Dialogues in Cuban Archaeology

Introduction / 7
national relations, particularly archaeology’s relationship to colonialism. The
rise of Marxist-in®uenced Social Archaeology in Cuba, Mexico, and other
Latin American countries in the 1960s engaged in this critique and eventually
contributed to the development of Post-Processual Archaeology in North
America and Europe in the 1980s and 1990s (Oyuela-Caycedo et al. 1997;
Patterson 1994). The gist of these critiques was that in the Americas much of
archaeological practice (its structures of funding, labor relations, and curatorial
arrangements, for example) either directly supported, or were supported
by, relationships of political-economic inequality broadly de¤ned as colonialism.
Some critics went further to say that interpretations themselves were
biased by colonialist perspectives. Archaeology was seen as replicating hegemonic
relations in other realms, particularly between the United States and
Central American countries. Although a parallel critique of anthropology’s
role in colonialism, galvanized by Fabian (1983), has nearly run its course and
become part of the worldview of cultural anthropology, few North American
archaeologists would yet agree with, or have paid any attention to, statements
such as Daniel Miller’s, that “Archaeology rises solely out of the colonial structure”
(1980:710). A small scatter of publications by historical archaeologists
does voice this view, but their critique has by and large failed to penetrate the
mainstream of archaeological practice in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Archaeologists from other parts of the world have more readily acknowledged
the historical reality of archaeology’s relationship to colonialism (e.g.,
Chakrabarti 1997; Shepherd 2002). The creation of the World Archaeological
Congress (WAC) in 1986 promised in part to address postcolonial con®icts
arising in archaeology. One of its statutes advocates “the explicit recognition
of the historical and social role, and the political context, of archaeological
enquiry, of archaeological organizations, and of archaeological interpretation”
(on the political history of WAC itself, see Kitchen 1998; Taylor 1988). At the
1999 WAC, the lead theme for the plenary session and symposia was “Identity,
Nationalism, and Local Voices.” Strangely, not one of the nearly 100 papers
organized for this theme addressed the relationship of North American archaeologists
to colleagues or communities in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The ¤fth congress, held in June 2003, sponsored several new themes and
sessions that addressed the international politics of archaeology, but again,
among the approximately 80 papers grouped under the headings “Colonialism,
Identity, and Social Responsibility,” “Empowerment and Exploitation:
North-South and South-South Archaeological Encounters,” “Global Perspectives,”
and “Indigenous Archaeologies,” only one paper—presented by Javier