Collaborative Archaeological Research in Central America: A View from the Community of Mogue, Pusa Drua Area, Congreso Local de Tierras Colectivas Emberá Wounaan, Darién, Panama

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over the past three decades, archaeologists and Indigenous communities throughout the Americas have developed varied approaches to collaborative archaeological research. In North America, where there is some legislative recognition of Indigenous sovereignty over cultural heritage, such approaches have transformed the landscape of archaeological research. In Central America, where paradoxical state policies partially recognize Indigenous sovereignty over ancestral lands but all archaeological heritage is under national control—facilitating settler encroachment and inhibiting Indigenous stewardship of cultural landscapes—these frameworks have had much less impact on archaeological scholarship. Despite this challenging political context, conducting collaborative research with Indigenous communities can have ethical and epistemic significance in Central America. We first discuss how co-designing research in the Emberá tierras colectivas of Mogue (Darién Province, Panama) in accordance with Indigenous traditions of knowledge production and governance, which involve reciprocal knowledge sharing, building emotional ties, and transmission protocols, continues to transform what is defined as collaborative archaeological practice in this community. We then illustrate how collaborative interpretations have advanced scholarly understanding in established domains of regional archaeological research. We conclude by discussing broader implications of Indigenous traditions of knowledge production, which mandate a concern by archaeologists for community-based, rather than national, stewardship of cultural heritage.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Centralizing Central America: New Evidence, Fresh Perspectives, and Working on New Paradigms   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38554.0