2Reflecting on Positionality: Archaeological Heritage Praxis in Quintana Roo, Mexico

Abstract

In this article I argue for a renewed engagement with the concept of positionality in archaeology. I provide a brief history of thinking about the idea of subject position in archaeology, focusing specifically on researcher subjectivity rather than that of past persons. The discussion highlights some of the strands of archaeological thinking where positionality has figured prominently in investigative and interpretative strategies: namely, intersectional, relational, and community‐based archaeologies. I then offer three examples from research in Quintana Roo, Mexico that speak to the ways that grappling with positionality has influenced my and my collaborators’ agendas and goals related to the commemoration of the heritage of the Maya Social War (Caste War of Yucatan).

Heritage as liberation

“…In order for us to do the work of bettering the future and the past (whatever that may mean), we are going to have to critically evaluate what it is that motivates us. That evaluation, as I've argued elsewhere (Fryer, 2020), will depend on a willingness to attend to our own positionalities (and teach our students to do the same) through regular, prudent self‐reflection as well as dialogue with critical interlocutors.…”

Introduction

“…Scholars working in heritage contexts steeped in violence also seem to be challenging the discipline writ large to take stock of its affective dimensions (e.g., Bondura, 2020; Lydon, 2019; Rizvi, 2019) and recommit to reflexivity in research design and implementation (Fryer, 2020). That reflexivity reveals, among other things, archaeology's deeply relational practices.…”

“…Calls for decolonizing the field have steadily increased since the 1990s, and decolonization remains a looming, unfinished project. As Akhil Gupta argued in his 2021 presidential address to the American Anthropological Association, anthropologists and anthropology do not function simply as handmaidens to colonialism, but when we do not acknowledge that race and location matter to the work that we do and that our very presence in a community can be a reminder (or an enactment) of colonialism, we stifle what anthropology could be (Gupta and Stoolman, 2021, 16–17; see also Fryer, 2020). A shared esteem for the archaeological record will never be enough to chart a productive way forward when whiteness continues to create barriers to effective research (see Hart, 2020).…”

Tracing the structural consequences of colonialism in rural Yucatán, Mexico

“…They embark on their research without first learning about the wealth of resources, knowledge, assets, identities, and perspectives characteristic of and available in that place. Instead, those archaeologists who wish to work outside of their own cultural contexts should plan to build partnerships, reflect on researcher subjectivity, position themselves as learners, and be humble about what their skillsets might offer (Diserens Morgan and Leventhal, 2020; Fryer, 2020; McAnany, 2020; Pyburn, 2014). Ideally, projects will pursue the recommendations of Fryer (this section) to work within collectivities and determine a “collaborative intervention” based on knowledge of systemic injustices inherent to a place.…”