Archaeology and Politics in Argentina During the Last 50 Years

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between archaeological practice and theory, on the one hand, and the political context in Argentina since 1958, on the other. Thus, 1958 highlights the starting point for our analysis with the objective of exploring the relationship between archaeological praxis and theory within a sociopolitical context. Special political circumstances existed particularly in Argentina, but also in the southern region of South America, where democratic governments (some fully while other partly democratic) alternated with strong military regimes over the past half-century and significantly influenced the development of archaeology in the region. Such context provides, in our view, interesting data to understand the political aspect underlying the origin and development of national archaeologies. This paper is within a critical perspective (in the sense used by Fernández Martínez. 2006. Una Arqueología Crítica. Ciencia, Etica y Política en la Construcción del Pasado. Editorial Crítica, Barcelona.) that sees the relationship between archaeology and politics as unavoidable and where the past is an interpretative construction dependent upon the sociopolitical context of knowledge production. Any attempt to study relationships between archaeology and politics and between archaeology and the public cannot avoid considering some of the related issues, such as the idea of the “others”, politics of culture, modelling of the country by the ruling classes, and the position of the country in the world context.