Archaeology and Straddling Heritage on the United States-México Border By Randall McGuire

https://www.academia.edu/167097847/Archaeology_and_Straddling_Heritage_on_the_United_States_M%C3%A9xico_Border In 2006, President George Bush signed the Secure Fence Bill that resulted in the construction of 654 miles of barriers along the United States-México border, from California to Texas. In the US state of Arizona, the new wall cut through the 1,000-year-old, Indigenous, Upper San Pedro Village archaeological site that extends north and south from the international border (Hopkins 2008). US archaeologists excavated a sixty-foot-wide swath of land north of the line to mitigate any damage to the site due to barrier construction. During the excavations, my Mexican colleague Elisa Villalpando and I visited the project. She brought with her a team of Mexican archaeologists who surveyed in México to define the southern borders of the site. In the excavation area, we observed a pithouse half exposed on the US side and the other half disappearing unexcavated into México. The Upper San Pedro Village site straddles the international border, with one side being the national heritage of the United States and the other side being the national heritage of México. As the Upper San Pedro Village shows us, when heritage and heritage places straddle the border, they create liminal, paradoxical and contested spaces that produce conflicting heritages. Where the boundaries of Arizona and of the Mexican state of Sonora meet, heritage physically straddles the international border line. Here two settler states touch and contradictions and paradoxes permeate the national heritages of each while Indigenous groups (that they both oppress) develop ...