Histories of a Burnt House: An Archaeology of Negative Spaces and Dispossession

The last few decades have witnessed the emergence of an unprecedented interest in the archaeology of the contemporary past. Here, building on that scholarship, I present a diachronic analysis of a fire that partially destroyed a late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century house in the city of Arica, Chile. Combining historical, archaeological, and ethnographic methods, I produce the frame for a biographic storytelling that lets the house tell about its life and take center stage in the fabrication of notions like morality and belonging, attesting to the production of social space. I contend that the house and its materiality have historically played a decisive role in the production of the mechanisms of dispossession and the displacement of its inhabitants through a negative portrayal. I conclude with some thoughts about how archaeology's privileged viewpoint of contextual historical scrutiny provides nuanced insights about the repercussions of current phenomena of gentrification and heritage making.