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Colonial Transformation: Euro-American Cultural Genesis in the Early Spanish-American Colonies
Abstract
Archaeological and historical data from two of the earliest sites of Spanish settlement in the Americas (La Isabela, Dominican Republic, 1493-1498; and Puerto Real, Haiti, 1503-1578) indicate that the transformation of Iberian social practice and identity to Iberian-American society and identity was well under way in the households of nonelite Spanish colonists by the early sixteenth century. It is argued that this transformation was conditioned as much by new forms of domestic accommodation - most notably Spanish-Indian-African intermarriage and labor - as it was by European economic, technical, or political developments. Social adjustment to the Americas is strikingly revealed in the archaeological records of households in Spanish colonial towns, particularly when that record is organized and considered from a gendered perspective. Historical archaeology, with its unique multidisciplinary evidential base, has been the best source of information about the daily choices and adjustments made by the European, American Indian, and African residents of sixteenth-century colonial America. The implications of this for cross-cultural comparative study of colonial adaptation and the development of American colonial identity are explored.
... This work concentrates on the encounter period roughly spanning from AD 1494 when Christopher Columbus spotted Mona Island during his second voyage to the Americas and the abandonment of Sardinera in AD 1590 after the encomienda was halted. Many studies have approached the materiality of the colonial encounter (Agorash, 1993;Deagan, 1988Deagan, , 1996Rodríguez-Alegría, 2005;Voss 2005Voss , 2008Voss , 2012Silliman, 2010;Hauser and Armstrong, 2012;Valcárcel Rojas, 2016;Hofman and Keehnen, 2019). This study hopes to contribute to this line of inquiry by evaluating the potential of a materials science approach. ...
... después de que la encomienda fuera detenida. Muchos estudios han abordado la materialidad del encuentro colonial (Agorash, 1993;Deagan, 1988Deagan, , 1996Rodríguez-Alegría, 2005;Voss, 2005Voss, , 2008Voss, , 2012Silliman, 2010;Hauser y Armstrong, 2012;Valcárcel Rojas, 2016; Hofman y Keehnen, 2019). Esta investigación espera contribuir a esta línea investigativa a partir de la evaluación de su potencial desde un enfoque de ciencia de materiales. ...
... Contrapondo-se a essa visão, consideramos que as transformações experimentadas pelos grupos humanos podem ser melhor entendidas se for levado em conta que as situações de interação produziram entrelaçamentos, influências recíprocas e realidades híbridas, uma perspectiva que vem sendo perseguida com sucesso por diferentes autores (e.g. DEAGAN, 1996;VOSS, 2008;CIPOLLA, 2013). ...
... Geralmente retratadas como tradicionais e estáticas, estavam, na verdade, sujeitas a mudanças contínuas e constantes (MITCHELL & SCHEIBER, 2010: 19). Assim, consideramos que os diferentes grupos que ocuparam a região estavam em constante transformação, inclusive nos momentos posteriores ao contato, quando diversos grupos foram implicados em movimentos diaspóricos e processos de etnogênese (DEAGAN, 1996;CIPOLLA, 2013;GOULD, 2013;LIEBMANN, 2013). ...
O artigo apresenta a retomada das pesquisas arqueológicas desenvolvidas pelo Museu Nacional na Ilha do Governador, Rio de Janeiro. Seu ponto de partida são as investigações lá realizadas de forma pioneira por arqueólogos nas décadas de 1960 e 1970. Utilizando uma abordagem dialógica, pretendemos apresentar algumas reflexões acerca das pesquisas na região, ontem e hoje. Buscamos, ainda, ao fim deste texto, encaminhar outras reflexões que têm se colocado como necessárias e de interesse para o trabalho de reconstrução após o incêndio que afetou o Museu Nacional em 2018.
... The themes presented in this collection of papers build on work by household historical archaeologists that first studied identity in Spanish Colonial Florida and the circum-Caribbean (Deagan 1974(Deagan , 1996(Deagan , 1998Landers 1999). Deagan's work at St. Augustine, Florida examined the role of acculturation and identity among indigenous and Spanish individuals. ...
... Deagan's work at St. Augustine, Florida examined the role of acculturation and identity among indigenous and Spanish individuals. Through the process of ethnogenesis, Deagan observed the intermarriage between indigenous and African women and European men as a creolized process that created mestizajea totally new creole culture (Deagan 1983(Deagan , 1996(Deagan , 1998. For Deagan, women's work in the household and domestic contexts (through the foods they prepared and the ways in which they prepared them) in colonial settings in Florida and the Caribbean were the principle ways women helped create a new creolized culture. ...
The papers in this special issue arise from the Status and Identity in the Imperial Andes session held at the 2017 meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Vancouver, Canada. That session focused on the role of status and power in shaping colonial interactions and identities throughout the Andes during the fifteenth to seventeenth century CE. The papers in this issue examine how Inka and colonial period individuals (indigenous, African, Iberian, mestizo, etc.) selectively incorporated or rejected Imperial goods, and how differing levels of access to these goods may have influenced social status, health, and relationships with imperial actors.
... The continued use of baskets and traditional plant foods after the introduction of European technology and foods also reflects the significance of women's roles among the Chumash Indians both before and after Spanish contact (Anderson 2005;Voss 2008a). The persistence of traditional domestic activities among indigenous women in colonial contexts has been noted in several regions of the New World (Deagan 1996;Voss 2008bVoss , 2008c. ...
