Daniela Balanzátegui y Heimar Cortés
Description
The main purpose guiding this topic is to integrate the wide scope of research generated by historical archaeology in the Northern Andes. It seeks to look into the social, political, and economic processes that developed in the area due to the Spanish intrusion and the effect of colonialism, both seen as a historical process and as an epistemological paradigm. In this context, Spanish colonialism integrated various institutions and social systems that left their legacy in Native Aboriginal societies and in Afro-descendant societies all along with the New World. Therefore, this topic will reconsider those cultural dynamics from the perspective of historical processes that are unique to the Northern Andes. These processes materialized within the context of colonial social relations in the shape of specific ways of either oppression or resistance. By comparing and contrasting new data obtained in various regions of the Northern Andes, we’ll have the chance to identify different social practices, power relations (including the convergence of race, social classes, and gender), ways of life, and how new meanings were born from the identities through which a multiplicity of realities were appropriated and transformed from those that existed in the region during Pre-Hispanic times. This topic is an invitation to rethink our region from the point of view of Historical Archaeology, and to develop a deep social questioning of the present, being as it is largely a consequence of a lasting colonial legacy.
Goals
With this in mind, we seek to achieve the following goals:
- A debate about the Northern Andes as seen from multiple archaeological and historical perspectives, focusing on its human landscape and the concept of Northern Andes itself.
- Determine the state of the art of historical and contemporary archaeology in the region, and how it creates a narrative for today’s studies about the Northern Andes.
- Map the effects of colonialism and contrast them with dissenting points of view, allowing us to tackle the recent past of the Northern Andes from a non-colonial framework of thought, and free from the official narrative of history.
- Set out the future of historical archaeology research in the area that considers cultural patrimony integrally. Works should include collaborative projects and aim to developing the skills of local human resources with help from the academia, both national and international.
Some themes for this topic
Estates, and Native and Afro-descendant populations
African Diaspora, slavery, resistance, and runaways
Discourses and identities
Other relevant historical archaeology works that may be pertinent to this topic
OpenEdition le sugiere que cite este post de la siguiente manera:
danielabalanzategui (16 de noviembre de 2021). Rethinking the Northern Andes from a Historical Archaeology Approach. Andes Septentrionales: arqueología e historia. Recuperado 15 de abril de 2026 de https://doi.org/10.58079/sdxh
