New Approaches to Community Stewardship, Education, and Sustainable Conservation of Cultural Heritage at Rastrojón, Copán, Honduras

Abstract

Like so many countries in the developing world, Honduras has always faced severe challenges in meeting its obligations and goals in cultural heritage management. These have been exacerbated since the great recession and a series of other difficulties that have dramatically reduced the government’s ability to support heritage management throughout the country. In 2007, the authors began a new program of rescue archaeology, conservation, education, and cultural heritage management at a site in the eastern end of the Copán Valley that engaged the local community on various levels, as well as offered the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia (IHAH) a new model for civic engagement in these endeavors. The new model engages the landowner and a local education foundation in sustaining the conservation and protection of the site, and provides technical training and K-12 educational programs to the benefit of the nearby town of Copán Ruinas and the Ch’orti’ Maya community. The site is now open to the public, with signage that emphasizes conservation and the role of the local staff in the rescue, documentation, analysis, conservation, and educational outreach that have been both the project’s and the IHAH’s goals from the onset of the work there. It is hoped that such community engagement and private stewardship will enable the government to enhance public awareness of the value of cultural heritage and the responsibilities local communities have to teach and to learn from it in the present and future.