ArmstrongFumero ArtifactualSurfaceLimits 2018

Artifactual Surface and the Limits of Inclusion: Blurring the Boundary Between
Materiality and Intangible Heritage

Author(s): Fernando Armstrong-Fumero
Source: Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 91, No. 4 (Fall 2018), pp. 1303-1328
Published by: The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26646267
Accessed: 28-11-2023 16:07 +00:00
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SPECIAL COLLECTION
WORLD HERITAGE AND THE ONTOLOGICAL TURN:
NEW MATERIALITIES AND THE ENACTMENT
OF COLLECTIVE PASTS
Artifactual Surface and the

Limits of Inclusion: Blurring
the Boundary Between
Materiality and Intangible
Heritage
Fernando Armstrong-Fumero, Smith College
ABSTRACT:
This article explores a central tension in the relationship between

intangible and tangible heritage politics in the Oriente region of the
Mexican state of Yucatan. In these communities, the burning of candles
in colonial-era churches and the re-occupation of sites that contain
pre-Hispanic ruins have played important roles in the reproduction of
certain elements of intangible cultural heritage. However, both of these
practices involve alterations of archaeological sites or historical artifacts
that federal heritage authorities characterize as "destructive. " The
seemingly insurmountable tension between intangible heritage that is
instantiated through the manipulation of physical objects and the formal
statutes for tangible heritage management raises important questions
about the boundaries between the human and non-human dimensions
of heritage practice. [Keywords: Yucatan, Maya, heritage, materiality,
multiculturalism]
Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 91, No. 4, p. 1303-1328, ISSN 0003-5491. © 2018 by the Institute for
Ethnographic Research (IFER) a part of The George Washington University. All rights reserved.
1303
Artifactual Surface and the Limits of Inclusion: Blurring the Boundary
Between Materiality and Intangible Heritage
any critical approaches to heritage promote what some authors have

m: called "multivocality" (see Hodder 2003). This refers to the idea that
the hierarchical and sometimes conflictive relationship between scholars,
heritage professionals, and local stakeholders can be addressed by rec
ognizing each party's right to express their own version of the past. This
inclusivity has significant political and ethical stakes, particularly since
access to historical sites can be important in reproducing the intangible
cultural heritage of living groups. Increasingly, international declarations
and national legal statutes recognize the reproduction of these intangible
legacies as a basic human right that is entitled to formal legal protection.
Still, there is one essential limit to most heritage professionals' willingness
to accommodate stakeholders' claims on the past—the assumption that
the physical form of protected objects cannot be altered in any way by
contemporary human activity.
Here, I will focus on two sets of practices that play a role in the intan
gible cultural heritage and identity of Yucatec Maya people in Mexico:
the use of candles in church rituals and the re-occupation of spaces that
contain pre-Hispanic architectural remains. Both of these practices have
played a role in the reproduction of patterns of subsistence, cosmovi
sions, and spirituality that have shaped the quotidian experience of this
ethnic group over many generations. Both are also, to different degrees,
difficult to reconcile with the assumption that tangible heritage objects
should conserve their current physical form in perpetuity. In focusing on
these two cases, I draw attention to an essential contradiction between
the official protection of intangible heritage and the legal foundations of
archaeological research and stewardship by Mexico's National Institute
of Anthropology and History (INAH). My intent here is not to single out
the Mexican institution for criticism, but to use the national example with
which I am most familiar to discuss legally enshrined assumptions about
the ontic autonomy of tangible heritage objects that have parallels to simi
lar laws in other national contexts (see Breglia 2006, Gilman 2010, Lopez
Camacho 2008).
I should note that my examination of these concepts is less about pro
posing pragmatic solutions to tensions between heritage institutions and
local communities, and more about exploring conceptual alternatives to a
series of received legal constructs that are difficult to reconcile with con
temporary understandings of the social role of non-human objects in the
reproduction of living cultures. Pragmatic solutions for tensions between
1304
FERNANDO ARMSTRONG-FUMERO
laws that protect antiquities and the demands of local communities are
not, in fact, lacking. They occur whenever communities are compensated
in some way for limits that are placed on their use of sites. These "fixes"
occur when Maya agriculturalists whose lands are affected by an archaeo
logical project are hired as paid laborers in an excavation, or when they
are able to derive profit from subsequent tourism development. Some ar
chaeologists design local education projects in tandem with excavations,
which provide more intangible compensation to communities (Macanany
and Parks 2012). Treating sites as "multivocal" spaces where a diversity
of perspectives can contribute to the interpretations of the past (Hodder
2003) is another of these pragmatic solutions.
Though these pragmatic "fixes" can provide some positive outcomes,
their ubiquity underscores a series of conceptual aporias that are built
into heritage law, and that all but preclude a theoretically consistent politi
cal project that simultaneously protects heritage sites and the intangible
heritage of stakeholder communities. I contend that, even if heritage pro
fessionals often find means of working around these tensions, we can
derive important insights from a more sustained questioning of certain
assumptions about the ontology of heritage objects. As I will argue in the
conclusion, this line of questioning suggests that a theoretically consistent
attempt to reconcile tangible and intangible heritage involves a far more
radical series of political and legal transformations. It entails, among other
things, a recognition of the complex relationship between socio-culturai
processes and the materiality of objects, a relationship in which the on
tological boundaries between humans and non-humans are often far less
distinct than they appear in most forms of heritage law. Given the legal
status quo, this sort of transformation of heritage law can seem utopie.
But, as I will argue, it points to ways of rethinking the politics of heritage in
terms that are consistent with current theories of materiality, and with the
democratization of public culture that is implicit in both critical heritage
studies and the promotion of local intangible heritage.
The aporias to which I refer above are, to a large extent, a product of
institutional and legal history. In Mexico's case, there is a complex and
evolving relationship between concepts of tangible and intangible heri
tage that is typical of many countries where well-developed legal tradi
tions for protecting archaeological remains come into contact with newer
forms of multicultural politics. By the time that Mexico became a signatory
of the UNESCO World Heritage convention, the country possessed a body
1305
of internal laws for the protection of archaeological monuments that had

