McAnany and Parks Casualties of Heritage Distancing 97 though some archeological purists, already feeling threatened by CONIMCHH’s disruptive claims to the ruins and its pro- ceeds, may disagree. Ultimately, the game for archeologists is about augmenting their funding and precarious control over sites so they can make their discoveries. Threats come from all directions— governments, indigenous activists, ethical research panels, ac- ademic critics, looters, unknowing destroyers of artifacts and features—and campesinos in the Ch’orti’ area have largely fallen in the last category. They certainly care little about obsidian pieces and much less about provenience. With West- ern knowledge about the Western/modern value of the ancient remains of people who were perhaps their ancestors, the res- idents may become the sites’ best preservers—or not. Im- poverished and marginal people that they are, they may parlay their new knowledge to loot and sell artifacts, as some en- lightened Ch’orti’s have done in Guatemala. Or the new am- ateur archeologists may decide to carry out their own exca- vations without the proper training, destroying evidence and usurping professional archeologists’ resources. Such incidents have happened in Guatemala. The risks for archeologists in enlightening and empowering local populations with archeological knowledge are real, but in my opinion they are risks that should be taken for both ethical and preservation reasons. The destitute campesinos on whose land the sites lay must be brought into the process to the fullest extent possible. It is best for all concerned, in- cluding cultural anthropologists like myself, to put aside some time to get on bandwagons like those of McAnany and Parks and give the local residents—whether one believes that they are indigenous descendants or not—a respectable piece of the action and the benefit of the doubt that they will not kill the archeological goose laying the golden eggs. Lena Mortensen Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, 19 Russell Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2S2, Canada (mortensen@utsc.utoronto.ca). 3 IX 11 McAnany and Parks offer a preliminary evaluation of the MACHI-sponsored Maya Project, an education initiative aimed at schoolchildren in the Copa ´n Valley of western Hon- duras who are ostensibly “distanced” from both the famous and the more modest archaeological heritage in their midst. At its heart, the project is an experiment in fostering ar- chaeological stewardship among residents who do not (yet) envision elements of their landscape as archaeologically sig- nificant, let alone embrace such remains as part of “their” heritage. As the authors describe it, the project is replete with good intentions and is bolstered by references to contem- porary ethical currents in the academy: engaged anthropology, heritage rights, democratizing knowledge, collaboration, and indigenous empowerment. In many respects, I am sympa- thetic to their aims and efforts. However, I am also somewhat sceptical about a number of their premises and claims. The pedagogical intervention they have set in motion is positioned against a backdrop of and as a remedy to what they call “heritage distancing.” McAnany and Parks introduce this terminology to gloss “the alienation of contemporary inhabitants of a landscape from the tangible remains or in- tangible practices of the past.” This conceptualization relies on a narrative of historical cultural rupture that is not in dispute, but it also makes a presumption about what “should” be heritage for contemporary Ch’orti’ rather than making this question a point of departure. By positing a “distance” be- tween Ch’orti’ and a preset heritage frame, the authors situate the economic and social marginalization of contemporary Honduran Ch’orti’ communities within the scope of archae- ological interests or, perhaps more accurately, archaeological activism. While there is nothing inherently wrong with such a move, I find it curious that McAnany and Parks begin from an assumption of heritage (“distanced”) rather than an investi- gation of what or how heritage might be locally and variably conceived. The unstated premise here is that archaeological remains are necessarily “heritage.” Indeed, material traces of past activity are constructed as “archaeological heritage” (cul- tural, national, scientific) from the perspective of resource managers and many academics. But the MACHI project was initiated precisely because many members of the communities they seek to “empower” do not conceive of these remains as heritage, archaeological or otherwise. Thus, the project ap- pears to be unapologetically didactic and productive of her- itage—or at least an archaeologically inflected heritage sen- sibility—among Ch’orti’ schoolchildren. From this angle, the project loses some of the radical po- tential that McAnany and Parks espouse. The core teaching efforts focus on archaeological methods and content, guided by the philosophy that “access by indigenous peoples to the means by which archaeological knowledge is constructed pro- vides tools for critical inquiry and empowerment.” The laud- able goal here is opening up the process of knowledge pro- duction to a broader base of participants. However, most elements of the program as described appear to replicate the narrow authority of the archaeological voice already so dom- inant in the Copa ´n archaeology industry (Mortensen 2009b). This leads me to ask, whose interest does such instruction really serve? The initiative is perhaps better read and assessed against the specter of archaeological site destruction with which the authors are more centrally concerned. Combating looting and other activities (or attitudes) that result in the destruction of archaeological resources is a long-standing aim of the ar- chaeological community and comprises the core of archae- ological outreach programs worldwide. It has generational precedents right there in the Copa ´n Valley, where the IHAH initiated campaigns among local residents nearly 3 decades ago, accompanying the passage of the country’s first law of This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Thu, 03 Mar 2016 00:00:07 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions