Modes of Cultural Production of the ?Mega-mining Reality? in the San Juan Province: The Role of Contract Archaeology and Local Responses to the Global Order.

IVANA CARINA JOFRÉ

Online Journal in Public Archaeology

JAS Arqueologia

Año: 2014 vol. 4 p. 15 - 23

The present study focuses on the relationship between culturalheritage and mega-mining1, and aims to show how contractarchaeology?linked to mining projects through the patrimonialisationof indigenous places of memory?is part of a complex network ofhegemonic actors that contribute towards the institutionalisationand naturalisation of a neo-extractivist developmental model. This model is implemented regionally in South American countries aswell as the Global South, where socio-cultural, environmental,political, and economic circumstances preclude a decolonisationmodel. In this study, patrimonialisation processes in the contextof mega-mining projects are examined based on the assumptionthat economic, environmental, and cultural conflicts are part of thesame dynamic, in that they originate from and overlap with the?colonial difference? (Escobar, 2011).