Cry Disney: The Potentials, Perils, and Pitfalls of “Reconstructing” Places of the Past

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

At the turn of the century, the city of Tucson, Arizona, started an effort at a “kinder and gentler” approach to urban renewal by attempting to utilizing the regional archaeological research to reclaim a long neglected and decidedly non-Anglo chapter of the community’s past. Archaeological research was funded to provide the information needed to re-create public architecture from the community’s Hispanic and Native American heritage, in the context of an ambitious plan for a new museum campus. The project was called Rio Nuevo, in the hopes of restoring the public imagination of city’s heritage along the Santa Cruz River or the “rio antigua” within the Tucson Basin. The project successfully sponsored important archaeological research on the community’s ancient and historical roots, but a lack of clear leadership, inept project management, and conflicts over the nature and ethics of the reconstruction of heritage sites would serve to derail the project’s lofty intentions. Two less ambitious heritage sites were partially reconstructed, but the centerpiece of the reconstructions at the location of the city’s original “birthplace,” as well as the museum complex, were derailed. This presentation will share lessons learned from the debates over reconstruction in practice and principle.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35981.0