... Although some of this was a result of the demand for baskets by nonnative people, it is significant that the Chumash were active agents in their commitment to the continued use of baskets, steatite cooking vessels, large mortars, and other objects that were central to their traditional practices. The role of women living in colonial households has been a significant topic of discussion, especially since women were intimately involved in the preparation and serving of foods (Lightfoot 1995(Lightfoot , 2001(Lightfoot , 2005Deagan 1996;Lightfoot et al. 1998;Silliman 2004;Voss 2008aVoss , 2008b. Much of this work has focused on Native Americans living in Spanish settlements, such as presidios, forts, and ranchos. ...
The Chumash Indians of southern California were active social agents after European contact, making choices in the traditions that they maintained despite drastic transformations in their daily lives. Archaeological and ethnohistorical evidence suggests that they continued to hold large ceremonial feasts with massive quantities of traditional foods prepared in oversized vessels, such as decorated mortars and steatite cooking pots. Many of these vessels proliferated or became more elaborate after the introduction of metal tools. The persistence and elaboration of traditional patterns of food procurement, preparation, and consumption served as a symbol of cultural identity among the Chumash and a means of maintaining and expanding social networks that extended over a wide region of California.
... Lo indudable es que se producía loza de tradición hispánica en las Américas con tecnología importada de Europa, en un extenso territorio en el que fueron evolucionando según los gustos locales, los cambios tecnológicos, las exigencias del mercado, la disponibilidad de materias primas, y las influencias de las tradiciones alfareras indígenas (donde estas pudieron sobrevivir), africanas y hasta chinas (McEwan, 1992;Deagan y Cruxent, 1993;Deagan, 1996;Schreg, 2015a). ...
El sitio arqueológico de Panamá Viejo (1519-1671) se reconoce como un centro de producción de cerámicas que tuvieron una amplia distribución en el continente americano. Sin embargo, aparte de las evidencias de su abundante producción, no se habían documentado en detalle sus alfares. Entre 2015 y 2016 se descubrieron y excavaron los restos de dos hornos cerámicos en el sitio. Uno de ellos es un horno bicameral de tiro semi-horizontal, con una hoguera circular unida mediante un canal a un laboratorio cuadrangular, estructura sin precedentes morfológicos ni funcionales en la literatura arqueológica hispanoamericana; el otro sigue el estilo “árabe”, con planta circular y tiro vertical. La estratigrafía y los restos materiales encontrados apuntan a que se trata de un alfar que pudo haber producido mayormente cerámica sin esmalte, aunque las perturbaciones post-deposicionales dificultan una interpretación certera. Estos hornos pertenecían al barrio alfarero de Panamá Viejo, que contaba con varios talleres que fueron reportados en estudios previos que no pudieron ofrecer más que evidencia circunstancial de su existencia. Presentamos aquí pruebas contundentes de la presencia de los alfares y de la manufactura local de cerámicas, siendo la primera vez que se documentan de manera completa hornos en el sitio.
... Mexican Colonial Mestizo Folk Culture. In the almost 250 years that passed between the Spaniards' conquest of Mesoamerica and their occupation of California, the resulting blend of Mesoamericans and Colonials brought an invigorating mixture of races that combined traits from pre-conquest native cultures and Europe, resulting in the emergence of a mestizo Colonial Mexican Society with its own customs and foodways (Miranda 1988:265;Super 1988;Weber 1992:315-317;Deagan 1996;Pilcher 1996Pilcher :198, 1998 Reynoso- Ramos 2015:312), as Natives and invading colonials fused as much, if not more, culturally as they did biologically (MacLachlan 2015:5). By the 1540s mestizos were a recognized racial-cultural group and by the early 1600s a Mestizo Folk Culture had emerged (Redfield 1930:13;MacLachlan 2015: 22, 30-31). ...
This monograph presents results of an analysis of ceramics recovered from excavation of the San Diego, California, Presidio Chapel Complex. The material has been presented in a format that also serves as an identification guide for these artifacts. The purpose of this study was to identify as thoroughly as possible all of the vessels represented in the collection and gain an understanding of their archaeological and cultural contexts and use. Vessels were quantified by sherd count, weight, and minimum number (MNV). Another objective of this report was to provide under one cover the background information needed to understand the historical, archaeological, and cultural contexts of the ceramic artifacts.
In Volume 2, an emic context for understanding the use of ceramics by Mexican Californios was achieved through an examination of the physical and demographic history of the San Diego Presidio, a history of trade and economics in California during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and assessments of Californio cultural origins and food ways, as well as a folk typology for Mexican ceramics.
... Excavations at Puerto Real were conducted by Dr. Kathleen Deagan, Curator Emerita of the Florida Museum Historical Archaeology Division, between 1979 and 1990. The 16 th -century town was arranged in a 500 m x 400 m rectangle [37]. The excavations revealed several buildings including the church and its cemetery, two elite households and a middle social status residence [2]. ...
Unlike other European domesticates introduced in the Americas after the European invasion, equids (Equidae) were previously in the Western Hemisphere but were extinct by the late Holocene era. The return of equids to the Americas through the introduction of the domestic horse (Equus caballus) is documented in the historical literature but is not explored fully either archaeologically or genetically. Historical documents suggest that the first domestic horses were brought from the Iberian Peninsula to the Caribbean in the late 15th century CE, but archaeological remains of these early introductions are rare. This paper presents the mitochondrial genome of a late 16th century horse from the Spanish colonial site of Puerto Real (northern Haiti). It represents the earliest complete mitogenome of a post-Columbian domestic horse in the Western Hemisphere offering a unique opportunity to clarify the phylogeographic history of this species in the Americas. Our data supports the hypothesis of an Iberian origin for this early translocated individual and clarifies its phylogenetic relationship with modern breeds in the Americas.
... Ultimately, it may be difficult to discern archaeologically between a modified square-ground pattern and a generic African family-based social arrangement. It should also be noted that Maroons had been exposed to European colonial spatial organization as well; including towns like St. Augustine with a rectilinear layout, centered around religious or administrative buildings (Deagan 1996) and linear plantation housing. However, it is clear that Pilaklikaha featured a site layout that differed from the family-homestead arrangement of most Seminoles and the linear plantation housing for enslaved people in the southeastern United States (Weik 2002:140). ...
Marronage was an extreme form of anti-slavery resistance in the Americas, however, we should not isolate Maroons from others fighting to maintain autonomy in the colonial Americas. This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of three Florida sites – Bulow Plantation, an urban plantation in St. Augustine, and the Maroon settlement of Pilaklikaha – through the dual frameworks of resistance and ethnogenesis, with the purpose of placing Maroons within a regional context. Ultimately, the archaeological materials examined highlight the common experiences shared by Maroons and their enslaved peers, and emphasize the significant role played by opportunity in shaping African diasporic cultural transformations in the nineteenth century.
... Hegmon, 1998;Hodder, 1979;Stark, 1998;Stark, 1999), and historical approaches (e.g. Cusick, 1998;Deagan, 1996;Hodder, 1979;Lightfoot and Martinez, 1995;Mills, 2008;Mullins and Paynter, 2000), although these are not mutually exclusive. As applied to sociocultural groups and organizations, we observe that these two processes generate a continuum between boundedness, defined as the expression of the solidity (or porosity) of social borders between groups, and homogeneity, in which goods and institutions are shared between groups, and/or take on similar characteristics over time (Paris, 2014:80). ...
This article examines the complex production and exchange networks through which Central Chiapas polities manufactured and imported fine orange pottery. The Jovel Valley of highland Chiapas formed part of the western frontier of the Maya area, traditionally considered a relatively isolated periphery zone. Conversely, the neighboring Central Depression is considered by many scholars to be a corridor for trade, transportation and cultural contact, inhabited by Zoque cultural groups prior to occupation by Chiapanec-speaking people during the Postclassic period. Instrumental Neutron Activation Analysis (INAA) of fine orange pottery samples from sites in the Jovel Valley and Central Depression revealed that they were locally-produced imitations of Balancán Fine Orange ceramic serving dishes from the Lower Usumacinta River region, rather than imported vessels. Our results suggest that potters working independently in the Jovel Valley and Central Depression were making and locally exchanging imitation Balancán ceramics, using many different clay sources/recipes. An interpretive framework of isomorphism adapted from new institutional theory is useful for distinguishing the production of a standardized, elite-attributed, God-N-decorated set of vessels, from multiple, independent potters’ communities, all under the widespread stylistic influence of Balancán-style Fine Orange wares.
... Because of the role of power and the emphasis on Indigenous peoples' responses to asymmetrical relationships, few have explicitly applied the concept to colonizers (Liebmann 2013(Liebmann , 2015Silliman 2013) although Deagan (1973Deagan ( , 1988Deagan ( , 1996, Lightfoot (2006), and others (e.g., Ewen 2000;Lightfoot et al. 1998) certainly explore ethnically mixed households. More importantly, changes among colonizing peoples are often viewed as unproblematic; the authenticity of colonizers in the face of these transformations is not scrutinized or questioned in the same way that Indigenous peoples are (Silliman 2013). ...
Missions and indigenous villages are commonly investigated contexts for indigenous responses to Spanish colonialism in the American Southwest. In early colonial New Mexico, colonists’ households were also a venue for interaction and exchange of information between Pueblos and Spanish. Using the concept of hybridity, I explore seventeenth-century Spanish ranches in northern New Mexico for the interactions between Spanish colonists and Pueblo wives, servants, slaves, and laborers. The architecture, foodways, and artifacts, show an interplay between Pueblo and Spanish ways of making do suggesting that Pueblo peoples contributed in substantial ways to the nature of these households.
... que certamente não faziam parte do seu contingente militar e cujo gênero rompia com a expectativa de uma população exclusivamente masculina nesse tipo de local. A presença de mulheres é interessante não só pelo fato de identificarmos um grupo que não pertencia ao efetivo militar da fortificação, mas também porque elas foram importantes vetores de transformação nas antigas colônias ibéricas, tendo um papel ativo na criação e reprodução de práticas locais, como vêm demostrando estudos em contextos relacionados aos espanhóis (DEAGAN; KOCH, 1983;DEAGAN, 1996) e aos portugueses (SOUZA, 2000(SOUZA, , 2002. ...
O presente texto tem por objetivo realizar algumas reflexões sobre os sistemas defensivos relacionados com a expansão marítima portuguesa. Para tal, dividiu-se este trabalho em duas partes: em um primeiro momento, realiza-se uma breve análise sobre as pesquisas arqueológicas em sítios militares do período para, em seguida, apresentar-se um estudo de caso sobre a cidade fortificada da Ribeira Grande de Santiago, situada em Cabo Verde na África Ocidental.
... The emphasis on concepts such as agency, practice, and identity, building upon the foundational works of Sahlins (1976), Bourdieu (1977), and Giddens (1979), as well as the reconsideration of Western cultural representations of "the other," represented by Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), called upon a more inclusive and multidimensional approach to colonial interaction in pluralistic social settings ( Lightfoot et al. 1998). These theoretical advances resulted in the formulation of a range of new and updated concepts about cultural mixture, including bricolage (Comaroff 1985), creolization (Dawdy 2000;Deagan 1996;Deetz 1996;Delle 2000;Ewen 2000;Ferguson 1992;Hannerz 1987;Mintz and Price 1992), ethnogenesis (Deagan 1998;Hill 1996;Moore 1994), hybridity (Bhabha 1994;Hall 1990;Silliman 2015;Young 1995), mestizaje (Deagan 1974(Deagan , 1983, syncretism (Palmié 1995;Stewart and Shaw 1994), and transculturation (Deagan 1998;Domínguez 1978;Ortiz 1995;Romero 1981). But, as part of this ongoing reconfiguration of historical anthropology, it was realized that to understand cultural continuities and changes following European contact, it is critical to perceive of these as grounded in a precolonial past. ...
... This is particularly true in their study of concurrent and nearby indigenous settlements in Cuba in which one area resisted the inclusion of Spanish material culture, while another did not (Valcárcel Rojas et al. 2013). Other scholars and research done in the Caribbean note the incorporation of Spanish artifacts into the daily lives and cosmologies of the indigenous peoples (Deagan 1988(Deagan , 1996Keehnen 2010). Deagan (2004) in her study of the indigenous village of En Bas Saline in present-day Haiti, introduces a colonial model in which the indigenous peoples were taken from their villages for part of the year, made to work for the Spanish, then were able to return to their villages for the remainder of the year. ...
... However, a more nuanced understanding of colonial interaction is achieved when considering postcolonial concepts of agency and identity(Valcárcel Rojas 2012). It is here that models of transculturation(Ortiz [1940(Ortiz [ ] 1995, ethnogenesis(Deagan 1996(Deagan , 1998Voss 2008), creolization(Hannerz 1987), and hybridity and hybridization(Bhabha 1994;van Dommelen 1997) have become prominent in archaeology and studies of colonialism. These models provide interpretive frameworks for the sociocultural factors that led to the emergence of new identities and cultural expressions. ...
... Es innegable que las sociedades coloniales fueron complejas y con diversos matices, por lo que no es posible analizarlas solo a partir de categorías binarias (Voss, 2008), o considerar el valor de lo indígena solo por la capacidad de los mestizos de élite para insertarse en ellas. También es necesario considerar la capacidad de agencia de aquellos que no tuvieron esa condición, o evaluar otras estrategias de resistencia y el mestizaje ocurrido en espacios rurales y urbanos (Deagan, 1996;Guitar, 1993;. ...
... Es innegable que las sociedades coloniales fueron complejas y con diversos matices, por lo que no es posible analizarlas solo a partir de categorías binarias (Voss, 2008), o considerar el valor de lo indígena solo por la capacidad de los mestizos de élite para insertarse en ellas. También es necesario considerar la capacidad de agencia de aquellos que no tuvieron esa condición, o evaluar otras estrategias de resistencia y el mestizaje ocurrido en espacios rurales y urbanos (Deagan, 1996;Guitar, 1993;. ...
Indigenous and Indians in the Caribbean: Presence, Legacy, and Study is a compilation of texts of various authors, edited by Jorge Ulloa Hung and Roberto Valcárcel Rojas in this first volume of the series "Los indígenas más allá de Colón" . All the texts agree in rejecting the vision of inferiority of the indigenous projected by the conqueror in order to justify the prevalence of his authority and his culture. This criterion was taken as valid by archaeologists and historians. The works exhibit a unity of criteria, endorsed by the progress of archaeological research, renewed in its visions and methods. The volume shows that History requires a re-evaluation in the face of the need to incorporate the "Indian" in the process of forming a deep national consciousness, and that its recognition does not only lie in the mere exhibition of folklore, toponymy, pragmatism, erudition, or a simple exhibition of the surviving material objects.
... Es innegable que las sociedades coloniales fueron complejas y con diversos matices, por lo que no es posible analizarlas solo a partir de categorías binarias (Voss, 2008), o considerar el valor de lo indígena solo por la capacidad de los mestizos de élite para insertarse en ellas. También es necesario considerar la capacidad de agencia de aquellos que no tuvieron esa condición, o evaluar otras estrategias de resistencia y el mestizaje ocurrido en espacios rurales y urbanos (Deagan, 1996;Guitar, 1993;. ...
... it also changed the form of chinese gardens (King 1981). the emergence and development of concession garden are a long-term experience, which directly facilitated the construction of china's first park (Deagan 1996). current research on the category of historiography is mainly reflected in published studies (Peng et al. 2008). in the present study, academic circles and research results can be divided into two parts: concession history and concession garden. ...
During the late Qing Dynasty, Western colonists plundered and divided the land as concession where they consequently built European and American architectures. These architectures, such as concession garden architectures, are a result of relevant cultural exchange. Thus, concession garden architectural culture should be studied. In this study, the historical records of the concession and the concession garden in the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China were examined on the basis of the representative architectures of Shanghai and Tianjin in China. The origin, classification, characteristic, and development of the concession garden architecture were regarded as the starting point, and the characteristics of the garden architecture in different regions were discovered. Further insights into the development of conservation concession garden buildings in China and the use of modern landscape architectures were provided, and new perspectives for studies on concession landscape architectures were presented through an in-depth understanding and analysis of concession landscape architectures.
