The Chachi and Their Uneasy Relationship with Archaeology

Praet, Istvan

Abstract

The central question of this chapter is: to what extent is the notion of ‘ancient’ itself relatively new? Let me put my cards on the table straight away. I will suggest that a distinction such as that between ‘old’ and ‘new’ is actually a fairly recent phenomenon. To be sure, it has been spread with considerable success all over the world, also among so-called indigenous people. Archaeologists, ‘scientists of the ancient’, have played a crucial role in this. Arguably, they are among the prime disseminators of the idea of ‘the old’ or ‘the ancient’ since at least two centuries. That specific role of archaeologists is often overlooked, for it is commonly assumed that conceptions of what is bygone are similar
(if only roughly) all over the world. We could say that so-called indigenous people are taken to be ‘ethnoarchaeologists’, which in this context simply means that they are supposed to make a basic distinction between what is old and what is not. This chapter considers the (at first sight) improbable possibility that such a distinction does not or, at least, did not exist. It takes an Amerindian example as its starting point: I will draw on my research among the Chachi Indians of Esmeraldas, Ecuador.

Citation

Praet, I. (2011). The Chachi and Their Uneasy Relationship with Archaeology. In P. Fortis, & I. Praet (Eds.), The Archaeological Encounter: Anthropological Perspectives

• Online Publication Date: Sep 1, 2011
• Publication Date: Sep 1, 2011
• Deposit Date: Sep 1, 2025
• Book Title: The Archaeological Encounter: Anthropological Perspectives
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4469056