Reflections on ‘material histories’ and the archaeology of slavery in Peru

What is it about?

While material-focused history is not a recent phenomenon in Latin Americanist scholarship, there has been a marked increase in the quantity and level of sophistication in the approach to material culture, material heritage, landscape, historical ecologies, and the built environment from a variety of disciplinary vantages. I argue that to be an effective tool for the present, historical archaeology in Latin America must ultimately be anthropocentric. In order to actively engage in anti-racist scholarship, it is important to not lose sight of the human and the ability to trace out human agency, despite the allure of the turn to the “post-human” in anthropology and related disciplines. In this essay, I explore how two materialist threads, pragmatism and political aesthetics aid in the meditative study of the material consequences and experiences of enslaved people in colonial Peru.

Featured Image

Photo by Leon Overweel on Unsplash

Photo by Leon Overweel on Unsplash