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SALON ANCESTROS Y MAESTROS 


SALON ANCESTROS Y MAESTROS

PARTICIPATORY  ARCHEOLOGICAL MUSEOGRAPHY AND PEDAGOGY 

CAJAMARCA TOLIMA

Salón Ancestros y Maestros is a collaborative museography project and interdisciplinary artistic initiative based at Institución Educativa La Leona, a rural public school in Cajamarca, Tolima. It promotes participatory, site-specific research of the local archaeological archive and redefines rural school design in Colombia through three core principles: connection to context, interaction with both human and non-human beings, and the revaluation of local cultures.

The project emerged from an urgent need to relocate 320 students from a deteriorating building at risk of landslide. During the construction of the new infrastructure, a significant yet underacknowledged archaeological site was uncovered, revealing 14 pre-Hispanic Pijao graves—two of which represent typologies identified for the first time in Colombia—alongside ceramics, textiles, tools, fauna, and human remains dating from 2,400 to 500 years ago. Despite their cultural value, the graves were reburied on-site for conservation, due to the absence of a formal heritage management plan and the lack of local museum infrastructure.

Salón Ancestros y Maestros repositions the archaeological archive as a living pedagogical tool through participatory research, artistic practice, and curricular transformation. Through situated research and critical reflection, students engage directly with their own heritage, proposing a non-linear understanding of time where past and future interweave. Immersive exhibition strategies—including student-made dioramas, augmented reality, 3D-printed replicas, and audiovisual testimonies—connect the archaeological past to contemporary life.

The project’s general objective is to create an immersive, place-based museographic experience that consolidates and reterritorializes the La Leona archaeological archive, transforming it into an ongoing educational and cultural platform managed by the school and supported by national institutions. It also seeks to document and legitimize spontaneous archaeological discoveries made by local farmers, many of which remain undocumented and unexhibited due to the lack of a local cultural venue. By bridging participatory archaeology, rural education, and critical museography, Salón Ancestros y Maestros offers a pioneering model for rethinking heritage access and positioning schools as active sites of cultural inquiry and collective self-representation.

















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