Cultural continuum, a methodology for an integrated history

Abstract

The cultural continuum methodology was created in 2011 during archaeological and cultural management intervention in the Mateo Salado archaeological complex (Cercado de Lima). This methodology proposes that all activities evinced into a monument along the time have same value as life styles, connecting in this way pre-Columbian archaeology, historic archaeology, archaeology of the contemporaneity, and public archaeology. It challenges temporal criteria must be determinant because it privileges an epoch at the expense of other ones and trends to select events for a grandiloquent diffusion. Likewise, the cultural continuum allows addressing contemporary and controversial issues in a monument usually seen as only pre-Hispanic. For showing these features, this paper presents cultural continuum applications in investigation, conservation and restoration, and cultural management towards community in Mateo Salado.