developed since the early 19th century and had attained a high degree
of enforceability by the 1920s and 1930s (Lopez Camacho 2008). in con
trast, political and legal discourse on /'ntangible heritage is considerably
newer in Mexico, and reflects a more recent confluence of international
policy instruments and national responses to indigenous activism. These
invocations of intangible heritage tend to be conflated with discourses of
cultural autonomy and human rights that have played a prominent role in
post-quincentennial ethnic politics in Latin America (Stavenhagen 2008,
Warren and Jackson 2003, Yashar2005). In Mexico, these closely related
concepts have been incorporated to various degrees in legal frameworks
that range from constitutional anti-discrimination reforms to the official re
framing of the idea of "national" culture.
In theory, treating intangible heritage as part of the rights of indigenous
groups involves granting official protection to usages and customs (usosy
costumbres) that pertain to religion, land tenure, and agriculture. In prac
tice, however, the recognition of these customs tends to be trumped by
the legal protection of tangible heritage. In some senses, this reflects the
fact that tangible heritage has been subjected to legislation and bureau
cratic control for a far longer period of time than its intangible counterpart,
and is therefore governed by a body of laws that has a greater degree
of consistency and applicability across the Mexican republic. Given that
objects of tangible heritage are defined as property of the Mexican nation,
the precedence that is given to their protection might also reflect a bias to
wards national heritage over more localized intangible legacies of regional
and ethnic minority communities.
Although these forms of bias towards tangible heritage have been
well-documented in the literature on Mexico and other national contexts
(Alivizatou 2012, Breglia 2006, Cojti Ren 2006, Watkins 2001), I will focus
more narrowly on a pervasive series of political and legal effects that re
sult from basic assumptions about the ontology of heritage objects that
emerge in the laws and practices of institutions like the INAH. These prac
tices hinge on the designation of heritage objects as spatially bounded
entities whose physical forms are the product of a particular historical
moment, and should be protected from alteration in subsequent histori
cal moments. Through this act of designation, heritage objects are made
autonomous from the influence of spatial and temporal contiguity with
living human communities. I place special emphasis on the seemingly
1306
common-sense reference to "caracteristicas" or "characteristics" of heri

tage objects in INAH statutes. Mexican law explicitly notes that artifacts
and structures attain legal status as heritage objects when experts are
able to describe and document "characteristics" that both certify their
authenticity and establish the particular material qualities that are subject
to legal protection. Although they acknowledge that the salient features
of these objects can only enter the realm of law through the intervention
of specially trained human actors, these statutes assume that "charac
teristics" are ontic qualities that exist independently of any present-day
human intervention. By extension, institutionally defined "characteristics"
are both temporally and spatially segregated from the activities that are
lawfully permitted to currently living humans.
This dual acknowledgment and denial of the human contacts that turn
non-human objects into "culture" mirrors a phenomenon that Bruno Latour
(1999) referred to as the "black box." As Latour observed, the smooth
day-by-day functioning of science involves a pragmatic suppression of
various human interventions that produced the most basic "facts" that are
subjected to experimentation and debate. A similar suppression seems to
be essential to tangible heritage law. In this particular context, the erasure
of heritage professionals' intervention in the definition of the objects'
"characteristics" is not simply an act of epistemological pragmatism. It is a
political gesture that creates a juridical bubble that spatially and temporally
segregates tangible heritage from most forms of contemporaneous
human activity into which they could be integrated. I refer to this bubble,
and to the relationship between non-human artifacts and human behavior
that it institutionalizes, as "artifactual surface." The ontological autonomy
implied by artifactual surface legitimates laws that place extraordinary
limits on how most stakeholders can interact with objects that often form
a part of their quotidian world. It is these limits that are a frequent source
of conflict between heritage institutions and local stakeholders.
Where the legal statutes that inform the work of the INAH assume that
heritage objects have a large degree of autonomy from the social and
ecological environment in which they are located, rural Maya speakers
in Yucatan have a long history of treating the same objects as far less
bounded or "fixed." In the case of colonial religious art, there is tension
between INAH conservation that is intended to maintain a clear artifactual
surface, and traditional ritual activity during which all objects within the
church are subjected to the effects of smoke from candles and incense.
1307
The accumulation of carbon staining and other residues on art objects—

residues which are themselves meaningful markers of the subjective ex
perience of worship—is consistent with the intimate encounters between
humans and things that define Catholic ritual. These tensions between
local experience and INAH practices are even starker in the case of pre
Hispanic ruins, which play multiple roles in the patterns of abandonment
and re-settlement that mark traditional swidden agriculture. In this case, a
recycling of architectural remains from previous phases of occupation has
formed an integral part of a pattern of agriculture that is a cornerstone of
the identity of many generations of rural Maya people. But as a practice
that treats pre-Hispanic ruins as collections of usable stones rather than
as integral historical artifacts, the recycling of material in archaeological
sites is impossible to reconcile with legal frameworks that place an arti
factual surface over structures and assume that these "characteristics"
cannot be altered in any way.
What is most important in this case is not simply that rural Maya speak
ers have a distinct way of thinking about these objects in comparison to
archaeologists and representatives of the INAH. Rather, I will stress how
the constitution of artifactual surface through an enforceable body of laws
gives a distinctive kind of status and legal agency to objects. The fact that
this creates real-world consequences for Mayan agriculturalists who al
ter archaeological objects offers an interesting counter-example to some
popular cross-cultural comparisons of object ontology in Western and
non-Western contexts. I am referring specifically to the typology of on
tologies that have been popularized by authors such as Philippe Descola
(2014; see also Alberti, Fowles, et al. 2011). For Descola, variation among
indigenous ontologies essentially stems from the distinct conceptual
frame that different peoples apply to their interactions with the material
world. Though he references how these conceptual frames endow non
humans with various kinds of social agency, his various ontologies are, in
essence, culturally conditioned ideas that exist in the minds of different
peoples and that are used to order the material world. Thus, Descola's
ontologies often seem less like an existential quality or political agency
of objects themselves than an extension of the kind of cognitive cultural
alterity that other authors try to resolve with multivocality.
As will become evident in the cases that I discuss below, tensions be
tween heritage law and local uses of heritage objects emerge from the
realpolitik of legally empowered non-humans, rather than from tensions
1308
between Western legal traditions and the radical "otherness" of Mayan

perceptions of the universe. In some ways, the empowerment of these
objects reflects the degree to which Maya speakers in Yucatan are far
more "Western" than one would anticipate from Descola's characteriza
tion of other indigenous peoples. Over the years, I have met many people
who believe that the bush is populated by supernatural beings that enter
into reciprocal relationships with humans. But these same people are no
strangers to the ideas of cause, effect, and obligation that define Mexican
legal culture and property rights. They employ agricultural techniques
and concepts of landscape with very deep historical roots, but do so as
Mexican citizens who are thoroughly immersed in the culture of liberal
economic development and modern notions of land title. A similar intima
cy with the signature cultural forms of the West is evident in the syncretic
form of Catholicism that has been practiced in Yucatan since the 1500s.
Thus, even if ethnic Maya people do have a distinct cultural perspective
on antiquities, they have generations of experience with the real-world
political effects that eminent domain and related legal constructs have on
their lives.
lo summarize, I argue that addressing the inequalities that are embod

ied in artifactual surface might have less to do with reconciling distinct
cultural perspectives, and more to do with the kinds of agency that heri
tage objects are granted in relation to Mexican citizens. In essence, the
historical structure of tangible heritage laws involves a momentary gesture
through which humans designate objects as heritage, after which those
objects retain a legally enforced right to exist autonomously from most
subsequent acts of intervention. Insofar as the incorporation of non-pro
fessional stakeholders like rural Maya people occurs after this initial act
of designation, any demands that they could place on the cultural use of
objects become secondary to the legal and ontological force of artifac
:ual surface. In the next section, I will look briefly at how this moment of
designation is enacted through Mexican law, before turning to specific
sonographic and historical examples.
rhe Legal Basis of Artifactual Surface

