ABSTRACT
Middle and South American postcolonial histories are some of the longest from a world history perspective, where locally embedded ways of life are in a strained relationship between national concerns and global entanglements. In this context, archaeological work now regularly features various forms of decolonising, collaborative research practices. Rooted cosmopolitanism is understood here as a normative idea that can contribute to critical engagement with local heritage. I discuss the parallels between rooted cosmopolitanism and collaborative archaeology, presenting it as a form of critical engagement that is in line with experiencing rooted cosmopolitanism in practice. I then briefly explore and describe two contexts, one from the apparent innocence of the academic halls of the West and one from the apparent locality of the Central American nation-state of Nicaragua. Both cases show that seeing globalisation as merely the path to cultural mixture and ensuing hybridity underestimates the intentions of those looking to strategically mobilise identity in uneven power relations, and that any discussion of the opposition between Global and Local is situationally and temporally bounded. What is required is an ‘effective archaeology’ built around transformative dialogue and cocreation, contra to state practices that gravitate toward equating heritage with regulation.
