Heritage and Environment: Archaeology at a United Fruit Company Site, 1909–1939

The process of creating archaeological heritage sites is necessarily rooted in the environments that surround them. This was particularly true for the Maya archaeological site of Quiriguá, located within a United Fruit Company banana plantation. Foreign archaeologists working at Quiriguá actively managed the surrounding landscape, shaping it for excavation work or, increasingly, to conform to a tourist aesthetic. Guatemalan scholars, tourists, and politicians by contrast displayed distinct interpretations of the tropical environment. Archaeological debates directed attention to environmental changes in the region and led Guatemalan elites to question the expansion of banana plantations at the expense of tropical forests, drawing together nascent efforts to conserve both ruins and specific aspects of the natural world. In this, they challenged a previously dominant notion of Guatemala’s tropical lowlands as empty “wastelands” but also solidified narratives about archaeology as national heritage that excluded the contemporary Indigenous population.