Questioning Social And Labor Relations In Contract Archaeology From A Feminist Autoethnography

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

I use an autoethnographic and feminist perspective to reflect on how the field practice of preventive archaeology has been developing in Colombia. I draw on experiences from my own work to question the naturalization of inequalities and violence present in everyday interactions during the implementation of development projects, involving different actors (archaeologists, engineers, and workers). The analysis of these experiences has allowed me to reveal how the epistemological differences between the disciplines of engineering and archaeology are connected to the inequalities of class, gender, and race pre-existing in the different contexts in which the trade is developed, resulting in unequal treatment in which the feminine and the masculine are hierarchical categories used to deploy power. These situations are exacerbated by the framework of infrastructure projects, which operate under notions of time and economic efficiency that add tensions between the actors. The reflections I propose to present aim to generate questions about the progress of archaeology as an anthropological discipline and its impact on nation-building, as well as to inquire about the places where academic knowledge is being built and its relationship with the working conditions of those who are doing archaeology in Colombia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39933.0