Monumental ambivalence: the politics of heritage - By Lisa Breglia (original) (raw)

Against Conservation: Towards a New Model of Archaeological Heritage Management in Chinchero

In the Peruvian Highland town of Chinchero, mainstream heritage conservation policies have proven to be at odds with vernacular practices of land management and uses of the material past. The temporal regimes involved in the strict conservation paradigm collide with local understandings of time and history, rooted in a dynamic tradition based on principles of alternation and circulation, and with a utilitarian approach towards ancient physical remains. The consequences of current archaeological management have turned the Inca ruins into a highly regulated space from which community members have been largely dispossessed. This goes against the legal consideration of the site as a cultural landscape. In order to remedy the temporal and spatial disjunctions derived from mainstream archaeological policy at the site, a new model, inspired in traditional landscape practices, local ideas of time, and movement patterns is proposed as a critical counternarrative to a global hegemonic conservation paradigm. For this purpose, two specific practices come into scrutiny where Andean temporalities as forms of knowledge are embedded. One is Muyuy, a long-standing principle of socioeconomic organization by which communal land is periodically rotated and worked. The other one is Linderaje, or the ancient custom of walking around community boundaries while honoring the milestones identified with the ancestors. Both are proposed as a solution to current conservation dilemmas in town.

Keeping World Heritage in the Family: A Genealogy of Maya Labour at Chichén Itzá

International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2005

This account of the everyday politics of the World Heritage archaeological site of Chichén Itzá (Yucatán, Mexico) contributes to a new impulse in the study of heritage and tourism: the interests and participation of multiple publics in the production of sites of national cultural identities and international tourism. For decades, Maya residents in and around Chichén Itzá have been employed in the site's excavation, maintenance, and protection. For these indigenous heritage workers, patrimonial claims to the site are based not on the monuments themselves but on inherited job positions. The transformation of these workers into a local elite has occasioned contentious broader community politics as other local residents advocate opening the site's benefit stream to a wider group of stakeholders. This case study thus addresses the role played by heritage workers in the micro-politics of patrimony at a World Heritage Site.

Heritage, a matter of position // 2010 [2003] // Journal Article // (only first and last pages)

Environment, Land, Society: Architectonics, 2010

First part of the text in lieu of an abstract: Some institutions have lately championed the lengthening of heritage. Among the examples available in this recent common-place, the clearest is that of UNESCO when claiming the need to take into account Intangible Heritage. that is to say, to lengthen heritagisation. The claim for the expansion of the horizons of heritage pretends to comprise a whole area labelled under diverse and vague criteria: the popular, the ethnological, the everyday life, etc.; and which, in a certain way would come into the field of what anthropologists have named culture (a set of norms, practices and beliefs applied as a whole and which, taken as a whole, make sense). It would be naïve to believe that this lengthening or widening of horizons is only this, that is to say, a quantitative change, a mere increase of objects: what it implies is a reformulation of the very notion of heritage and its praxis.

(2012) In the Shadow of the Pyramid: Recent Archaeological Investigations at Chichen Itza.

The largest monumental construction at Chichen ltza is the Great Platform, a leveled surface so large that it dwarfs the Castillo, the Temple of the Warriors, the Group of 1000 Columns, and all the other structures that stand upon it. Yet the construction history of this platform has been poorly understood. Archaeological investigations conducted in 2009 reveal at least ten major construction episodes for the Great Platform, and serve to link the construction sequences of many of the buildings that the platform supports. This long history indicates that the basic orientation and planning of the Great Platform was established at an early date, and that the center of Chichen Itza was not built all at once by Toltec invaders or by Mexicanized Maya but instead slowly evolved. Moreover, the International style of art and architecture that dominates the final stages of construction in the heart of Chichen Itza also developed gradually over time, revealing a pattern of adoption, innovation, and adaptation. In sum, the rulers, architects, and artists of Chichen Itza were not the passive recipients of foreign influence, but instead were active participants in the creation of the International style.