Afro-Argentine Archaeology: A Case of ShortSighted Academic Racism During the Early Twentieth Century

Abstract

During the early 1930s an African cemetery was discovered fortuitously at Arroyo de Leyes, a During the early 1930s an African cemetery was discovered fortuitously at Arroyo de Leyes, a free settlement of the former enslaved near the town of Santa Fe la Vieja in Argentina. Hundreds of bodies were buried there, with pottery dating from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth centuries. But since the discoveries could not be related to the native archaeological culture of the area, most of them were destroyed or neglected by museums and archaeologists, and for the next fifty years, the name of the place and its objects remained a forbidden topic in academic circles, until the find’s importance was recently reconsidered. However, by this time, the site and the objects had almost vanished, which included the people who lived at or near the site.