Latin American Archaeology Collections in European Museums in Decolonial Times

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Global Archaeologies and Latin American Voices: Dialogues Transcending Colonizing Archaeologies", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

A good number of museums in Europe house Latin American archaeological collections. The majority of objects that make them up were acquired by 19th and 20th European expeditions in various contexts of looting, commercial transactions, donations, gifts and more recently even archaeological excavations.

In this paper, I will focus on discussing the ways in which these collections have been accessioned, catalogued, understood, and displayed and their curatorial narratives as long-lasting practices of colonialism in archaeology.

I will argue that these narratives have lacked a direct relationship with Latin American archaeological work and, more importantly, have not taken into account source communities’ perspectives and knowledge. Ultimately, my goal is to redirect the decolonial discourse in museums toward Latin America, critically discussing how the history of those who inhabited Latin America in the past has been shaped in European museums through these fragmented Latin American archaeological collections and this practice's inherent implications.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Global Archaeologies and Latin American Voices: Dialogues Transcending Colonizing Archaeologies   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow