Indigenous Peoples and Archaeology in Latin America

This book is the first to describe indigenous archaeology in Latin America for an English speaking audience. Eighteen chapters primarily by Latin American scholars describe relations between indigenous peoples and archaeology in the frame of national histories and examine the emergence of the native interest in their heritage. Relationships between archaeology and native communities are ambivalent: sometimes an escalating battleground, sometimes a promising site of intercultural encounters. The global trend of indigenous empowerment today has renewed interest in history, making it a tool of cultural meaning and political legitimacy. This book deals with the topic with a raw forthrightness not often demonstrated in writings about archaeology and indigenous peoples. Rather than being ‘politically correct,’ it attempts to transform rather than simply describe.

Cristobal Gnecco is professor at the Department of Anthropology, University of Cauca (Colombia), where he works about the political economy of archaeology and the discourses on the ethnic other. He has published “Modernity and politics in Colombian archaeology” (In Handbook of South American archaeology, edited by Helaine Silverman and William Isbell, Springer, New York, 2008), “A three-takes tale: the meaning of WAC for a pluralistic archaeology” (Archaeologies 2, 2006), and co-edited, with Carl Langebaek, Contra la tirania tipologica en arqueologia. Una vision desde Sudamerica (Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, 2006).Patricia Ayala coodinates the office of relationships with the Atacameno community at the Archaeological Research Institute and Museum Gustavo Le Paige of the Universidad Catolica del Norte (Chile). As an archaeologist she has studied the Formative and Late Intermediate periods of Atacameno prehistory as well as social interaction between the Circumpuna and the Bolivian altiplano. As an anthropologist she investigates the historically-constructed relations and discourses between indigenes, archaeologists, and the state in Atacama, and heritage processes in Chile. She has organized meetings, workshops, and symposia, and co-edited issues of Chungara (2003) and Textos Antropologicos (2005) about these topics. She has published Politicas del pasado. Indigenas, arqueologos y Estado en Atacama (Universidad Catolica del Norte, Antofagasta, 2008).