Centuries before the creation of archaeology as a scientific discipline in the modern West, indigenous people in Mesoamerica developed their own interpretations for the physical remains of their past. This study draws on archaeological, ethnographic, and historical sources to explore a tradition of indigenous Mesoamerican archaeology. By resorting to the culturearea concept of Mesoamerica, an interpretive structure of the long term is outlined. This framework is used to explore the social life of objects and places from the past in three paired locations: the Classic site of Teotihuacan and the 16thcentury Mexica Aztec capital of Tenochtitln; the Classic site of Yucuudahui and the 16thcentury Mixtec community of Chachoapan; and the Postclassic site of Chichen Itza and the 20thcentury Yucatec Maya community of Chan Kom. Shifting between wide and narrow perspectives in time and space, this study considers archaeology as a social practice, inventions and revisions of tradition, and the productivity of regional generalizations and structures of the long term.