Colonialism, social archaeology and lo Andino: historical archaeology in the Andes

Abstract

The rich prehistoric archaeological record in Andean South America has obscured the importance of post-conquest historic sites in the region. Archaeologists researching the former Spanish colonies have long turned to the US ‘Borderlands’ and the Caribbean for models defining the archaeology of Spanish colonialism. Recently, however, Andean archaeologists have begun to create new emphases on the archaeology of colonialism and archaeologies of the later Andean republics. This region was a core area of Spanish overseas expansion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with much of the precious metal wealth of the empire produced in Andean mines. Today archaeologists in the Andean republics of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, and the foreign researchers who also work in the region, are overcoming geographic, financial and linguistic barriers to create a unified Andean historical archaeology.