Indigenous Archaeology,
Community Archaeology,
and Decolonial Archaeology: What
are we Talking About? A Look
at the Current Archaeological
Theory in South America
with Examples
REVIEW
Archaeologies: Journal of the World Archaeological Congress (Ó 2021)
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11759-021-09433-y
Wilhelm Londoño , Carrera 32 No. 22-08, 470004, Santa Marta,
Magdalena, Colombia
E-mail: wlondono@unimagdalena.edu.co
Accepted: 28 October 2020
ABSTRACT
________________________________________________________________
In this article, I review the various forms of political commitment in the field
of archaeology in South America over recent decades using three cases: one
from Argentina and two from Colombia. The several types of political
engagements that can be categorized involve multiple levels of work, from
the use of archaeological excavation in projects with indigenous peoples to
the rejection of the application of archaeology within the purposes of the
indigenous social movement; in between those two options, we distinguish
practices such as multiculturalism and its reification of culture. At this level,
past, heritage, and history become merchandise for cultural markets.
Resume: Dans cet article, je procède à une étude des différentes formes
d’engagement politique dans l’archéologie en Amérique Latine au cours des
récentes décennies. Je m’appuis sur trois études de cas, l’une issue
d’Argentine et les deux autres de Colombie. Les types multiples
d’engagement politique pouvant être relevés impliquent des niveaux variés
de travaux qui incluent le recours à des fouilles archéologiques dans le
cadre de projets avec des populations indigènes, et pouvant aller jusqu’au
rejet de l’application de l’archéologie au sein des finalités du mouvement
social indigène. Nous avons pu distinguer entre les deux des pratiques
telles que le multiculturalisme et sa réification de la culture. À ce niveau, le
Ó 2021 World Archaeological Congress
ARCHAEOLOGIES
________________________________________________________________
WILHELM LONDOÑO DÍAZ
passé, le patrimoine et l’histoire deviennent des marchandises pour les
marchés culturels.
________________________________________________________________
Resumen: En este artı́culo, analizo las diversas formas de compromiso
polı́tico en arqueologı́a en América del Sur en las últimas décadas utilizando
tres casos: uno de Argentina y dos de Colombia. Los diversos tipos de
compromiso polı́tico que se pueden registrar abarcan múltiples niveles de
trabajo, desde el uso de la excavación arqueológica en proyectos con
pueblos indı́genas hasta el rechazo a la aplicación de la arqueologı́a dentro
de los propósitos del movimiento social indı́gena. En el punto intermedio,
podrı́amos distinguir prácticas como el multiculturalismo y su reificación de
la cultura. En este nivel, el pasado, el patrimonio y la historia se convierten
en mercancı́as para los mercados culturales.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
KEY WORDS
Indigenous people, Heritage, Caribbean, Archaeology, History
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Some Theoretical Issues
As Nicholas established, ‘‘indigenous archaeology’’ (2014) can be understood as a realm of archaeological theory that is engaged with the possibility for indigenous peoples to use, produce, and discuss archaeological data.
As indigenous peoples are involved in archaeological research, they may
use data to strengthen their relationship with their heritage and with political processes. As Nicholas highlighted, indigenous archaeology thrives on
legislation that favours the interests of indigenous peoples and on the commitment of archaeologists and anthropologists to decolonize their disciplines. A feature of indigenous archaeology is that it does not subtract
from scientific archaeology; rather, some archaeologists see it as a complement and not as an appendix (Watkins, 2011). There is a large amount of
literature on indigenous archaeology; however, some trends can be distinguished, such as the approach of indigenous knowledge to criticize the
Anthropocene (Cipolla, 2017) and the use of indigenous knowledge to create analytical tools beyond the Western philosophical background (Todd,
2016). These theoretical currents base their work on a nondualistic vision
in which culture and nature are united (Deloria, 1997). Thus, it is possible
to understand the archaeological record from local perspectives and not
from pre-established interpretation frameworks. In some research presented
Indigenous Archaeology, Community Archaeology, and Decolonial Archaeology
as indigenous archaeology, collaboration is an integral part of the projects.
Likewise, the power relations between actors must be faced and resolved to
become balanced (Cipolla et al., 2019).
Repatriation processes are also included in the indigenous archaeology
agenda. In these cases, indigenous peoples do not want to use archaeology
techniques but want human bodies or artefacts to be returned to their
communities. Many times, these repatriations are requested so that sacred
rituals can be performed (Haas, 2012).
In the Anglophone world (Simpson, 1994), more legal tools allow
indigenous peoples to claim human objects and remains (Fine-Dare, 2002;
Rose et al., 1996); this is unlike the situation in Latin America, where the
centralized State declares that everything that is considered archaeological
belongs to the nation-state (Gnecco, 2011). Despite this, in Latin America,
indigenous peoples use archaeology to support their identity-strengthening
processes (Haber, 2009) and to press for the repatriation processes of landscapes and artefacts (Londoño, 2019).
In addition to indigenous archaeology, ‘‘community archaeology’’ can
be defined as archaeology in which the community rules the research
(Marshall, 2002). Another name for this concept is ‘‘archaeology from
below’’ (Faulkner, 2000), and the same idea defines the research objectives.
Some academics share the opinion that community archaeology is defined
by the active participation of local groups in the formation of data that
can help the project in general (Ferreira, 2010). Digging, analysing data,
and presenting them to the public are conceived as phases that must be
negotiated with local communities. This type of archaeology should be
understood as very distant from the practice of heritage education, which
is a way of directing perceptions about the past. Contract archaeology has
trivialized the collective construction of the past, turning the social production of history into another practice of civil works contracting (Gnecco &
Dias, 2015). One feature that is a determining factor of heritage education
carried out in contract archaeology projects is its scant attempt to question
the historical narratives imposed by the Nation-State and the power groups
that support it. In this way, many South American archaeologists believe
that the historical narrative that is formed in heritage education is illegitimate and comes from a political point of view, although this is the most
popularized practice. For some South American academics, the use of heritage education, developed in various archaeology contract projects, is a
way of performing archaeology without political or community effects; that
is, multicultural archaeology (Gnecco, 2012). The departure to multicultural archaeology supposes an archaeology outside of modernity (Gnecco,
2017) that, in the opinion of several academics in South America, could be
considered a relatedness archaeology (Gnecco, 2009; Haber, 2009). Relatedness is an adjective used to describe a kind of archaeology that attends to
WILHELM LONDOÑO DÍAZ
indigenous peoples’ ontologies and works inside those frameworks. This
brings us to the next category: decolonial archaeology.
Decolonial archaeology is a practice that partakes in decolonial thought,
which appears in the context of developing countries (Mignolo, 2009) or
the global South. For decolonial thought, the West built an image of the
Other, produced through colonialism, which expropriated communities
from their natural and cultural resources. The West constructed questions
that asked about the backwardness of these nations, ignoring the obstacles
put into the development of those nations by colonial empires. Thus,
decolonial thinking seeks to unmask modernity and the subjection of the
other. Decolonial archaeology is a practice that transcends forms of archaeology based on ethics to an archaeology based on politics (Gnecco, 2015;
Hamilakis, 2018). There is some consensus that decolonial archaeology
seeks to question the heteropatriarchal version of the modern human being
and allow space for other modernities or alternative modernities (Escobar,
2007).
As I stated above, there is an enormous amount of literature on indigenous archaeology, community archaeology, and decolonial archaeology. In
this literature, two significant tendencies can be seen. The first is archaeology that favours community interests, whether of indigenous, peasant, or
urban societies. The second trend is defined by the efforts of archaeologists
working on contract archaeology projects to generate entertaining content
favouring a positive image of the interventions carried out by civil works.
Within this second trend, there exists public archaeology and the projects
therein aimed at improving the consumption of archaeological knowledge
in society (e.g., Merriman (Ed), 2004). The first trend is related to local
political projects’ goals, while the second trend is related to the need to
abide by regulations regarding archaeological heritage. The second trend
relates to more instrumental heritage education needs, such as those found
in museums, schools, and universities. We can also distinguish a trend of
citizen collectors seeking to rescue antiques. In these cases, large middleclass groups become consumers of material culture related to historical
sources, as in the case of community archaeology associated with intertidal
archaeology projects (Cohen et al., 2012). As many authors have shown
(Renz, 2011; Taussig, 1997), heritage education is related to the need to
introduce nationalist narratives to society. Nationalist narratives become
tools to activate the systems that give life to the imagined community (Anderson, 1993), that is, the nation. The imagined communities are built on
museums, squares, and statues, commemorations, and holidays that make
history perceptible as a legacy.
As we see today, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and after
the murder of G. Floyd, the nation’s narratives begin to be questioned to
allow for the access of other narratives. The criticism of the allegorical
Indigenous Archaeology, Community Archaeology, and Decolonial Archaeology
monuments to Franco in Spain, to Julio Argentino Roca in Argentina, and
to Robert E. Lee in the USA is signs that the images of past perceptions of
modernity worldwide are collapsing (Londoño, 2019).
Now that I have presented an overview of the analytical tools that define
other archaeologies, I would like to present three cases involving archaeology and indigenous peoples in South America to highlight the conceptual
constructs that were used in and appeared from those experiences.
Novirao: A Nasa Indigenous People
Nasa society exists throughout a large part of southwestern Colombia.
Within the hegemonic narratives that have been placed on them, the Nasa
were considered one of the most challenging tribes to dominate in the colony (Franco, 2019; Londoño, 2002; Rappaport, 1985). The Nasa are
divided into indigenous reservations, some older than others; the oldest
ones are found within the heart of the Colombian Andes, in a region
known as Tierradentro (the hinterland). In 1997, I carried out indigenous
archaeology work with the Nasa de Novirao community a few kilometres
from the capital of Cauca, Popayán (Figure 1).
This community had just recovered the Hacienda Novirao that was in
the hands of a landowner from Popayán. The Nasa natives of Novirao had
Figure 1. Source: Google Earth. Author: Wilhelm Londoño Dı́az
WILHELM LONDOÑO DÍAZ
set out to recover their land by disobeying the landowners who had them
almost enslaved. The relationship between the indigenous people and the
landowner was given under the premise of ‘‘terraje’’; the indigenous people
would pay with six days of work for ability to work a small plot on their
day of rest. In the late 1980s, the Nasa de Novirao rebelled and managed
to get the State to buy the hacienda and cede it to the indigenous people.
As said by Mr. Julio Cucuñame, Nasa from Novirao:
The landowners and the priests enslaved us. We had to work the land for
free, for priests and landowners; they only gave us Monday as a day off, and
we had to use it to work the farm. Then came a movement to organize the
community; the community understood that it was necessary to organize
and fight for the territory, which, in the end, is ours by right (1998 field
notes).
In theoretical terms, the research I carried out in Novirao, as a requirement to graduate as an anthropologist, was carried out from a decolonial
perspective. I started from the principle that historic-cultural archaeology
was an instrument that generated a rigged narrative in which archaeologists
presented the Nasa as recent emigrants who came to unfairly dispute the
land that now belonged to the heirs of the Spanish tradition. In this way,
the archaeological work that the Nasa wanted would allow us to counter
the official narratives.
With the 1991 constitution, some things were made more accessible for
indigenous peoples, such as the formation of their educational projects and
some decentralization to improve their access to financial resources.
Despite the constitution, local governments, such as city halls and governorates, were indifferent to indigenous peoples’ claims to education, roads,
and health.
By the late 1990s, the Nasa of Novirao wanted to perform historical
research to understand how historians had constructed them as a historical
and archaeological object; it was a kind of archaeology of their archaeology
made by foreign academics. They also wanted to know what had happened
to their history since the church had banned it. As Hernández and Gnecco
(Gnecco & Hernández, 2008) showed, colonialism implied a silencing of
indigenous narratives about the past, which were defined by the church as
idolatries. The decolonization of memory involved defying the prohibitions
imposed by Catholicism.
In the 1990s, it was already possible that within the indigenous communities of Colombia, people could speak again about genealogies of origin
and about the world seen from local ontologies. When indigenous people
began to revisit their sacred sites considered to be cursed by the church,
questions began to appear regarding the community’s relationship with
Indigenous Archaeology, Community Archaeology, and Decolonial Archaeology
Tierradentro. This is how the first archaeological explorations of the Novirao territory were planned.
In Novirao, after surveying the territory, we chose to start digging a terrace site that was considered incredibly old. Due to the shallow depth of
the organic layer, materials made with pre-Hispanic and colonial techniques were quickly recovered by the archaeological research team. The
pottery was similar to the classic Tierradentro types, which was a good
result (Londoño, 2002). During the excavations, it became clear that the
ceramic types of pre-Hispanic technologies were similar to those of Tierradentro; it was also clear that this pottery was found with the colonial
types that had prevailed in the Popayán Valley in the eighteenth century
(Londoño, 2011) (Figure 2).
