Archaeology and heritage as infrastructural violence
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
No booking required
Archaeology and heritage as infrastructural violence
This paper draws on work undertaken as part of the UKRI-funded project Ecologies of Violence: Conflict and Heritage in More-than-Human Worlds, which considers a range of forms of infrastructural violence in (post)conflict settings. Using the creation of the Museo Tierra Guarani from late 1970s/early 1980s Paraguay and its relationship with the building of what was then the world’s biggest hydroelectric dam as a case study, this paper aims to consider how archaeology and heritage practices are themselves part of a wider network of violent infrastructural projects. By doing so, it will discuss how archaeologists and heritage professionals can be complicit in what Amitav Ghosh (2021) calls “colonial terraforming” - an extractive and destructive practice resulting in the ecological and social transformation of indigenous landscapes and lifeworlds.
Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square.
Contact name:
Sarah Howard