Although laws for the protection of pre-Hispanic and colonial monuments
lave existed in different forms in Mexico since the early 19th century, the
îstablishment of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH)
309
in 1939 created a centralized federal institution with the financial, admin

istrative, and intellectual resources to administer tangible cultural heritage
on an unprecedented scale. INAH lawyers and technocrats have articu
lated, amended, and applied an evolving legal framework for researching
archaeological and historical sites, protecting the objects and structures
found within them, and making them accessible to the public. This legal
framework constitutes the Institute as the sole steward of monuments and
artifacts, all of which are considered property of the Mexican nation and an
eminent domain of the federal government. Here, I will focus on two docu
ments, the 1972 Federal Law on Archaeological, Artistic, and Historical
Monuments and Zones, which lays the constitutional foundation for the
protection of tangible heritage, and the 1975 Reglamento that established
best practices for the implementation of the 1972 legislation. Amended
several times in the 1980s and 1990s, these two documents form the cor
nerstone for the management of tangible heritage in Mexico.
As a set, these two legal documents outline the process that a number
of critical authors would characterize as the "creation" of heritage (Angelo
2010). In his poststructuralist analysis of archaeology and tourism at
Chichén Itza, Quetzil Castaneda observed how the ruins were "invented"
by archaeologists as a distinctly modernist representation of human his
tory (1996:120-135). His interpretation somewhat overstates the agency
of archaeologists, whose ability to "create" the past is still constrained
by the form that had been imparted to artifacts by artists and builders
who lived more than a millennium earlier (see Armstrong-Fumero 2011).
But, there is something important in the observation that a deliberate act
of constituting heritage as such exists behind the realist pretensions of
modern museology and archaeology. Archaeologists can use the fact that
they are "uncovering" objects whose physical form preceded their own
intervention to establish a plausible denial of their own role in creating the
past. But the framers of legal statutes for the protection of heritage are
faced with a distinct set of pragmatic problems. In effect, they must create
boundaries between protected heritage objects and the larger human and
non-human world in which these objects are situated. Everything can't be
protected heritage, and the day-to-day practice of an institution like the
INAH requires the existence of some qualitative criteria that can separate
heritage objects from the soil, vegetation, modern construction, refuse,
or other signs of human use to which they are contiguous in the present.
1310
The legal—versus strictly epistemological—origin of this segregation is

readily acknowledged in the 1972 Federal Law on Archaeological, Artistic,
and Historical Monuments and Zones. It states:
Archaeological, artistic, and historical monuments and zones of mon

uments are those which have been determined expressly by this Law
and those which shall be declared as such by declaration or petition.
Son monumentos arqueolôgicos, artfsticos, histôricos y zonas de

monumentos los determinados expresamente en esta Ley y los que
sean dec/arados como taies, de oficio o a peticiôn de parte. (INAH
1972: Articulo 5o.-)
Though this statement assumes that these objects possess some inherent
quality that precedes their evaluation by qualified experts, it essentially
turns the human authors and executors of the law into the de jure creators
of objects-as-heritage. The 1975 Reglamento elaborates on this point by
establishing that:
The formal declaration of archaeological, artistic and historical zones

shall specifically determine the characteristics of these and, when
necessary, the conditions to which constructions on said zones
should be subjected.
Las declaratorias de zonas arqueolôgicas, artfsticas e histôricas de

terminaran, especificamente, las caracteristicas de éstas y, en su
caso, las condiciones a que deberân sujetarse las construcciones
que se hagan en dichas zonas. (INAH 1975: Artîculo 9)
The Reglamento advances a more political and debatable ontological

claim than a common-sense term like "characteristics" seems to imply.
In theory—or in the theory of heritage law, at least-"characteristics" are
aspects of the spatial extension, form, texture, and composition of objects
that existed in their current forms before these objects are encountered by
the human beings that are subjected to this particular body of laws. Still,
there are some important ways in which these characteristics are created
in the present, even if the object to which they are attributed took a con
Jerably longer trajectory through time and space. A spatial and temporal
1311
dimension of an artifact becomes a characteristic through the process

of translating non-verbal artifacts into narrative descriptions, maps, and
drawings that can be filed as part of the official documentation of these
heritage sites. In this respect, the "characteristic" is not an ontic dimen
sion of the object itself so much as it is the re-articulation of this object into
an intelligible and transmittable form of discourse.
The second way in which the characteristic emerges in the present is
through the work of segregation or bounding that i have referred to as the
creation of artifactual surface. The formal legal statutes of the I NAH are
somewhat open-ended regarding the process of separating or bounding
a discreet object from the larger natural and anthropogenic contexts in
which it is embedded. A number of provisions regarding the legal status
of lands on the periphery of archaeological sites speak to the INAH's right
to exercise the state's eminent domain over heritage objects by effect
ing contiguous structures that do not constitute heritage themselves. In
practice, this determination is made on-site, and the spatial extent of the
artifactual surface of a particular object or site depends on the archae
ologists' discernment. This determination occurs on various scales, from
deciding if organic residues on the surface of a ceramic vessel should be
preserved as traces of an original context to determining if a cenote (a
naturally-occurring sinkhole well) was the object of ancient ritual activity
and should thus be considered an integral part of a pre-Hispanic architec
tural grouping.
There is also an important temporal component to this determination.
It is rare to find archaeological sites in which pre-Hispanic remains are
not closely associated with subsequent constructions that can range from
superstructures built in antiquity to evidence of colonial and modern oc
cupations of the same site. INAH conservators will often take pains to
preserve colonial structures associated with pre-Hispanic sites. However,
many structures or artifacts that are contiguous to those which are defined
as heritage—including remains of modern occupations that might be de
cades or even a century old—fall outside of the temporal threshold of a
legally constituted artifactual surface for a particular structure or complex.
This temporal segregation is implied in the wording of the 1972 law
which defines "archaeological monuments" as:
Movable and immovable goods that are products of the cultures

that preceded the establishment of Hispanic [culture] in the national
1312
territory, as weil as remains of humans, flora, and fauna related to

those cultures.
Son monumentos arqueolôgicos los bienes muebles e inmuebles,

producto de culturas anteriores al establecimiento de la hispânica en
el territorio nacional, asf como los restos humanos, de la flora y de
la fauna, relacionados con esas culturas. (INAH 1972: Articulo 3.28)
Here, there is some ambiguity as to what exactly is meant by "cultures."

