Adriana María Linares-Palma, “Community-based archaeology in the Ixil region, Guatemala”

In this presentation, Dr. Adriana María Linares-Palma shares their reflections on the processes, challenges, and outcomes of a community-based archaeological program conducted in San Juan Cotzal, in the Maya highlands of Guatemala. Linares-Palma explains how their research emerged in collaboration with the Ancestral Authorities of San Juan Cotzal and the Ixil University towards Indigenous autonomy, especially facing extractivism by transnational corporations that had settled in their territory. Dr. Linares-Palma situates their talk in the context of the conflicts created by a hydroelectric plant built without the communities’ consent and the principal damages, including the constellation of memory in Cotzal. The processes of this research informed about archaeological methodologies anchored to colonial notions of cultural heritage, cultural appropriation, and national discourses of homogeneity.