Resumen

CAPRILES FL, José M.. ETHNICITY IN BOLIVIAN ARCHAEOLOGY? A CRITICAL REVIEW. Textos Antropológicos [online]. 2005, vol.15, n.2, pp. 165-179. ISSN 1025-3181.

Investigations ofethnicity in archaeology are few, much more so in our own country. However, although this type of study might seem irrelevant, in Bolivia today ethnicity in archaeology is an important area of study. The antecedents of this work are found in different ethnohistoric and ethnographic investigations as well as from influences and critiques made by and towards the national Bolivia archaeology, Latin American social archaeology, and North American and British postprocessual archaeology. In this article, an analytical and critical review of such investigations of the archaeology of ethnicity in Bolivia is presented. As a result, two forms of conducting such studies are identified: (1) studies that have as a goal to fortify the ethnic identity ofmodern social groups, whose past is being investigated and (2) studies that through the study ofthe archeological record conceive ofthe intersocietal relations in the past as significant and fundamental in social change and continuity. It is proposed that the treatment of ethnicity in archaeology is an important and growing field of study and its theoretical and methodological advances are in the process of construction. However, one can observe a great potential in the growing number of studies about this topic and its encouraging results.