Given the deep history of swidden maize cultivation, it could be argued
that any alterations to the landscape that are produced by traditional sub
sistence agriculture reflect the continuity of a culture that preceded the
Spanish conquest. But, in practice, the act of attributing a structure to
pre-Hispanic "cultures" assumes that these cease to be "archaeologi
cal" cultures after the 16th century, when they fall into the category of the
"historical." Furthermore, the law specifically characterizes the "historical"
monuments that fall under its protection as those having been construct
ed during the 16th—19th centuries. This effectively excludes any traces of
Maya culture that were left on the landscape in the 20th or 21st centuries
from the realm of things that are protected by heritage law. In this sense,
the artifactual surface that is legally constructed around heritage objects
is not simply a spatial bubble that separates them from adjacent humans
and non-humans, it places those objects within a temporal spectrum that
segregates the "archaeological" from the "historical" and from the pres
ent day. Even if relatively recent architectural remains were produced by
practices with deeper historical roots—say, the remains of a wall or k'oot
built in a swidden farming settlement that was founded in the 1920s and
abandoned three decades later—their temporal provenance places them
outside of the privileged categories of objects that are endowed with arti
factual surface.
The two cases that follow highlight some of the conflicts that emerge
from spatial and temporal segregation. Both reflect an important semantic
distinction between the INAH's definition of "cultures" as historico-spatial
entities that can be bounded into distinct periods, and the tendency for
definitions of intangible heritage to emphasize the way in which cultures
are transmitted, transformed, and reproduced through time. As I will show,
this semantic difference has important real-world implications at the
points of contact between objects that have been designated as tangible
1313
heritage and the types of practices that embody the more dynamic and
diachronic culture of intangible heritage.
Yaxcabâ: When Intangible Heritage Goes Up in Smoke

In a 2014 short film El Reloj, filmmaker Yolanda Cruz presents a Zapotec
grandfather and granddaughter entering a colonial church in Oaxaca City.
The grandfather makes a prayer of blessing for the little girl, then proceeds
to leave his offering of flowers and a candle. At that point, a guard politely
but authoritatively intercedes to tell the pair that the lighting of candles is
prohibited, and directs them to a bank of artificial electric candles that can
be activated by inserting a coin. Nonplussed, the old man makes the sign
of the cross over himself and his granddaughter with a coin, and inserts
it into the machine, leaving an electric offering behind. The scene closes
with a pan at the beautifully painted ceilings of the church, preserved at
the expense of the old man's more traditional religiosity. Later in the film,
the pair have a nasty confrontation with a racist watch vendor who had
been desperately trying to push an overpriced watch on the grandfather.
The film closes with the old man observing that he and his granddaughter
should not have their lives defined by a thing that presumes to control
time.
Something that is implied in the Zapotec prayers that are used as a

voiceover in the film is that the grandfather's daily rhythms owe more to
the intimate experience of the sun's light and warmth than to the abstract
segregation of hours and minutes by the watch. I find it hard not to view the
parallel between the scene in the church and the encounter with the watch
seller. The guard's intervention against the burning of candles reflects a
desire to control the passage of time that is distinct from the rhythms of ru
ral life and religiosity. Something very similar happens in colonial churches
throughout Mexico, including Yucatan.
In strictly legal terms, the old man's offerings and the colonial paint
ings reflect a point of crisscrossing jurisdictions. All colonial churches in
Mexico are property of the nation and under the stewardship of the INAH,
even as the devotional activities that take place within them are orches
trated by local parishes and religious communities. Besides this division
of labor between the secular state's stewardship over material objects and
the ostensible private nature of vernacular religiosity, the legal and politi
cal status of colonial churches entails a segregation of selected objects
1314
from a larger assemblage of behaviors that constitutes an important part

of the intangible heritage of rural Mexico's Catholic majority. The 1972
Monuments Law states that the status of national heritage applies to:
Immobile structures built in the 16th to 19th century, meant to be part

of temples and their annexes, archbishoprics, bishoprics, and curial
homes; seminaries, convents, and whatever other structure dedi
cated to the administration, diffusion, or practice of a religion, [This
also applies to structures] for education and teaching, to provide as
sistance or beneficence, to public services and art, or the use of civil
and military authorities. [This also applies] to the mobile objects that
are found or were found in said immobile structures and related civil
works that were created between the 16th and 19th century.
Los inmuebles construidos en los siglos XVI al XIX, destinados a

templos y sus anexos; arzobispados, obispados y casas curales;
seminarios, conventos o cualesquiera otros dedicados a la adminis
traciön, divulgaciön, ensenanza o practica de un culto religioso; asi
como a la educaciön y a la ensenanza, a fines asistenciales o bené
ficos; al servicio y ornato publicos y al uso de las autoridades civiles
y militares. Los muebles que se encuentren o se hayan encontrado
en dichos inmuebles y las obras civiles relevantes de carâcter priva
do realizadas de los siglos XVI al XIX inclusive. (INAH 1972: Articulo
36.1, emphasis added)
I've highlighted the final sentence to draw attention to the objects that are
implicitly excluded from protection by heritage law. Any given church will
have some materials—wooden panels, altar decorations, or even priestly
vestments—that were created between the 16th and 19th century and
thus fall under the purview of this law. But the inside of churches also in
cludes furnishings like wooden seats, pews, electric fans, and other items
that were added as replacements for damaged originals or as upgrades
to the interior space in the 20th century. These items all fall outside of
the category of "national" heritage, are considered property of the local
parish, and are subject to restriction and removal if they affect the colo
nial or "historical" elements of the church in any way. Finally, and most
important for my analysis here, the material assemblage of the church
ncludes a large amount of ephemeral paraphernalia—flowers, candles,
1315
Mifactual Surface and the Limits of inclusion: Blurring the Boundary
3etween Materiality and Intangible Heritage
paper decorations, and food displays—that are bought at the expense of

