Ruins in the landscape: Tourism and the archaeological heritage of Chinchero

Abstract

Aggressive heritage policies implemented by the state in the Peruvian highland town of Chinchero are severing the local population from their material past through processes of de-territorialization and displacement involved in the appropriation of archaeological spaces for tourism exploitation. This management is having an effect on local identity and how residents engage with their landscape. The landscape of the Inca ruins has traditionally been used in different ways and bears the traces of historical relationships, practices and events through which people have constructed a sense of place. Additionally, archaeological heritage management is changing how time is experienced in the landscape and showing how the process of ‘cleaning-up’ ruins to remove evidence of recent human activities and tidy up fallen stones can remove a sense of time and process for tourist visitors. These ethnographic observations are used to develop new ideas about how we can understand time and change in archaeological heritage sites.