Indigenous Interpretations of the Past

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper examines indigenous understandings of the archaeological record through the case study of the Mopan Maya of Belize. Among many traditional Mopan Maya, classic era artifacts such as potsherds and stone points are often attributed to the Cheil or "those of the forest." Mopan believe that the Cheil are magical anthropomorphic beings descended from the unbaptized Maya who fled into the forest to escape European colonization. While the Cheil have played a central role in Maya environmental cosmologies for centuries, in recent decades local ideas about the Cheil have been challenged by both outside/Western institutions, notably archaeology. Through dialogue with archaeology, contemporary indigenous relationships to the past are transformed. Yet, at the same time that archaeology attempts to re-write cultural narratives of the past, excavations of new artifacts can support the present day accounts of and belief in the Cheil within Maya communities. Exploring the changing relationship between the Cheil and the Mopan allows for an understanding of how indigenous conceptions of local pasts are reshaped through engagement with global modernities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25947