UC Berkeley

This dissertation traces the design and implementation of a pilot program in Participatory Archaeology at the archaeological site of Currusté, Honduras, through recursive reflexivity in action. The impact and outcome of this approach to archaeological practice was transformative, giving way to more meaningful relationships with local participants, as contemporary understandings of identity, nationalism and cultural heritage, shared in daily conversations and in ethnographic interviews, emerged through the different ways that people connect and understand the places we call archaeological sites. Contemporary understandings, rooted in the epistemic positionalities of different voices and the legitimate inclusion of our diverse knowledge, became the basis for praxis in the field of archaeological practice.

By turning the archaeological site into an open-air classroom that included programs and activities related to the community of practice being created through our shared archaeological activity, examples of contemporary daily experiences and lives recognizable to all participants, became an approach that made archaeological knowledge more accessible to all involved. This was achieved by a reconfiguration of the language and trato that characterized the relationships that were being created and reconfigured as we discussed relationships in the past.

The ethnographic part of the Pilot Program, meant to evaluate its effectiveness as situated learning through apprenticeship and legitimate participation, generated a move from just observation to active participant observation in this example of ethnography in archaeology, where the active engagement, through the sharing of experiences, enriched our joint community of practice by building and fostering relationships shaped by the confianza of legitimate participation. The evaluation generated positive feedback and encouragement for continued programs in future archaeological work.

What also emerged during this process (a continuous recursive process) of the reconfiguration of approaches to archaeological practice were not just stories, but legitimate ways that people understand, within their own communities of practice and epistemic positionalities, their connections to and ties to a place in the present, the modern archaeological site of Currusté. These stories and experiences differ and many perspectives emerge, whether in formal interviews or during the daily moments and sharing of experiences in which the archaeological voice is superseded and knowledge about our relationships, both past and present, are eclipsed by stories of a place: how it is understood by different people, how it is felt, lived, protected, contested, pronounced and evoked in ways that are meaningful and intelligible to those living there today, different to each of the different actors that have a stake in the place, archaeologists included. Ideas of what cultural heritage means to different people are augmented, questioned and turned on their heads. These have more implications than those that exist for Currusté and certainly important elsewhere in the world.