... A diferencia de El Caribe, con las primeras ocupaciones europeas en La Isabela entre 1493 y 1498 (Deagan y Cruxent 2002), y Santo Domingo en 1502 (Deagan 1996), las investigaciones de arqueología histórica acerca de los primeros asentamientos europeos y sus edificaciones religiosas han sido escasas en América del Sur. ...
... Em situações de copresença, essas nuances podiam se relacionar a diferentes modalidades de estratégia social que, quando examinadas, podem trazer melhores entendimentos para as situações de trocas culturais que se estabeleceram. Examinando as práticas materiais dos primeiros assentamentos espanhóis das Américas, Deagan (1996), por exemplo, demonstrou que muitas das trocas ocorridas entre espanhóis, nativos e africanos, estabelecidas ora por meio de relações de trabalho, ora por meio de uniões consensuais, foram baseadas em estratégias de gênero e etnicidade. Estudos como esse apontam para as complexidades existentes nessas trocas e cujos meandros podem ser explicados por meio de análises arqueológicas. ...
Este texto busca identificar alguns dos problemas que cercam o estudo dos indígenas que viveram à época da colonização brasileira e em períodos posteriores, bem como encontrar caminhos possíveis para a análise e interpretação dos vestígios materiais a eles associados. Pretende, com isso, contribuir para o incremento das investigações feitas sobre esses indivíduos, cujas trajetórias e experiências ainda são muito pouco conhecidas na perspectiva da Arqueologia.
... The paper presented here focuses on coarse earthenware, one of the most understudied types of artifacts in Banten's past archaeological research. The study of utilitarian ceramics associated with Blow social visibility^ (Ewen 1991, p. 116) activities, such as food preparation, has been shown to be an effective tool with which to understand mundane yet important domestic domains of colonial interactions in the Spanish Atlantic (e.g., Cordell 2013;Deagan 1996;Ewen 1991), for example. This research provides a direct window into daily aspects of the Dutch-indigenous relationship, an area under-documented in written sources. ...
This paper analyzes Dutch and indigenous adaptation processes of foodways in the colonial Dutch East Indies, using seventeenth to early nineteenth-century archaeological evidence from Banten, Java. Banten was a global trading center and the focal point of the expansion in Asia of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Its cosmopolitan and multinational society was already apparent when the Dutch arrived in 1596. Our research suggests that the Dutch in Banten adapted to using locally produced utilitarian earthenware instead of importing European vessels or having European-style cookware made in Banten. Banten’s pre-existing market-oriented urban society made many of the basic necessities available for the VOC garrison in Banten. Perhaps equally important in facilitating Dutch adaptation to local foodways was the presence of local women and Asian cooks in their daily life.
... Considered as a whole, the Spanish and Portuguese invasions arguably posed uniquely severe challenges for subsistence activities among indigenous households (Cook 1981;Cook and Lovell 2001;Crosby 1972Crosby , 1986Lovell 1992). However, case studies by historical archaeologists working in the colonial Americas have illustrated how changes in household economies associated with imperial incorporation and resistance varied greatly based on region and settlement, if not also across domestic units within the same communities (Deagan 1996;deFrance 1996;deFrance 1993;deFrance and Hanson 2008;Gifford Gonzales 2010;Pavao-Zuckerman and LaMotta 2007;Reitz 2001;Reitz 1990;Reitz et al. 2010;Rodríguez-Alegría 2005;Spielmann et al. 2009;VanderVeen 2006;Wernke 2013). In this essay, we present a study of household economic change within a late sixteenth century indigenous community in Peru's North Coast region. ...
Through analysis of zooarchaeological remains from two occupations at the site of Carrizales, we examine how an indigenous Peruvian maritime community responded to imperial interventions in their daily lives in the late sixteenth century. Following their forced resettlement into a planned reducción village, and amidst demographic decline and tribute extraction, Carrizales’s residents significantly changed how they put food on the table, pursuing less time-intensive strategies of food collection and incorporating Eurasian animals into their diets. These results illustrate the dynamism of relations between imperial political economies and domestic life and the efficacy of indigenous survival strategies.
... Historical archaeologists study eras and places in which domesticated animals had long been a significant part of organizing human activity on the landscape (Zeder 1991;Reitz 1992;Deagan 1996;Bowen 1998;Landon 2009). Pasturage, water, wallows, and security are just some of the concerns of those who managed and traveled with stock. ...
Archaeological studies of movement between communities that had horses should use empirical evidence about horse travel over terrain types analogous to those traversed between historical archaeological sites. The experiences of equestrians are of interest to archaeologists because they reflect past processes of creating landscapes of warfare, communication, transportation, and trade. Late Spanish colonial New Mexico provides an example of how the potential of an equine perspective on landscape-scale choices might change archaeological interpretations of place and space. This article introduces an experimental approach and calls for modeling that accounts for different kinds of observed horse travel that can better articulate archaeological landscape studies with more realistic travel factors encountered by those who populated a dynamic and horse-connected frontier. Datasets generated by such a method will be well-positioned to aid in the interpretation of lived experiences on indigenous landscapes completely transformed by the colonial introduction of the horse.
The Western American Frontier during the mid to late nineteenth century is often described as a quintessentially American experience; a period in which an ethos of self-reliance, independence, and resilience developed. Archaeological attempts to understand the processes of social change on the frontier have developed models that evaluate the circumstances around adult modification of culture rather than incorporating the experiences and contributions of children. Research conducted at the sites of Teller (5ML29) and Fort Garland (5CT46) Colorado suggests a relationship between a site’s socioeconomic security and children’s culture. Through the evaluation of childhood assemblages and site-specific factors, we can determine if or how frontier parents and children modified cultural concepts or if socioeconomic conditions determined the pace of social change. Understanding these relationships could change how we understand cultural change in frontier settings, how frontiers evolve, and how frontier identities emerge under different and historically contingent settings.
In death, bodies that were autopsied or used for medical dissection or experimentation are transformed from individuals into specimens, their identities and personhood removed. This destructive act was commonplace across the United States during the 19th century for the sake of medical advancement. Becoming a cadaver (anatomization) was typically reserved for the poorest individuals who passed away in almshouses and indigent hospitals. Charity Hospital, which operated from the 18th century until Hurricane Katrina in 2005, served New Orleans’s indigent population. The remains of many individuals who died at the hospital during the 19th century were used for medical dissection, experimentation, and autopsy. From two collections of skeletal remains associated with Charity Hospital’s second cemetery, this study explores the skeletal indicators of anatomization and how these individuals’ treatment in death speaks to larger trends of marginalization of the poor during this time.
La definición tradicional de “dominicanidad” postula que esta se compone del intercambio entre tres raíces: la hispana, la indígena y la africana, aunque en proporciones desiguales. Esta desigualdad se evidencia en la gran cantidad de artefactos españoles e indígenas exhibidos en los museos del país, mientras que los artefactos de herencia africana son relativamente pocos. ¿Por qué este desbalance? Este ensayo propone la necesidad de un cambio de paradigma dentro de la arqueología dominicana para contestar esta pregunta. Este nuevo paradigma resignificaría la narrativa sobre el intercambio indo-afro-hispano del siglo xvi en la isla La Española, comenzando con el reconocimiento de la presencia de los afrodescendientes desde los primeros momentos de la colonización. Más específicamente, propone una resignificación de las características de los artefactos arqueológicos, cambiando la definición de artefacto, tanto en tamaño como unidad, y priorizando quiénes los usaron sobre quiénes los fabricaron. Finalmente, este ensayo aplicará este nuevo paradigma a la colección arqueológica del Parque Histórico y Arqueológico de la Vega Vieja en un estudio de caso.
La integración latinoamericana ha sido desde los inicios de las luchas por la Independencia y mucho más desde hace varias décadas, uno de los temas más recurrentes desde las políticas nacionales, también desde diversas posturas teóricas, corrientes epistemológicas y desde el ámbito de distintas disciplinas sociales. En mayor o menor medida, muchos han estado de acuerdo con esa mirada integradora que a veces se ve tan distante, pero que con pequeños pasos, algunos intentan llevar a la práctica, materializarla, aunque sea en cuestiones puntuales dentro de la diversidad de problemáticas en las que viven nuestros pueblos. Dentro de esta perspectiva, hace algunos meses surgió la idea de exponer en una publicación impresa una muestra de la variedad de investigaciones que se llevan a cabo en dos países latinoamericanos: Argentina y Cuba. Con un sesgo geográfico determinado por el origen de los editores, este libro se propone un acercamiento al desarrollo de la Arqueología histórica en ambos países. En él se expone un amplio espectro de las temáticas en estudio desde diversas perspectivas teóricas.
The initial interactions between Indigenous groups and European colonists across the Caribbean were largely shaped by pre-existing
sociocultural conditions. The central importance of exchange for social construction and the concomitantly high value placed upon foreign material was common to many Native societies. This played in contrast to European understandings of exchange, which was far more focused on economic gain and competitive bargaining. The role assigned to exchange and the foreign in Indigenous and European societies guided their perceptions of each other and respective goals in interaction. Native systems were well entrenched throughout the regional networks of trade and culture in the Caribbean, and so colonists entered into a world fundamentally defined by such systems. European imperial views permitted them to exploit these systems, twist- ing Indigenous exaltation of intercultural trade into a tool for attempted oppres- sion, subversion, and assimilation. Nevertheless, colonists were unable to under- mine core structures, even if they appropriated them for the creation of new hierar- chies and dehumanization of Natives. These structures prevailed even as coloniza- tion grew more pervasive and degenerative.
More often than not, geophysical surveys are conducted to find places to dig. In this paper, we answer the call to use geophysical data not just for prospection, but for actual interpretation of the past. To do this, we use gradiometer data collected at the Etowah site (9Br1), a Mississippian period center located in the modern state of Georgia. Etowah is unique among major Mississippian period centers because its occupation is segmented by periods of abandonment. As a result, with each occupation a new community was established at the site. Communities are created by building a shared sense of place, purpose, and history—a collective identity. In this paper we use geophysical data to explore how the built environment was used to create community and reinforce changing identities during the history of Etowah.
As contested spaces, frontiers are the ideal location in which to study identity, as inhabitants of these landscapes constantly experience and actively negotiate among the multiple lived realities that are shaped by conflicting ideologies. I propose the use of third-space and borderlands theory as frameworks for understanding the fluidity of experiences in the American frontier during the 19th century. Through a look at a community of laundresses in Fort Davis, Texas, I show how life on the edge—or perhaps in the middle—of geographic and social frontiers allowed inhabitants of these contested spaces to construct and redefine new personhoods. Moreover, I assert that women’s participation in food provisioning and preparation allowed them to act as cultural brokers across various scales of community interaction.
This study sought to investigate the extent and processes through which indigenous technologies were passed on in the production of indigenous pottery in the Greater Antilles, the Caribbean, during the early colonial period in the late 15th and early 16th centuries AD. We examined a selection of black wares and red wares recovered from an early colonial archaeological site of Pueblo Viejo de Cotuí, Dominican Republic. We devised an integrated approach, which combined anthropological theory of cultural transmission and archaeological science. Thin-section petrography was used to characterise five main aspects of the production of the ceramic assemblage, including raw materials selection, paste preparation, forming, surface finish, and firing methods. We then compared the results with the analyses we had previously conducted on the production of pre-colonial Meillacoid and Chicoid ceramics, which allowed us to delineate the extent and processes of technology transmission. Our findings reveal that indigenous technologies were neither fully replicated nor discontinued in the production of black wares and red wares at Cotuí during the early colonial period. Instead, the producers of both black wares and red wares continued to use certain aspects of indigenous technologies, but each with varying extents. The black wares largely followed the local indigenous ways as expressed in the selection of local raw materials, low level of standardisation in paste preparation, the use of coiling and low firing temperatures. As for the red wares, it is certain that their production continued with the use of local raw materials and low firing temperatures, whereas it is possible that the use of grog temper and red slips also represents the transmission of indigenous technologies that were linked to roots other than the Meillac and Chican ceramics.
An analysis of architectural remains reveals changes in both construction practice and the organization of labor during the occupation of Fort San Juan de Joara, located at the Berry site in present-day North Carolina. This fort and its associated domestic area, referred to as the Spanish compound, were established in December 1566 by Captain Juan Pardo and constitute the earliest European settlement in the interior of what is now the United States. Excavations in Structures 1 and 5, built at different times in the compound’s 18-month occupation, recovered well-preserved remains of wooden construction elements, with some displaying evidence of cutting and preparation with metal tools. Focusing on wood selection and wood preparation, we show that construction labor through the early phase of the Spanish occupation was divided between settler and indigenous host communities; later, however, as relations between these groups deteriorated, so did indigenous participation in Spanish construction projects.
This chapter tackles the materiality of households, largely focused on the plantation of Mgoli, Pemba, and drawing extensively on excavation data. It is argued that plantation owners’ homes were sometimes used to materialize an Omani identity. This chapter also explores the nature of power on plantations. Drawing on features such as the clove-drying floor and baraza at Mgoli, the paternalistic structure of power on Zanzibari plantations is explored, as is the way that a small number of elite women were able to take charge within this structure. By contrast, the position of women held as concubines is also discussed through an analysis of how such women may have figured into the architectural structures of plantation households.
This chapter focuses on some of the cultural changes that Africans and their descendants endured in Brazil during the eighteenth century. Considering a particular pottery shape found both in Brazil and Africa, some of the material practices of slaves beyond their African background are examined. Adopting a comparative approach, I try to demonstrate the fluid and situational nature of these practices, as well as some of the mechanisms that gave birth to diasporic cultures in Brazil during the slave trade period.
Research at a variety of Spanish colonial settlements in the circum-Caribbean region (Deagan 1983, 1988; Ewen 1991) has revealed consistent patterns in the types and proportions of indigenous and European artifacts in domestic assemblages. These results have suggested that acculturative processes influenced largely by gender were the standard adaptive response throughout the Spanish colonial world. Excavations at colonial sites in Peru by Rice and Smith (Rice and Smith 1989; Smith 1991, 1997) and in Bolivia by the author have yielded assemblages, however, which are differently structured and include much larger proportions of locally produced goods, including a wide variety of ceramics. These findings indicate that there were regional differences in the degree to which colonists incorporated indigenous technology into their domestic activities, a divergence that was influenced largely by local geographic and historical conditions.
By the mid-18th century, the population that lived on the Louisiana/Texas frontier was comprised of French, Spanish, Native American, African, and creoles (or mixed-bloods). French and Spanish colonial policies dictated the kinds of social and economic relations that were to exist between people of different racial and ethnic groups on the frontier. Colonial practices often ran counter to official policies, however, as individuals crossed social and racial borders created by the Crown to construct not only multiethnic communities but also multiethnic households. This process of creolization resulted in the negotiation of new colonial identities for those that did not fit into neat colonial categories. Using ethnohistoric and archaeological data, the process of creolization that occurred within multiethnic communities and households along the colonial Louisiana/Texas border is considered.
Creolization theory has recently been adopted and adapted by archaeologists as a useful tool for the study of culture contact and culture change. Another term, acculturation, has a much longer history and appears to examine the same phenomena. An examination of how this approach was applied in the study of the development of a Hispanic creole culture demonstrates its utility regardless of the terminology used.