After the archaeological research, the region was associated typologically
with the Tierradentro pottery clusters. This was interpreted as a positive
sign in the historical research process. At the beginning of the 2000s, the
historical process had given way to a strengthening of the mother language
(Rojas et al., 2011); we could say that the historical research team was a
good starting point in the political venue. The need for historical data to
underpin political processes, such as the diffusion of the mother language
within the community and the use of locally produced historical knowledge for the teaching of schoolchildren, was dynamics that occurred after
the decolonization of their territory and their memory and after the use of
Figure 2. Novirao’s archaeological team. Author: Wilhelm Londoño Dı́az
WILHELM LONDOÑO DÍAZ
archaeology for local empowerment. In this case, there was no question
regarding the need to use scientific procedures to assess historical connections when bureaucrats were dismissing the notion of recognizing the Nasa
de Novirao as a Nasa indigenous community.
If we look at the context of southwest Colombia, we find that indigenous peoples have developed a whole agenda of indigenous archaeology
that has allowed them to decolonize history and culture. One piece of evidence of this process is that the Nasa de Novirao carried out archaeological
research, even knowing that the practice could have been the cause of the
Paez River avalanche that had occurred years before; some older adults had
held the archaeologist Mauricio Puertas responsible for destabilizing the
territory. I remember a meeting at which the community members, comprising more than 200 people, asked me, through Julio Cucuñame, how
much the excavations would affect the community’s territory. Since I did
not speak Nasa Yuwe, they had to translate for me, and I could understand
that the elders were afraid that the archaeological excavations were a kind
of wound in the earth that might not heal. At this point, I had to promise
that the excavations would not be more profound than an excavation necessary to plant a potato. This was how the elders permitted the young people of Novirao to join the investigation team.
Now, I will present the case of the Puna de Atacama, Argentina. There,
I developed indigenous archaeology projects with the Coya Atacameña
community of Antofalla.
Antofalla: A Trip to the Heart of Andean Ontology
The village of Antofalla is settled in the northeast of the Argentine province
of Catamarca, in northern Argentina, on the border with Chile (see Figure 3). The village has a long history of visiting archaeologists, who have
always seen the inhabitants as ignorant and dirty (Haber, 2000; Londoño,
2017). Since Puna is a high-altitude desert, the explorers who visited the
area at the beginning of the XX century thought that these oases were caravan transit points. Therefore, they denied the local ontology and the long
human occupation of the area (Haber, 2006).
As has happened in Latin America for many indigenous peoples, the
indigenous people of Antofalla were facing the constant threat of expropriation of their lands due to the mineral wealth of the land. Their land had
not yet been expropriated at the end of the nineteenth century; at the
beginning of the twentieth century, interest in the region increased due to
economic expansion requiring land for agribusiness.
Unlike the Colombian case, in Antofalla, the task was not to convince
bureaucrats of the pre-existence of the community, but to prove it to the
Indigenous Archaeology, Community Archaeology, and Decolonial Archaeology
Figure 3. Source: Google Earth. Author: Wilhelm Londoño Dı́az
State; this was a condition that the Argentine government requires for the
recognition of ethnic groups. For legal recognition, a tour of the entire territory was made, along with a census, which allowed for the documentation of the life forms in the high-altitude desert, complemented by
archaeological research carried out by various archaeologists commanded
by Alejandro Haber (Haber, 2009; Haber & Lema, 2006; Haber et al., 2006;
Moreno & Revuelta, 2010). Part of the research team oversaw the conceptualizing of the pre-Hispanic use of water, which involved understanding
the Puna settlements and their use of water. For this conceptualization, it
was imperative to understand the current management of the territory.
Another part of the team was dedicated to understanding the hunting of
the small camelids called vicuñas. It was clear that some practices remain
in effect today; for example, the hooves of vicuñas are dug out after they
are hunted.
The archaeological research conducted in the Puna de Atacama allowed
us to understand several things. The first is that the landscape’s occupation
occurs due to the interaction of various beings, human and nonhuman,
that help the reproduction of the landscape. The water that appears from
the Andes is channelled by indigenous peoples to irrigate the plains next to
the village. With these water channels, some alfalfa fields are formed, and
they allow the feeding of llamas and vicuñas, the first domesticated and the
second not. The recognition that the relationship with the sacred moun-
WILHELM LONDOÑO DÍAZ
tains allows for the breeding of the herd is celebrated in several ways, such
as through the digging of holes in the ground to feed Pachamama.
Although it is challenging for the people of Antofalla to produce a theorization of the ontology locally, it is quite clear that the people of the Puna
celebrate the magic that appears when anthropogenic forces cross with
water and soil dynamics to produce life. What is celebrated in Antofalla is
the building and the giving of life provided by the relationship between
human and nonhuman beings. The celebratory practice is called ‘‘corpachada’’, which means to celebrate with the Pachamama, the mother of
all beings. Haber summarized these networks of networks in relatedness
theory (Haber, 2009). This theory emphasizes the connections between
human and nonhuman beings in the development of the world. In the
world of relatedness, it is mandatory to give back what is received. In this
sense, something must be returned for the water that comes down from
the mountain and for the vicuñas that are not domesticated. Likewise,
everybody must give thanks for the water that allows for the alfalfa fields
with which the herd of llamas is nurtured. In this case, the Coyas Atacameños recognize that they are raised by the Pachamama just as they raise
the herds of llamas and sheep. In the Andean world, a human’s actions
must be backed by their peers; this is the world of sympathies giving order
to the world of analogies. When the corpachada is made, it is given to the
Pachamama to drink, eat and smoke, as a way of giving back to the visible
world made possible with her powers. That is, the nurture policy allows all
the beings surrounding the Puna to live.
Another thing we could learn from this experience is that indigenous
peoples’ political action must deal with the hegemony ontology; this is
because the analogical ontology should be subordinate to modernity in the
game of multicultural interactions between the State and the indigenous
people. The anthropologist Marisol de la Cadena (2009) has discussed how
Andean communities face the process of political recognition within a language and a way of thinking that is not their own. It is difficult for Latin
American states to accept that two things must go with the political recognition of indigenous communities: recognition of their ontology and their
nurturing policy and recognition of that policy as a situated practice. For
the governments that manage the State, it is easier to grant political recognition without its geographical correlates; this is a big problem for indigenous peoples because they cannot manage and care for their territory using
the nurturing policy (Figure 4).
Indigenous Archaeology, Community Archaeology, and Decolonial Archaeology
Figure 4. Corpachada in the Puna of Atacama. Author: Wilhelm Londoño Dı́az
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta: Back to the Mother’s Land
The case that I will describe below corresponds to the Kággaba or Kogui
community of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM). The Koguis are
mainly settled in villages in the La Guajira and Magdalena Departments in
northern Colombia (Ricaurte, 2004). Within the ethnographic literature,
the Koguis are people about whom there are abundant references. The best
works correspond to G. Reichel-Dolmatoff, who, in the 1940s and 1950s,
performed extensive fieldwork within this community (Reichel-Dolmatoff,
1985) (Figure 5).
Although the Kággaba are thought to be a nation, there are marked differences between different Kogui settlements. The differences are basically
due to the Koguis, who settled in the southern basins, accepting Pentecostalism a few decades ago. This is unlike the northern Kággaba, who
have been influenced less by international churches. However, it is futile to
affirm that the Protestant religion’s imposition has been a limitation for
the local ontological vision. We simply have no data and cannot make
these inferences. What we can verify is that the Koguis who have adopted
Pentecostalism tend to be more receptive to certain ethics that are necessary to become a professional in a liberal profession; thus, the southern
WILHELM LONDOÑO DÍAZ
Figure 5. Source: Google Earth. Author: Wilhelm Londoño Dı́az
Koguis have more members that have been educated at universities, and
there are usually college teachers among them.
In the case of the southern Koguis, they are in the robust process of
strengthening their language through ethnoeducation (Gil, 2016). In this
process, the aim is to generate a sense of Kogui citizenship without compromising local visions in which the territory is a subject of rights. In contrast, the northern Koguis are not engaged in an ethnoeducation project
but want a sort of decolonization of the territory to exercise territorial
autonomy (Mestre & Rawitscher, 2018). For this reason, several years ago,
the Kággaba of the northern basins began a process of recovery from what
was known as the Pueblito Chairama archaeological site. The Kogui name
is Teykú, in honour of an ancient authority: ‘‘Mamo Teykú’’. To achieve
this recovery, the Kággaba had to present several demands to the Colombian State, showing that the existence of the archaeological site violated the
right of the community to self-determination. According to some advisers
that I consulted, this process began in the 1980s, when the indigenous people created the indigenous social movement of Northern Colombia: Gonawindua Tayrona Organization (OGT). According to the anthropologist
Julio Barragán (personal communication), the OGT organization began
requesting the delivery of property from the archaeological sites Ciudad
Perdida (Lost City), and Pueblito Chairama. Those requests were dismissed
before the 1990s, as there was no constitutional framework to allow such
Indigenous Archaeology, Community Archaeology, and Decolonial Archaeology
repatriations. This process had to wait until the 2010s, when OGT, through
lawyers, presented actions to guarantee their fundamental rights, among
them the right to culture, to legitimize the villages’ repatriation efforts.
Since there is now a legal expression for the Colombian State to attend to
these repatriation processes, finally, in 2016, the first favourable rulings
allowed some places to be excluded from the flow of tourists in what is
considered one of the areas with the highest tourism in Colombia: the Tayrona Natural National Park. When looking at the regulations that allowed
the Natural Parks to close some areas considered by the Kággaba as sacred,
the rules made by the government emphasized that the State had yielded
to the claims of the Kággaba because their ontology was comparable to the
goals of conservation. Thus, the success of the site closure processes in
Tayrona Park was because the State equated the claims of territorial autonomy with the conservation strategies of the State. This has to do with the
representations that have been made of the Kággaba throughout the twentieth century (Orrantia, 2002). Once the preservation of the environment
appeared as the dominant narrative, the SNSM became a conservation site,
and its indigenous people were theorized as ‘‘ecological natives’’ (Ulloa,
2004).
In 2018, the northern Kággaba managed to get the Colombian State to
prohibit tourists from entering the main square of Teykú in the Tayrona
Natural National Park. The Kággaba celebrated the event as a triumph and
noted that, from now on, the site would take the name that it has always
had: Teykú. Within the Kággaba mythology of the northern villages, Teykú
was the name of a mamo, who is the authority of the Kággaba. In the
mythology, Teykú professed the principles of being Kággaba that are
enshrined in the Sé Law. Then, by recovering Teykú, it was possible to set
up a kind of mamos’ university, not because that was a new project but
because that was the village’s function: to allow the instruction of mamos
under the principles of the great civilizing hero Teykú. In this sense, the
local inhabitants of Teykú are against the archaeological investigations that
were carried out in Teykú because these investigations stole the sacred
objects that were part of the offerings that had been given to this mythical
character.
In the early 2010s, we held workshops at the Universidad del Magdalena, and it became clear that for a century of archaeology in northern
Colombia, archaeologists had finished a sacred site by sweeping the sites of
their offerings (Londoño, 2002). These offerings were made up of polished
quartz known as tumas; the tumas are agents that allow the communication of the current Koguis with the principles of creation. Since the Kággaba planted them inside clay pots, some of them were broken and
registered as ‘‘garbage clusters’’ or accumulation sites. As Juan Nieves, the
Kogi leader of Teykú emphasized, ‘‘archaeology has violated our sacred
WILHELM LONDOÑO DÍAZ
sites, taken away the tombs, and produced an imbalance.’’ (Personal communication to the author).
It seems that archaeology in northern Colombia is entering a re-evaluation phase since indigenous movements have been gaining political ground.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was great pressure on regions in
northern Colombia from traditional political sectors to become tourist
exploitation zones. Now, in during the pandemic, this political sector has
demanded legal regulations that define sacred sites. Unlike the two earlier
cases, there are still things to be defined in northern Colombia, such as the
possibility of indigenous territorial autonomy (Figure 6).
Discussion
If we take stock of the three cases presented above, we realize that the
organizational processes of indigenous peoples have been taking place in
southwestern Colombia for decades. The projects of the Nasa or the Misak
concerning the use of history and archaeology are long-standing. Likewise,
these processes have been supported by a robust social base that attempted
to perform territorial and cultural decolonization processes. Even in south-
Figure 6. Juan Nuvita in Makútama. Photo by: Anghie Prado Mejı́a & Wilhelm
Londoño Dı́az
Indigenous Archaeology, Community Archaeology, and Decolonial Archaeology
west Colombia, the indigenous social movement managed to start thinking
about the need for a particular indigenous jurisdiction in the country.
When reviewing the specialized literature, it is easy to suppose that enormous strides in decolonization have been made in this region (Gómez,
2000). Undoubtedly, the great strength of the indigenous social movements
in southwestern Colombia was that these communities managed to defend
themselves against attempts at disintegration in the colony and in the
republic. During the time of the colony, for example, many indigenous
people from the southwest learned to read and write so that they could
send letters to the Crown with large lists of grievances. This allowed the
colonial bureaucracy to act on the matter and generate measures to protect
indigenous subjects (Londoño, 2006). During the republic, these indigenous peoples managed to make agreements with the regional leaders; the
agreement was for indigenous peoples to give men to armies in exchange
for the government to respect the titles of indigenous reservations given
during the colonial period (Gnecco & Londoño, 2008).
This historical background is related to the great strength that the
indigenous social movement currently has in this region of Colombia; the
need to defend the territory and for political autonomy has made archaeology an instrument of political struggle. In the case of Novirao, it was clear
that archaeology was used in an adverse context of ethnic discrimination.
This example teaches us how archaeology is configured in these parts of
the global south as an instrument for decolonizing historical narratives.
Unlike what indigenous archaeology could be in the global north, in Latin
America, social movements risk things such as territory and the right to
life. The Latin American elites do not have a warning to agree with multinational governments on the displacement of communities to carry out
hydrocarbon exploitation projects. Therefore, the past is not only a scene
of symbolic struggle but is also a political instrument that allows for the
activation of some measures that the State must consider in the framework
of a multicultural global policy. We could think of some effects of this
trend, such as some Latin American archaeologists’ inclination for theorists
such as Walter Mignolo and Enrique Dussel (Paz Garcı́a, 2011). The main
consequence of this trend is that decolonial archaeology, practiced mainly
by indigenous communities, does not seek to contribute to the description
of cultural diversity, as the tradition of American anthropology supposes,
but seeks instead to demonstrate how the building of the nation-state generated a process of territorial and cognitive dispossession of indigenous
peoples.
Although anthropology departments are designed under the classic Boasian model in Colombia, there is a tradition of decolonial theory that is
clearly seen in works by academics such as C. Gnecco from the Universidad del Cauca and L. Vasco from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
WILHELM LONDOÑO DÍAZ
It is important to mention that this decolonial archaeology has its own
methodological features, such as looking in the colonial and republican
documentation for proof of the processes of territorial dispossession; this
implies building a base that demonstrates how colonialism and endocolonialism have militated against indigenous, peasant, and Afro-descendant
communities. These conceptual preferences make decolonial archaeology a
practice that is off-centred from the nation-building project that has characterized traditional archaeology in Latin America. Thus, people who practice decolonial archaeology do not claim that their data are evidence of
universal processes of accumulation of power, as scientific archaeology tries
to do, but instead seek to teach the trajectories that take place within colonialism as a global disease.
If we take the starting point of decolonial archaeology, we find that it
differs enormously from community archaeology because it does not look
to satisfy a community’s demands, for example, the demands of colonial
narratives. It is easy to understand that the fact that a group founds a
practice does not make it ethically correct. Similarly, decolonial archaeology is not a form of indigenous archaeology since, as J. Watkins noted,
some indigenous archaeologists do not consider there to be significant differences between scientific archaeology and indigenous archaeology (Watkins, 2011). For decolonial archaeology, however, there are great
differences; science has been an instrument that has allowed us to ignore
the fact that modernity has a dark side, coloniality, in which millions of
human beings, ecosystems, flora, and fauna are preyed upon to generate
capital accumulations in the global north. If we look at the Colombian case
and the Argentine case, the use of excavation and recording techniques
generated a credibility substrate for decolonized narratives of local histories. Thus, these archaeologies appeal to reason to demystify hegemonic
narratives, but they do not suppose that there is a neutral field of ethics
that science grants. In these cases, archaeology is decolonial or it is nothing.
The case of northern Colombia shows us that archaeology is an instrument that has allowed for the colonization of historical narratives; archaeology has turned sacred sites into garbage dumps, making it inconceivable
that the practice of archaeology can be used for local empowerment projects. In this case, the role of decolonial archaeology is not to propose
more excavations to solve the plundering problems that communities have
suffered; thus, the way out is to support the repatriation processes set up
by local communities.
Indigenous Archaeology, Community Archaeology, and Decolonial Archaeology
Acknowledgements
A special thanks to Julio Cucuñume from the Novirao reservation, Cacique
Antolı́n from Antofalla, and to Mama Rumualdo from Ciudad Perdida, for
the patience and time dedicated to this work. As well, to University of
Magdalena Grant 2018 ‘‘Decolonizing history: towards a relational construction of the past of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta from the Kogui
vision of the community of Palmor (Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta), Cienaga, Magdalena ’’
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