About this Book

This book offers three in-depth case-studies of cultural landscapes and intangible heritage in Native North America at Canyon de Chelly, in Mesoamerica at the Yucatec Maya cultural site of Coba in the state of Quintana Roo, and in the Andes at the Aymara community of Copacabana and the nearby sacred sites of the Islands of the Sun and of the Moon. The primary selection criterion is an archaeological site around which contemporary communities have grown. My goal is to offer an “indigenous or community-based archaeology/anthropology” as outlined by Kathleen Kawelu (2015:17,136-141): this is archaeology/anthropology done with, for, and by indigenous peoples. Indigenous anthropology is not fixed in its format and allows for varied strategies. While this type of archaeology/anthropology may lack academic precision as defined traditionally, it does not lack the rigor of negotiating a path between indigenous and disciplinary values, rights, and responsibilities, toward the ultimate goal of empowering indigenous peoples. Community-based archaeology/anthropology begins with a mindset of situating archaeologists/anthropologists among indigenous communities and other stakeholders who value heritage. Such an approach is two-sided and is grounded in shared and negotiated interests and issues between a researcher and indigenous consultants. In my case studies, each social scenario was different requiring a multiplicity of approaches. Each of the three sections will bring together the available archaeological information and aim to reconfigure the cultural landscapes of the successive occupation phases. Ongoing discourse between descendants of ancient inhabitants and the ruins will be interwoven and how both shape and re-shape each other as active agents. Methods have to shift in the pre-contact and post-contact analysis sections. The pre-contact occupation phases are reconstructed based on material data from available archaeological reports. One goal clearly is to contribute a scientific cultural history summarizing current knowledge. Within these parameters, special attention will be directed to data which might provide insights into 1.the agency of individuals as opposed to the overarching ideology of power structures – past and present - which bury individual actions, to probe whether a bottom-up perspective can be opened up within the confines of data limitations and 2.how these individuals inscribed memory on material remains they encountered from prior occupations and upon the land. In the post-contact sections, twenty-first century occupation and views of land as intangible heritage will be presented through my ethnographic fieldwork. I began to return to Canyon de Chelly in 2012 with yearly return visits lasting one to three weeks. I met consultants and made friends with many people in Chinle some of whom do not wish to be mentioned by name. In 2015, I received a permit from the Navajo Nation in Window Rock to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Canyon de Chelly. In 2016, I was granted a permit to conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Canyon de Chelly from the National Park Service. I returned to Coba in 2012 and was surprised by the impact of tourism in contrast to nearby villages who continue a rather traditional Maya lifestyle. Two years later, interviews in Coba were my research project as a member of the Open School for Ethnography and Anthropology directed by Quetzil Castaneda in Piste. This is when I met Luis May Ku; we have discussed several partnership projects since then, which have involved return visits lasting one week each. I have gone to Copacabana since 1999 and it was the focus of a major chapter validating stone ideology in my book Memory Landscapes of the Inka Sculpted Outcrops (2016). Here the emphasis is shifted toward post-contact cultural heritage. Most of my ethnographic fieldwork was conducted during the weeks of the August pilgrimage to the Virgin of Copacabana in 2015 and 2017. As explained and theorized above, my ethnographic approaches and practices had to stay flexible and be adjusted to each local social setting. In the conclusions, an analytic comparison of the three American case studies will unpack results with practical applications in the twenty-first century. My findings show that Archaeology provides the physical stage set of cultural landscapes – however, conventional science which solely reconstructs frozen and essentialized temporal slices does not participate in the dynamic reality of the twenty-first century; Archaeological ruins lie buried in the social memory of descendant communities and are inextricably cross-linked with the social construction of the present and future; Differences derive from the historical, local, as well as legal circumstances of the individual case studies; The insights gained can provide building blocks for future cultural landscapes sustained economically and spiritually by a fruitful merger of scientific and indigenous knowledge, truths, and identities which will help to empower indigenous peoples; Such future cultural landscapes should not be seen as static, idealized, and self-supporting but would have to be continually balanced out among interested parties as pieces of living human realities. Academic contributions from the sciences which include space for the empowerment of indigenous peoples can provide solid foundations to better understand changing lived human realities. Such findings will be humanized through the three case studies. The reader should not expect clear-cut answers or formulaic recipes for a sustainable future. Rather, he/she is asked to understand the data and results presented and apply or connect them to their life experiences to foster change.