“Toda la Gente”: Advocating an Intersectional Approach to Heritage Production

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Democratizing Heritage Creation: How-To and When" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Collaborative archaeological approaches recognize that partnerships between archaeologists and members of descendant communities can potentially democratize heritage production and foster a more inclusive—and thus more accurate—understanding of the past. Nevertheless, descendant communities are often themselves hierarchical. Inequalities based on age, gender, ethnicity, and other aspects of identity pervade contemporary social groups, including those that have historically been marginalized. How then can archaeologists avoid perpetuating and reinforcing the inequalities present in their own and in their partner communities? By foregrounding one axis of difference—that between archaeologists and members of descendant communities—do scholars unintentionally minimize other axes of difference, such as those based on gender? This presentation argues that the democratization of heritage necessitates an intersectional approach. Put differently, archaeologists must consider how various aspects of identity combine to create different types of inequities for different members of descendant communities. To make this argument, this presentation considers the Punta Laguna Archaeology Project, located in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, and specifically a community meeting where the phrase “toda la gente,” or “all the people,” was used to refer only to men.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Democratizing Heritage Creation: How-To and When   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38254.0