Introduction · Knowledge and territory
Understanding the societies that inhabited the valley means learning to bring evidence together, listen to different voices and recognise how we develop our interpretations.
Start reading ↓01 · A place from which to learn
Much of what we now know about the Indigenous societies of the Aburrá Valley has emerged from classrooms, laboratories, archives and fieldwork. The Department of Anthropology at Universidad de Antioquia is one of the main centres for this teaching and research.
The programme was approved on 3 December 1965 and teaching began in 1966, with Graciliano Arcila Vélez as the Department’s first head. Its creation built on earlier initiatives in anthropological research, collections and public engagement. The institutional history of its first fifty years documents a community of students, teachers and graduates whose work has advanced our understanding of pre-Hispanic societies, Indigenous histories, and regional and national cultures.12
Teaching and research bring together questions about settlement, technologies, food, territories and social relations. Francisco Javier Aceituno’s work on early settlement and plants, Sofía Botero’s research in archaeology and ethnohistory, and Ramiro Delgado’s studies of food and cultures illustrate the breadth of this field. They are examples of an academic community with diverse backgrounds, enriched by exchanges with other institutions.13
Anthropology programmes in Urabá and Bajo Cauca also show how the discipline develops through engagement with regions and the issues they face. Students and graduates connect their learning with communities, institutions, and projects in research, heritage and social practice. This relationship between university and territory is part of anthropology’s contribution to contemporary culture.14
This project belongs to that history: Aburrá desconocido grew out of Julián de Jesús Pérez Ríos’s degree project at Universidad de Antioquia and received support from the Área Metropolitana del Valle de Aburrá. Acknowledging these origins makes visible the people and institutions that support the public communication of knowledge.10, 11
02 · Questions, methods and meanings
Studies human experience in its biological, social, historical and cultural diversity. It asks how people learn, form relationships, inhabit places, speak and make sense of their lives. Its comparative perspective encompasses Indigenous communities as well as urban societies, institutions and digital worlds.15
Investigates societies through their material traces: objects, structures, plant and animal remains, soils and landscapes. Its scope includes the distant past and periods with written records, including the recent past. An object matters alongside its context and the processes that account for its presence.16
Universities organise these fields in different ways. At Universidad Complutense de Madrid, for example, archaeology shares a department with Prehistory and Ancient History within the Faculty of Geography and History. This historical association neither removes archaeology’s distinctive methods nor describes every European university.17 In the United States, the four-field model brings together sociocultural anthropology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology and archaeology.15
Universidad de Antioquia maintains an anthropology programme that integrates archaeology, social anthropology and biological anthropology, consistent with this broad understanding of the discipline. Its Colombian history also reflects the influence of Paul Rivet and the Instituto Etnológico Nacional; it cannot be explained as a copy of a single foreign model. Fieldwork, comparison and dialogue between specialisms underpin this education.13, 14
Ethnography explores practices and meanings through shared daily life, observation, conversation and participation in particular settings. Understanding how a meal is prepared, a home is organised or a territory is remembered helps us identify questions that objects alone cannot answer.18 In archaeology, these observations help us formulate comparative hypotheses. A resemblance does not, however, demonstrate historical continuity: it must be assessed against chronology, context, use-wear and other evidence. Present-day communities have histories of their own; they are not unchanging remnants of a distant past. Boas’s critique of comparisons made without sufficient contextual analysis provides an important foundation for this caution.19
‘the collective construction of meaning in life’
«construcción colectiva del sentido de la vida»Martín-Barbero places this collective process within a contested relationship between society, the state and the market. His formulation invites us to understand culture as a shared process of making meaning, one that also involves disagreement and inequality: belonging to a society does not mean interpreting everything in the same way.22
Globalisation brings local memories into contact with transnational flows of information. The internet, social media and almost instantaneous communication sustain cultural communities across regions and borders: people share languages, music, stories and causes without being in the same place. These relationships can reshape territorial attachments while offering new ways to express them.22, 23
From this perspective, a digital community archive or a migrant network can bring local memory to distant audiences. Global circulation does not automatically produce a uniform culture: it intersects with local adaptations, unequal access and disputes over who can tell a community’s stories and represent it. The Aburrá Valley is part of these connections, while its inhabitants continue to develop their senses of place.23
Vancouver numbering follows the project’s reference system. Publication titles remain in their original languages. Notes identifying indirect consultation are retained with the source records.