We are seeking additional panelists for the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) 2018 congress (May 23-26, 2018 in Barcelona). If interested, please submit a 250-word abstract and paper title. Please contact me with questions or requests for additional information. Contact Email: christina.davidson[at]duke.edu

This panel explores the cultural, social, and political functions of archaeological patrimony in nation-building Latin America from a global perspective. After independence, citizens in the region used indigenous and colonial material culture to build cohesion between competing multicultural social groups and to connect with emerging local institutions across national borders, including public libraries, scientific societies, and historical academies. Archeological objects became important conduits in creating national visibility and establishing intellectual and economic relations throughout Latin America and abroad. We will discuss how the discovery of patrimonial heritage transformed Latin American nation building and how people regarded and interacted with the region in the nineteenth century.

We are interested in papers that bring interdisciplinary dialogue and shed new light on the staging of power through archaeological patrimony within a global context. What are the international dynamics at play behind finding, inventing, and discovering national patrimony? What happens when such patrimony is reproduced in other media and circulated in and beyond national borders? How does national patrimony define the spheres of the private and the public? What are the consequences of commodifying archeological heritage in an international market?

Topics include but are not limited to: patrimony and immigration, circulating and static patrimony, the rise of national archaeologies, anthropology, and preservation practices, the collecting of Pre Columbian antiquities and Afro-Latin American arts and artifacts, literature and indigenismo, the visual arts and patrimony, the link between patrimony, legislation, and diplomacy, museums, ruins, universal expositions, tangible and intangible patrimony, patrimony and nostalgia, the shaping of race, gender, religious and class identities through patrimony.