the parish or individual worshippers like the Zapotec grandfather in Cruz's
short film. From the perspective of traditional religiosity, each of the three
categories of object that I described here has a clear role to play in the
successful performance of ritual. But, in terms of the letter and practice of
the heritage law, a clear artifactual surface separates the first category of
"colonial" or "historical" objects from the other two and from the humans
whose faith is expressed through the manipulation of all three. This seg
regation turns the first category of objects into the priority of preservation
efforts, and can reduce the second two categories of objects to peripheral
status within social processes that play a role as potential destroyers of
heritage.
An example that is closer to my own fieldwork is the 18th-century church
at Yaxcaba, which has an active parish of several thousand predominantly
Maya-speaking Mexican citizens. Architecturally, this building is unique
for the central tower on its front façade. Historically, it is significant for its
close association to two indigenous rebellions, the Quisteil Revolt of 1761
and the Caste War of 1847. Today, the municipality in which it is located is
relatively poor and underserved, but its proximity to pre-Hispanic sites to
the northeast and an emergent corridor of colonial church tourism to the
south offer a tantalizing avenue to attract foreign tourism.
About a decade ago, the INAH officially prohibited the burning of can
dles inside the church in order to prevent carbon staining on the inter
nal surfaces. This included a wooden altarpiece and panels, which had
been painstakingly restored by INAH conservators after being reduced to
a quite poor state by the 1980s. The prohibition on candle burning was ra
tionalized with the observation that this is one of relatively few Yucatecan
churches with preserved colonial woodwork, and has potential to draw a

limited stream of tourists to the needy community. Still, it is undeniable that
this choice has come at the expense of a local tradition, particularly con
sidering the importance of candle offerings and smoke in the vernacular
Catholicism practiced by many Yucatec Maya people (Armstrong-Fumero
and Hoil Gutierrez 2010).
More than a common-sense protective method, the ban on candle burn
ing is an ethical and political statement that transforms the panels' status
vis-à-vis the larger human and non-human assemblage within which they
existed for generations. The removal of carbon staining by conservators
assumes that the definitive "characteristics" of those wooden panels
1316
approximate the appearance of these objects when the carpenters, paint

ers, and gilders finished their work, but before the panels became part of
active church ritual. The banning of candle burning assumes that these
panels should retain those characteristics in the future to a degree that
they did not during the two-and-a-half centuries after their initial installa
tion. Thus, the restoration is not a cleaning or repair meant to prolong the
life of the panels within the same ritual practices in which they have been
embedded for centuries. The restoration of the panels provided the I NAH
with cause to enforce an artifactual surface that radically transformed the
panels' relationship to a larger assemblage of humans and non-human
objects with varying degrees of permanence that define the social and
cultural life of the church.
Earlier, I noted that the creation of artifactual surface tends to involve
both a spatial and temporal segregation of heritage objects from the larger
assemblages that bring them into contact with local stakeholders. In this
case, this segregation entails isolating the objects from a concatenation
of sight, sound, and smell that constitutes a complex web of meaning
and sentiment that is the very essence of intangible heritage. Smoke is
more than a mere by-product of cultural practices, it is part of a visual
and olfactory economy that formed part of the native environment of the
painted panel for generations of churchgoers in Yaxcabâ. As the art his
torian Samuel Edgerton (2001:82-87) has observed, the interplay of vivid
religious imagery with light, smoke, and smell in the churches of colonial
Yucatan and Mexico was conceived by Catholic priests as essential to
attaining a state of anagogia (heightened emotion) that made the faithful
susceptible to spiritual renewal. Candle burning is particularly important
to most or all Mayan ethnic groups as a kind of offering that is particularly
favorable to saints, and is also used extensively outside of churches to
establish reciprocal relationships between agriculturalists and the various
supernatural beings (Sosa 1985, see also Vogt 1993). Scenting the nave
and altar may also have played a more pragmatically human role in the
early years of the church's function. 18th-century sources make numer
ous references to the overpowering smell of decay that resulted from the
practice of burying the dead under the floor and in the walls of colonial
churches (Vogel 2002)—a practice that is clearly evidenced in Yaxcabâ. In
this sense, the carbon staining that INAH conservators interpret as dam
age can also be read as a residue of the larger cultural context in which the
panels "work" as devices for generating religious experience.
1317
Artifactuai Surface and the Limits of Inclusion: Blurring the Boundary
If treating carbon staining as preventable damage denies the history of

spatial contiguity between the colonial panels and smoky ritual activity,
other elements of the artifactual surface that is erected over these objects
segregate them from the temporal rhythms that govern the larger assem
blage of the church community. Historically, minor repairs to wear and
tear on the panels and other permanent furnishings of the church were
performed or coordinated by the local sacristans. Though these kinds of
alterations are expressly prohibited by Mexican heritage law, they original
ly formed part of a larger body of maintenance work that included the pro
curement and arrangement of fresh flowers and the periodic substitution
of cloth vestments that were appropriate to the season. This work reflect
ed both the linear passage of time that caused the decrepitude of ritual
paraphernalia, and the annual cycle of the liturgical calendar. Heritage law
posits the colonial panels as existing outside of both these temporalities:
their legal status takes their restoration outside of the bailiwick of church
personnel, and treats them as being qualitatively different from the fur
nishings that are subject to cyclical seasonal re-arrangement.
In pointing out these tensions, I don't mean to engage in a one-sided
critique of the INAH or defense of traditional ritualism. In fact, this is one of
those cases in which there would probably be a great deal of consensus
across social groups about the value of preserving the painted panels.
It's important to note that the INAH makes extensive efforts to educate
churchgoers and to make religious heritage objects accessible—as long
as this accessibility doesn't pose a threat to the material form of sculp
tures or paintings. There is a great deal of truth to the INAH's assertion that
the long-term preservation of these objects is a boon to tourism develop
ment that is in the best interest of local communities. While traditionalists
take issue with the curtailment of their religious liberties, I have spoken to
many Catholic Maya people that proudly point to colonial religious art as
an architectural heritage that is worthy of special preservation, and who
are more than willing to share their religious monuments with interested
tourists.
That said, the central theoretical issue that I wish to address here does
not necessarily concern whether heritage laws have an unequivocally
good or bad impact on the quality of life of a local community. Rather, it
is a question of whether tangible heritage laws can also contribute to the
reproduction of traditional culture if they are autonomous from the larger
assemblages of people and things among whom they function. It's difficult
1318
to see how painted panels that are separated from the liturgical cycles
and smoky anagogia for which they were designed are the same cultural
artifacts that have existed in the church for hundreds of years among ritu
als that are still part of the quotidian life of Yaxcabâ's Catholic residents.
In this case, the preservation of the tangible heritage object entails an in
evitable loss or forced alteration to the forms of intangible heritage within
which they are intimately enmeshed.
In the case of candle bans in colonial churches, this critique of artifactu
al surface can seem more like a fine theoretical distinction than a pressing
political question. The transformation of the relationship between different
elements of the church environment is done for the sake of objects that
have been restored by INAH specialists and that have real potential to at
tract tourists to local communities. From the perspective of many church
goers, it is relatively easy to reconcile the need to protect heritage objects
with the more general aura of veneration that pervades churches. Rituals
that take place during saints' fairs, carnival, and more spontaneous ritual
gatherings that occur outside of the parish church provide the faithful with
ample opportunities to make smoky offerings to saints and other super
naturals. In the next section, however, I will discuss a case in which there
is far less potential for a restoration that will bring tangible benefits to lo
cal stakeholders, and where it is far more difficult to reconcile artifactual
surface with certain kinds of intangible heritage.
Rock Piles or Ruins?

