Historical and Contemporary Archaeology as Border Thinking? Coloniality, Materialisms and Survivance in Guatemala’s Colonial and Recent Pasts

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

As noted the uncertain position of historical archaeology in Mesoamerica, particularly in Guatemala, has reified the divide between prehispanic and later colonial native histories in the region. At the same time, the archaeology of the recent/contemporary is especially neglected, obfuscating how colonialism continues to structure native experiences. This paper draws together Latin American subaltern and decolonial approaches with new materialism theories to explore the potential of historical and contemporary archaeology as a mode of “border thinking” that relies on the materialites of native presence and survivance to challenge these ruptured histories, and track new ways of writing against dominant narratives of colonialism, and modernity as a means of disrupting them. The goal is to emphasize the persistence between ancestral and modern native communities, as well as bridging the violence of colonization and the coloniality of the present and recent past in the production of more equitable futures in Guatemala.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Gateways to Future Historical Archaeology in Mexico and Central America

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow