Archaeology in Latin America

Abstract

This book captures the diversity of the practices and theoretical orientations in Latin American archaeology. Its main goal is to deliver knowledge of these diverse approaches to a wider audience than has usually been possible, especially to those who do not speak Spanish or Portuguese, for a vast quantity of information, ideas and analyses produced by Latin American archaeologists remains relatively unknown to scholars outside the region. This situation is due not only to the problems of language, but also to the inaccessiblilty and lack of diffusion of the publications— many of which are produced by local universities and museums —in which this work appears. Raw data and basic information are sometimes introduced into international debate, but very rarely do the ideas and models developed by Latin American archaeologists receive the same attention. A good example is the question of the peopling of the Americas, in which the data from the southern hemisphere cannot be ignored, yet the only models and interpretations discussed in the literature outside Latin America are North American and Western European. What this book hopes to achieve is to reduce the relative invisibility of the theoretical trends and ideas put forward by Latin American archaeologists. Bearing the above in mind, we approached Latin American archaeologists working on key issues in the archaeology of the region, or developing innovative approaches to specific problems or data sets. We solicited papers concerning the history of archaeology and different themes in the archaeology of various regions, and others which reflect a growing theoretical corpus of work specific to Latin America. Of course, it is not possible to cover all the many themes and issues in Latin American archaeology in one volume. Nonetheless, we feel that the current papers are a representative sample of the contemporary status of archaeological research in the region, a sample which further enables one to envisage the future directions of the discipline...