Churches like Yaxcabâ's contain many showy masterpieces of colonial art.
But not all objects that fall under the purview of the INAH's heritage law are
as easily targeted for restoration or for tourism development. Hundreds of
poorly documented "minor" archaeological sites and thousands of indi
vidual structures dot the Yucatecan landscape. Many of these are found
within ejidos (collectively farmed lands) or small private properties that are
used for the practice of subsistence maize cultivation. Given economic
constraints on the activity of the INAH and academic archaeologists, and
the sheer number of pre-Hispanic sites in the Yucatecan landscape, it is
virtually impossible that most of these will be granted the kind of techni
cal attention that was lavished on the church of Yaxcabâ. But in strictly
legal terms, these minor sites and structures possess the same artifactual
surface.
1319
As in the case of candle bans and traditional worship, the artifactual

surface on sites in agricultural land tends to segregate these objects from
spatial and temporal contiguity with practices that form an important ele
ment of the intangible heritage of local stakeholders. But, in this case,
there is a more immediately tangible political and economic concern.
Heritage law places an artifactual surface over structures and objects that
are unlikely to ever be turned into a source of revenue for local stakehold
ers, and unlikely to even attract substantial attention from researchers or
heritage professionals. The strict application of heritage law can represent
a real threat to the livelihood of many rural Yucatecans who derive a sub
stantial part of their food or income from subsistence agriculture on ejido
lands or private plots where archaeological sites are found. For many of
these agriculturalists, the benefits of protecting each and every remnant
of pre-Hispanic architecture is far outweighed by the limits that this would
place on the forms of agriculture that are central to the identity, diet, and
familial organization of their communities.
Here, it's useful to say a bit about the history of maize agriculture iri
colonial and 19th-century Yucatan, to highlight how certain "destructive"
alterations of pre-Hispanic structures by Maya agriculturalists are closely
tied to important cultural and historical legacies of these communities. For
centuries, Maya agriculturalists in the peninsula have practiced rainfall
dependent swidden agriculture of maize, beans, squash, and other cul
tigens that requires long fallowing periods after one or two successive
harvests on a single cleared patch. This pattern often led families and
communities to abandon sites and settle new territories as viable farm
lands became more and more distant from their residential clusters.
During the period between 1850 and 1950, this pattern saw a sort of
"golden age" in the Oriente sub-region of Yucatan, an area just northeast
of Yaxcabâ (Warman 1985), where I have conducted more than a decade
of ethnographic research. The disastrous Caste War of 1847 led to the
depopulation of the eastern region of the peninsula, disrupting commer
cial agriculture and displacing thousands of indigenous agriculturalists
(Rugeley 1996). Waves of settlers arrived from other parts of the state to
find large tracts of abandoned or unclaimed land that was open for their
exploitation. While rural people in the north and west of the peninsula were
pulled into the commercial henequen economy that developed in the last
third of the 19th century, their counterparts in Oriente enjoyed access to
large tracts of abandoned land. For these same reasons, the people of
1320
Oriente were well-positioned to benefit from the Revolutionary agrarian

reforms that were instituted after 1915 to distribute collectively titled lands
to peasant communities. Resistance from landowners delayed the distri
bution of lands in parts of Yucatan that had seen a stronger development
of commercial agriculture until at least the 1930s. But the families who had
re-settled the eastern part of the state in the second half of the 19th cen
tury faced little such resistance, and many communities had formal titles
as early as 1926 (Armstrong-Fumero 2013).
The relatively long history of independent maize agriculturalists set
tling new lands for subsistence cultivation has several important impacts
on the collective identity of people from Eastern Yucatan. Many of my
friends and informants like to contrast their own lifestyle and ethos to that
of rural people in parts of the state that had been dominated by com
mercial henequen agriculture. They proudly state that, while the former
henequen workers and their descendants tend to be "in their hammock"
from the moment their wage labor is done, the industrious and indepen
dent maize agriculturalists of the east can be found puttering away at a
dozen productive tasks around the house after they return from the fields.
A related dimension of this agrarian identity is an intimate knowledge of
a productive landscape that often transcends the immediate vicinity of
a given community. Many people that I have interviewed over the years
identify with the particular community in which they were born, but retain
clear recollections of sometimes-distant plots of land through which their
ancestors had passed in previous generations. This reflects the migrations
of the period from 1850 to the early 1920s, when a given family might raise
crops at a number of promising locations before settling in a place where
they could attain formal title.
This particular identity with the landscape is evident in a tradition of oral
narrative through which the names of different places, and different fea
tures of the landscape, are transmitted with remarkable consistency over
time. The landscape that surrounds communities where I have conducted
fieldwork is dotted with thousands of toponyms. Some of these are the
names of Catholic saints—like San Fabian or San Rigoberto—which tend
to make reference to a day in the liturgical calendar on which excavations
for an artificial well reached water. More common are names that refer
to specific natural wells or cenotes, local flora and fauna, or other ele
ments of topography. Thus for example, Xcalakoop, "Twin Dry Sinkholes,"
or Xcocail, "Firefly place," are typical place names. Some of these sites
1321
appear in written sources from the 17th and 18th century, but many more
have left little or no trace in the archival record. What is most remarkable
about this transmission of named places is that it spans a period of history

