Reframing Heritage: Indigenous Views in the Forefront

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Politics of Heritage Values: How Archaeologists Deal with Place, Social Memories, Identities, and Socioeconomics" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In many parts of the world, it is assumed that the most important heritage are the ancient sites that are visible on the landscape. This is certainly true within the Maya region of Central America. Projects often start out with the assumption that contemporary Maya communities are focused on local archaeological sites as primary heritage sites. Led by this assumption, archaeology projects become so-called community archaeology projects when Maya community members are hired to work together with the archaeologists. Archaeological sites might be important heritage sites to archaeologists, governments, and UNESCO—but are not necessarily of great importance to local communities. Real community heritage projects must start with a series of wide-ranging conversations about local areas and sites of cultural importance. Such conversations will help identify community heritage and the local histories and stories about that location. In addition, these conversations will also define the type of information and knowledge desired by local community members. These discussions provide a local framework for what is heritage, how to examine and work to define local heritage, and be considered a real community project. These concepts will be presented along with information from ongoing projects in both Mexico and Belize.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)   •
• Politics of Heritage Values: How Archaeologists Deal with Place, Social Memories, Identities, and Socioeconomics

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38129.0