Landscapes of Inequality: the Issue with High-End Digital and Computational Methodologies in the Study of Colonial Latin America’s Past

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.

In this presentation, I reflect on the disparities in Latin America’s archaeological application and adaptation of digital and computational technologies. Archaeological practice in Latin America exists in constant cooperation between local and foreign agents—usually from the global north. As part of this research exchange, technological capabilities and knowledge transfer remain a complex challenge. I will focus my discussion on the use of satellite technologies in Latin American archaeology and how the differentiated access to funding and additional resources as universities’ laboratories and computational infrastructure affects all levels of research, from data acquisition to analysis, to data storage curation, and dissemination. Using my research on landscape transformation during the colonial period (S. XVI-XVII) in Huarochirí, in the highlands of Lima, I discuss these challenges and present alternative pathways so local agents can implement the use of satellite images analysis as part of their research means.

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