during which the vast majority of Yucatec Maya speakers were illiterate
and/or functionally monolingual in Maya. This is a testament to the de
gree to which this common font of geographic knowledge was transmitted
across generations (Armstrong-Fumero 2013).
Knowledge of named sites represents a map of essentially permanent
elements of the landscape. This synchronic geography intersects with a
more diachronic awareness of cyclical transformation of the social and
natural function of different sites. Yucatec Maya speakers distinguish
between "k'aax" (uncultivated bush), "/coo/" (agricultural field), and "/cay"
(habitational settlement). Given the long history of settlement and aban
donment, cultivation and fallowing, a given named place will be referred to
by two or more of these terms at different points in its history. For example,
a place known as Xtojil existed as a stretch of k'aax that was familiar to
members of various communities who transformed lands in its vicinity into
kooi at the beginning of the 20th century. They obtained land title in the
1920s, which led to Xtojil's political incorporation and transformation into
an inhabited kaj. Today, after selling most of their agricultural lands to real
estate developers, the majority of the population of Xtojil has abandoned
the village, which is rapidly reverting to k'aax.
The interplay between the synchronic map of named places and the cy
cles of settlement, cultivation, and fallowing provides a useful model of the
vernacular historical consciousness of agriculturalists in Eastern Yucatan.
It also underscores why the cultural heritage that has evolved through the
practice of agriculture is particularly difficult to reconcile with the artifac
tual surface that heritage law places over archaeological and historical
sites. The status of found objects in Yucatec Maya society reflects a col
lective experience in which humans' relationship to place was marked by
repeated cycles of cultivation, abandonment, and resettlement. Even the
most frugal peasant families tended to leave objects behind when aban
doning an agricultural field or house site. As the kaj or kool fallows, these
objects cease to be associated with a specific human owner. They might
be re-discovered, decades later, by new settlers for whom they represent
one more handy local resource, like water sources and wild plants.
Pre-Hispanic artifacts might be older and seem somewhat uncanny to
modern Maya agriculturalists when compared to the more familiar debris
1322
of 19th and 20th century settlements. But they are not exempt from this
moral economy of "finders reusers." For the generations that resettled
Oriente after the 1850s, and that continued to periodically carve out new
agricultural fields in their ejidos after the 1920s, the building material, grind
stones and the occasional intact ceramic vessels that could be mined
from pre-Hispanic ruins were just particularly old objects within these col
lections of found and useful things (Armstrong-Fumero 2012). It is telling
that the most common Maya-language word for pre-Hispanic structures,
mul, comes from a root that roughly translates as "pile" (as in the bound
ary-marking cairns known as multun). More abstractly, the root mul can
simply refer to a group of persons or objects gathered together for a given
purpose (as when collective labor is referred to as mulmeyah). Where heri
tage law constitutes pre-Hispanic structures as integral objects existing
underneath an ideally impermeable artifactual surface, traditional Maya
terminology explicitly treats them as the sum of parts that can be excised
and used.
Due in large part to active intervention by the INAH, and to the fact that
industrial building materials are now more available in rural communities,
the premeditated re-use of pre-Hispanic stones is less common now than
it would have been even 20 years ago. But there are still a number of com
mon situations, from planting fields in close proximity to pyramid mounds
to making improvised uses of stones or artifacts that weather out of build
ings, which can place peasants on the wrong side of the Monuments Law.
Even when Maya agriculturalists are not being accused of direct violations
of heritage statutes, tensions between the formal legal status of monu
ments and the values of local communities emerge when it comes to ad
ministering archaeological remains. Recognizing that ruins and artifacts
found within the ejido possess a historical value that transcends their po
tential use as building material is one thing, but acknowledging that this
value places them under the purview of a federal institution that trumps
the authority of local government is quite another. Particularly in impov
erished communities that recognize the tourist potential of archaeological
sites and artifacts, eminent domain that can permit INAH representatives
to remove objects from the ejido violates both the sovereignty of local gov
ernment and a law of "finders keepers" that is a deeply cherished value in
this settler society. Today, in a time when tourism development is the cor
nerstone of the regional economy, many ask why the "working" of these
structures has to be conducted by a specialized federal institution. Why
1323
must these ruins be exempted from the same laws of abandonment, fal
lowing, and refurbishment that govern all other elements of the wild and
cultivated environment that they have settled and farmed for generations?
Heritage Beyond Artifactual Surface

It is hard to deny that certain key elements of the intangible heritage of
rural Maya speaking communities would be considered destructive under
current statutes for the defense of tangible heritage. Whether in the case
of burning candles or recycling archaeological remains, the enforcement
of the Monuments Law entails the loss of some elements of intangible
heritage. To me, there is something tragic in the inevitability of this loss. As
I've argued throughout this article, the root of this sad situation is not the
unbridgeable cultural tension between Western conservation and Maya
cultural perspectives on the past, but a denial of the dynamic social and
material relationship between objects and human beings. The denial of
this relationship is legally instituted through the constitution of artifactual
surface as a sine qua non of heritage practice.
Clearly, abandoning the legal protection that institutions like the INAH
place on heritage objects would be both politically untenable and socially
irresponsible. But if tangible and intangible heritage are to co-exist as ob
jects of legal protection, it is important to re-examine concepts that we of
ten taken for granted in spite of the fact that they reproduce irreconcilable
semantic and political contradictions. At their worst, these contradictions
undermine the democratizing impulses of political projects like the promo
tion of local forms of intangible heritage or the inclusion of stakeholders in
the stewardship of tangible heritage. Some of the key insights to emerge
from the later work of Bruno Latour (see Latour 2004) stem exactly from
attempts to democratize the procedures through which different commu
nities of humans define the ways in which they are to relate to non-humans
(like tangible heritage objects).
Mirroring some of Latour's own thought experiments (see especially
2004:32-^9), I'll sketch a simple contrast. Faced with the preservation of
heritage in Mexico, one could choose to assume that the pragmatic ne
cessity of protecting certain objects justifies the production of artifactual
surface, notwithstanding the violence that this might inflict on the intan
gible heritage of local communities. In this case, certain hierarchies are
permissible in the creation of knowledge, and should not be understood
1324
as explicitly exclusionary. On the other hand, one could choose to believe

that the authority that is granted to scientific elites can only be mitigated
by creating a space where radically different subaltern perspectives can
be expressed. But, in this case, how can two distinct perspectives exist
if one mandates the unconditional preservation of objects and the other
permits their gradual destruction? Given this conundrum, radical relativ
ism often leads to the assumption that diverse (non-Western) stakeholder
perspectives exist in a realm of concepts and values that is autonomous
from the production of (Western) scientific knowledge. This is, in the end,
another means of excluding non-Western perspectives from the terrain of
science.
In The Politics of Nature (2004), Latour offers a series of alternatives to

both of these extreme options in a series of thought experiments about
the formation of new "collectives." These collectives democratize the
work of science without relying on the separation of facts from value that
characterizes extreme relativism. Central to this is the incorporation of
diverse stakeholders at the early stages of forming scientific agendas, thus
avoiding analytical gestures that bring premature closure to the process of
creating scientific facts and objects of inquiry. Science becomes engaged
in broader social concerns from the earliest stages of inquiry. This in turn
avoids the tendency to limit the participation of a broader community of
stakeholders to a post-facto realm of value in which they are limited to
commenting on already-established facts.
From this perspective, the key to democratizing heritage practice lies
in preventing the premature closure that artifactual surface imposes on
the ontology of heritage objects. At present, artifactual surface is granted
a priori to all objects meeting certain criteria of antiquity. But what would
heritage look like if there was a more involved process of social consulta
tion and more consensus across different groups regarding which objects
could be legitimately segregated from human interaction?
One important counter-argument to this alternative sort of heritage col
lective would be that not having an a priori declaration of universal arti
factual surface leads down a slippery slope that undermines the state's
eminent domain over heritage and paves the way for the privatization of ar
chaeological sites. The decline of eminent domain is certainly a legitimate
concern in a context like contemporary Mexico, where neoliberal reforms
have led to the outsourcing of many formerly state-controlled sectors and
the undermining of social safety nets. A broader social consultation is
1325
likely to generate a large degree of consensus regarding these concerns,

