology, and archaeologists are perceived differently by diverse indigenous publics, even within the same community. These, in turn, directly shape archaeological research designs and outcomes. A particular emphasis will be placed on the role contemporary religious factionalism plays in these public perceptions of the past, and some of the community-wide outreach initiatives developed to overcome such factional tendencies.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Public Perceptions of Archaeology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage