Youthful Visions of Time and Place: Photovoice Methodology in Three Maya Communities

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Braiding Knowledge: Opportunities and Challenges for Collaborative Approaches to Archaeological Heritage and Conservation" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeology, and to greater extent academe in the Western world, is evolving from a past couched in the comfort of objective truths and universal knowledge focused on static places and societies. However, now more than ever, there has been a push towards understanding the dynamism that is, and has always been, part of the greater human experience. In seeking new directions of collaboration with Native American groups throughout the Americas, academics are finding new ways of knowing and interpreting the pluralistic realities of lived time and place. Inspired by Sonya Atalya’s concept "Braiding Knowledge", we as university researchers and grade-school educators of InHerit and the Cultural Heritage, Ecology, and Conservation of Yucatec Cenotes project present "photovoice"— a community-based photographic research initiative. We suggest that this methodological practice is an ideal way to interpret and articulate subjective and therefore truthful understandings of time and place. In this talk, we present those realities in relationship to the cultural patrimony of cenotes (underground water sources) as interpreted through the visions of middle school students from the Yucatec Maya communities of Yalcobá, Cuncunul, and Kaua.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Braiding Knowledge: Opportunities and Challenges for Collaborative Approaches to Archaeological Heritage and Conservation

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25389