especially as it relates to showy archaeological sites or artistic gems like
the altarpiece of Yaxcabâ. But the fact that thousands of mulo'ob in the
Yucatecan bush are unlikely to ever be excavated, restored, or visited by
non-local people raises different questions about the real purpose of cre
ating an a priori artifactual surface over all sites.
Since it is not my intention to single out the INAH—whose research
ers and administrators often make heroic efforts to balance the work of
stewardship with their relationship to stakeholders—I will address these

final thoughts to a generalized state-sponsored heritage institution. One
possible alternative to the a priori creation of universal artifactual surface
would be to imagine a subset of tangible heritage objects that is more
permeable to human actions that have an ethically and intellectually valid
claim to contiguity. So, for example, rather than documenting and protect
ing a pyramid whose only legitimate form can be that which best approxi
mates the 10th century original, heritage professionals can steward a mul
that has had a more dynamic history of interaction with subsequent waves
of population and local patterns of agriculture. This sort of heritage object
would intentionally blur the boundaries between tangible and intangible
heritage, and open the way for new and innovative legal frameworks and
institutional practices.
This hybrid of tangible and intangible heritage would inevitably create
circumstances in which the preservation of certain elements of a structure
or artifact can be determined to have greater strategic value than having
local communities alter its physical form. Insofar as many local communi
ties that neighbor archaeological sites in Yucatan are deeply dependent
on archaeological tourism, it's easy to imagine many situations in which
such stakeholders would be willing to sacrifice their use of certain spac
es for the sake of tourism development that could offer other benefits to
themselves and their families. The difference in this case would be that
restrictions on the manipulation of objects would emerge from a delibera
tive space that acknowledged the role of intangible heritage and human
activities in the life of tangible heritage objects.
While this sort of re-conceptualization of heritage presents challenges,
there are clear benefits both in terms of generating consistency in laws
and promoting broader kinds of social democracy. At present, tangible
and intangible heritage are simultaneously recognized as entities and phe
nomena that should be protected and respected by the state. Yet, given
1326
the different trajectories taken by the legal history of these concepts, the
defense of the intangible is often sacrificed for the sake of the tangible.
Preventing the segregation of objects from humans that is imposed by
artifactual surface provides a conceptual and legal bridge between these
different dimensions of cultural heritage. ■
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Yashar, Deborah. 2005. Contesting Citizenship in Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Foreign Language Translations:

Artifactual Surface and the Limits of Inclusion: Blurring the Boundary Between Materiality and Intangible
Heritage
[Keywords: Yucatan, Maya, heritage, materiality, multiculturalism]
La superficie artefacual y los limites de la inclusion: permeabilizando las fronteras entre la materialidad y
el patrimonio inmaterial.
[Palabras Claves: patrimonio material e inmaterial, ontologia, cosmologia maya yucateca]
eï», mr,
ApTe<t>aKTya/ibHan noBepxHocîb n orpaHnneHna hhkjik)3hm: Pa3Mt>iBaHMe rpannubi Mexvty
MaîepuannTeTOM n HeMaiepwa/ibHbiM Hacneflnew
[KnioieBbie cnoea: lOxaTaH, Mann, nacneflue, MaiepnannTeT, My/ibTOKynbTypann3M]
Superficie Artefactual e os Limites da Inclusào: Desfocando a Fronteira entre Materialidade e Patrimonio

Intangivel
[Palavras-chave: lucatâo, Maia, patrimonio, materialidade, multiculturalismo]
.^giUI ji- üyüla djbUl pu aa-ibJI :^oaJI 3 ^lihxùll Il

olslâdl ù.i.v.1 .âjbUl (iblyUl <bUI , jbSyJ! ô'kbf
1328

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Artifactual Surface and the Limits of Inclusion: Blurring the Boundary Between

Materiality and Intangible Heritage

The George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research is collaborating

Artifactual Surface and the

This article explores a central tension in the relationship between

any critical approaches to heritage promote what some authors have

of internal laws for the protection of archaeological monuments that had

common-sense reference to "caracteristicas" or "characteristics" of heri

The accumulation of carbon staining and other residues on art objects—

between Western legal traditions and the radical "otherness" of Mayan

lo summarize, I argue that addressing the inequalities that are embod

rhe Legal Basis of Artifactual Surface

in 1939 created a centralized federal institution with the financial, admin

The legal—versus strictly epistemological—origin of this segregation is

Archaeological, artistic, and historical monuments and zones of mon

Son monumentos arqueolôgicos, artfsticos, histôricos y zonas de

The formal declaration of archaeological, artistic and historical zones

Las declaratorias de zonas arqueolôgicas, artfsticas e histôricas de

The Reglamento advances a more political and debatable ontological

dimension of an artifact becomes a characteristic through the process

Movable and immovable goods that are products of the cultures

territory, as weil as remains of humans, flora, and fauna related to

Son monumentos arqueolôgicos los bienes muebles e inmuebles,

Here, there is some ambiguity as to what exactly is meant by "cultures."

Yaxcabâ: When Intangible Heritage Goes Up in Smoke

Something that is implied in the Zapotec prayers that are used as a

from a larger assemblage of behaviors that constitutes an important part

Immobile structures built in the 16th to 19th century, meant to be part

Los inmuebles construidos en los siglos XVI al XIX, destinados a

paper decorations, and food displays—that are bought at the expense of

churches with preserved colonial woodwork, and has potential to draw a

approximate the appearance of these objects when the carpenters, paint

If treating carbon staining as preventable damage denies the history of

Rock Piles or Ruins?

As in the case of candle bans and traditional worship, the artifactual

Oriente were well-positioned to benefit from the Revolutionary agrarian

about this transmission of named places is that it spans a period of history

Heritage Beyond Artifactual Surface

as explicitly exclusionary. On the other hand, one could choose to believe

In The Politics of Nature (2004), Latour offers a series of alternatives to

likely to generate a large degree of consensus regarding these concerns,

stewardship with their relationship to stakeholders—I will address these

. 2012. "Tensiones entre el Patrimonio Tangible e Intangible en Yucatan, México: La

. 1975. Reglamento de la Ley General Sobre Monumentos y Zonas Arqueologicos, Artisticos e

Latour, Bruno. 1999. Pandora's Hope. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

. 2004. Politics of Nature. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Watkins, Joe. 2001. Indigenous Archaeologies. Walnut Creek: Altamira.

Foreign Language Translations:

Superficie Artefactual e os Limites da Inclusào: Desfocando a Fronteira entre Materialidade e Patrimonio

.^giUI ji- üyüla djbUl pu aa-ibJI :^oaJI 3 ^lihxùll Il

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