Revista Contacto

16-37

Authors: Abner Alberda; Rita Liss Ramos Pérez; Helena Barba Meinecke; Luis Eduardo Mora Riquelme

The creation of an Area of Nautical and Underwater Archaeology at the Centro de Investigaciones Antropológicas de la Universidad de Panamá (CIAUP), represents a breakthrough in the Latin American region. There was no academic entity in the national territory or in Central America specialised in the research of underwater cultural heritage. The article presents the most important advances in training, research and dissemination of Panamanian underwater cultural heritage.

78-108

Authors: Linneth Suira Araúz

The geographical position of Panama marked its participation in the machinery of an empire that in three centuries experienced its maximum splendor and its decline. From the hand of the conquerors, the engineering and construction techniques reflected in the real works came to our territories, although in most cases we cannot appreciate them due to the passage of time or the lack of care and protection. Following the documentation of archives, bibliography and articles, this article has been developed in which it is sought to summarize through the most outstanding facts that show that the Portobelo - San Lorenzo - Panama triangle was a protected artery that always deserved attention and work of the most qualified military engineers and manpower. This route was coveted by the enemy powers, who also made efforts to control and fragment the established structure and order.

137-153

Authors: Ximo Soler Navarro; Ixone Herrero Otsoa; Carlos Micó Tonda

This work focuses on the Valencian Community, a Spanish region with a long coastline and a wealth of underwater archaeological heritage from different periods. Through the experience of the private cultural association Àncora-Cultura del Mar we will analyze the looting, the lack of funding and the growing disconnection between the academic world and the rest of society that make both research and dissemination of this heritage difficult. Also, in this article, we explore the state of maritime archaeological heritage management, taking the Valencian coastline as a field of study. We will analyze its current state, its weakness and its potential, with especial emphasis on the high degree of cultural pillage suffered in this region during the latest decades, but also on paradigmatic cases of success and projects still under development. The final objective is both to make self-criticism from the archaeology on the deficiencies of the working methods in management, as well as to reveal new ways of development that we have within our reach to improve the conditions of the sector, both at the labor and scientific level. The future of the archaeology, the preservation of cultural heritage and the creation of projects that generate a real return to society depend on how we rethink the internal structures of the academic world and this relationship with the rest of the social actors, both public and private.

199-238

Authors: Carlos Del Cairo Hurtado; Carla Riera Andreu; Laura Victoria Báez Santos; Juan David Sarmiento Rodríguez; Jesús Alberto Aldana Mendoza

During recent years in Colombia, different studies have been formulated from maritime and underwater archaeology linked to various contexts that have contributed to enriching the understanding of the historical relationship between human societies and the bodies of water that surround them. One of the main purposes defined by these studies, developed mainly from the analytical tools provided by the concept of the Maritime Cultural Landscape, have had the goal of understanding the defense of Nautical Spaces in the Colombian Caribbean. With this in mind, it has been possible to demonstrate the way in which different sociocultural dynamics were historically presented in these landscapes related to mobility, control and territorial defense of the region. In this order of ideas, this article aims to comprehensively discuss an interpretation and propose, at the same time, a comparative analysis of the maritime control and defense of the Nautical Space in some sectors of the Caribbean Sea at the north of Colombia. All this, based on some of the archaeological and historical approaches developed to date in Cartagena de Indias, La Guajira peninsula and Providencia and Santa Catalina islands, associated with the socio-historical dynamics that occurred and are framed in the sociocultural conjunctures given, mainly, between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries during the Colonial Period

258-292

Authors: Helena Barba-Meinecke; Abiud Pizá Chávez; Gabriel Quetz León

The Yucatan Peninsula, in the Mexican southeast, has more than 1,300 kilometers of marine coastline, in addition to rivers, coastal lagoons, springs, estuaries, swamps, and land reclaimed from the sea, as well as a vast network of underground caves, cenotes, and waterways, among other bodies of water (inland/continental). A large part of the Underwater Cultural Heritage that the Mexican Republic has today has been identified in these aquatic spaces. This article aims to offer an overview of the various explorations and research projects over forty years that account for this vast heritage. However, the significant advances made by the Vice Directorate of Underwater Archeology (SAS) of the National Institute of Anthropology and History, a Mexican entity mandated by law to protect, conserve, research, and disseminate the cultural heritage of Mexico, stand out.