New Perspectives for a Collaborative Community Archaeology in Colombia: Strengthening the Social Fabric through the Mitigation of Violent Pasts and the Re-Appropriation of Heritage Management

Summary

Colombian archaeologists continue to be criticized for instituting nationalistic agendas and ignoring the demands of local communities interested in participating in the research and stewardship of archaeological remains. This criticism of Colombian archaeology has a strong foundation, but it does not generate alternatives on how to mitigate the lack of cooperation between archaeologists and communities. It is necessary to assess processes in which communities have worked along with archaeologists, to improve the discourse and the implementation of community archaeology in Colombia. I will assess the strategies applied in the first community archaeological project in Colombia, the San Jacinto Archaeological Project and Museum, as well as describe other important community projects in other regions in the country to identify factors of the value/costs for the communities participating in these projects to define how strategies and methodologies used in each of the projects can contribute to the future of collaborative community archaeology. Given Colombia’s violent history, the regions where the above-mentioned community archaeological projects are conducted have been stricken by armed conflicts and can serve as comparative cases for the implementation of community archaeological projects in other regions of the world as a tool to mitigate violent events and conflictive pasts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage