Colonialism, Oral History, and Local Archaeology Experts in the Puuc Region, Yucatán, México

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Oral history is a method that contributes to the decolonization of contemporary social sciences. Contemporaneous Maya populations have a link to their ancestral land, and rural lifeways regardless of their colonial disconnection to the past. From 2018 we are collecting oral histories from multiple local non-archaeologist groups engaged with archaeological sites. Their in-depth knowledge of the archaeological landscape, use of local language, and ease of communication with the local population render them experts of archaeological ruins. In this paper, we discuss the preliminary results of our project “Voices Of The Puuc Angels: Rural Life Among The Archaeological Ruins In The Yucatan Peninsula,” which, through video ethnography and multi-site interviews, documented the different narratives of the Brigadores about rural lifeways in Yucatán and their relationship to their ancestral archaeological past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Oral History, Coloniality, and Community Collaboration in Latin America   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology