Dilemmas of making and unmaking environmental and cultural heritage in Southern Belize.

Heritage is defined and maintained through complex and changing processes. In what ways might heritage scholars and practitioners understand dynamic complexities theoretically, methodologically and ethically? Through reflections on involvement in environmental and cultural heritage initiatives with Maya communities in southern Belize, this paper argues for an explicit forefronting of community aims and goals in heritage-focused project design and implementation. It demonstrates how cultural anthropologists involved in collaborative projects with archaeologists, non-governmental and/or community organisations may use ethnographic approaches to push collectively towards decolonial, community archaeologies. The challenges of ethnographers and archaeologists working together to document heritage past and present are critically and reflexively analysed, using frameworks rooted in environmental anthropology to capture the fluid and negotiated nature of heritage constructions by exploring what it means to live a 'good life' in Maya communities in Belize. The insights generated for developing a decolonising approach for future work of this type are also considered. By challenging what constitutes project 'success', and discussing the questions simultaneously posed and revealed by the long-term community projects detailed here, the paper argues for a more collaborative, nuanced and fluid conceptualisation of what constitutes heritage, and who is served by its documentation and dissemination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]