During the late-19th and early-20th centuries, antiquarian collectors amassed hundreds of artifacts from the vicinity of Fort St. Joseph (20BE23), a mission-garrison-trading post complex established by the French in the late-17th century along the St. Joseph River in southwest Michigan. George Quimby (1939, 1966) later used these materials to establish a chronology for post-contact Native American sites in the western Great Lakes region, although the research potential of the collections was limited by their lack of provenience. Subsequent fieldwork conducted in 2002 and 2004 by Western Michigan University located intact deposits from this site. Excavations have identified a number of cultural features and associated archaeological materials that suggest the locations of buildings and discrete activity areas. The undisturbed deposits encountered at the site of Fort St. Joseph can inform researchers about everyday economic activities at an important trading post in the North American interior.
The development of the field of historical archaeology in Mexico has made many advances since the inception, in effect, of its practice there in the 1960s. The roots of historical archaeology in the Central Mexican Symbiotic Region (CMSR) in general and in the Basin of Mexico in particular are discussed. Specific case studies illustrating some of the Historical Archaeology that has been done in the CMSR are referenced with particular note of some of the diagnostic materials that have been valuable to the studies. The value of these studies to the record of post-Conquest Mexico is noted as are the prospects for continued research in the area.
Archaeology conducted at Latin American sites in Brazil, Cuba, Florida, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Peru has made significant contributions to our understanding of African Diaspora history. Historical archaeology of the African Diaspora in Latin America has explored technological innovations in pottery making, resistance to slavery, and everyday life. The unifying theme in these studies, like that of the Anglo colonies, has been ethnic or cultural markers of identity. Maroon studies have predominated, while plantation archaeology in Latin America is developing slowly. By placing Latin American sites within the context of theories such as ethnogenesis, focusing on intercultural interactions in Maroon and slave societies, and rediscovering the forgotten connections between Amerindians and Africans, it is possible to advance our understanding of African Diaspora social formation and culture creation.
This article focuses on mestizaje in the colonization of Hispaniola, especially in relation with Nicolás de Ovando's settlements (1501-1503). From a Colonial Studies perspective, this paper seeks to dialogue with recent research in archaeological Contact Studies that have focused on the problem of gender. The analysis from mestizaje allows us to think of Hispaniola as a gender and race contact zone in the frame of the relations of power and domination imposed by Spanish conquest. Through the discursive analysis of the Instructions that the Crown sent to Ovando and a reading of the myth of Guahayona as recorded by Ramón Pané in his Relación de las antigüedades de los indios (1498), I analyze the role of gender relations in the establishment of the colonial power relation in order to open new reflections on the central place of gender in the processes of colonial subordination that follow this initial stage.
Iberian Worlds is an imaginative, short text that dramatically depicts important globalization themes and processes through the important flows and impacts Spain and Portugal have had with many important regions of the world for many centuries. Spain and Portugal have long histories at the cutting-edge of world relations, managing far-flung empires, and author Gary McDonogh stresses this historical perspective as well as foregrounding the vast present world fostered by the "Iberian project" - Latin America, Southern Europe, parts of Asia and Africa, in which Spain and Portugal possess enormous power.
Not long after Spanish Florida became United States territory in 1821, the attention of Anglo-American settlers was drawn to the handful of remaining Spanish fishing ranchos along the lower gulf coastline, inhabited by Cuban fishermen and their "Spanish Indian" families and neighbors. The history and identity of these groups, many of whom were forcibly relocated west along with the Seminoles by 1841, has long remained enigmatic due to a paucity of documentation. This paper uses extensive new documentary data from Cuba and Spain to explore the emergence of these new Creole communities during Florida's British and second Spanish periods.
In an age of revolution, Mexico's creole leaders held aloft the Virgin of Guadalupe and brandished an Aztec eagle perched upon a European tricolor. Their new constitution proclaimed “the Mexican Nation is forever free and independent.” Yet the genealogy of this new nation is not easy to trace. Colonial Mexico was a patchwork state whose new-world vassals served the crown, extended the empire's frontiers, and lived out their civic lives in parallel Spanish and Indian republics. Theirs was a world of complex intercultural alliances, interlocking corporate structures, and shared spiritual and temporal ambitions. Sean F. McEnroe describes this history at the greatest and smallest geographical scales, reconsidering what it meant to be an Indian vassal, nobleman, soldier, or citizen over three centuries in northeastern Mexico. He argues that the Mexican municipality, state, and citizen were not so much the sudden creations of a revolutionary age as the progeny of a mature multiethnic empire.
Archaeological data have been critical in articulating the manner by which system-wide structuring elements of Europe's colonial projects in America were adjusted or transformed in local settings. This paper explores the ways in which certain of these structuring elements in Spanish colonial America were played out in a variety of households and communities, with the ultimate goal of approaching an archaeologically informed, comparative study of American colonialism. Several parameters are offered as examples of potentially fruitful points of comparison among colonial systems through which researchers might assess local agency at both intra- and inter-colonial scales. These include varieties of economic and governmental centrality, forms of labor organization, varieties of religious experience, gender relations, idealized social identities, and frontier-urban dichotomies.
Maiolica (tin-enameled earthenware) was a staple of daily life for serving food and drink, as well as other household purposes, in Spain and Spanish America throughout the colonial period. Examining choices in ceramic styles is one way to examine the colonial policies of reductión, which were to instill a regular, commonplace Christian order in everyday life. The Rio Ceniza Valley of western El Salvador, the heartland of the Nahua-speaking Pipil polity known as the Izalcos, was a center of Spanish colonial commerce in Guatemala. This research presents a typology and chronology of Guatemalan maiolica, the stylistic similarities of its maiolica types to trends in Europe, and frequencies in rural vs. urban use, based on an ample collection of 16th-to 19th-century Guatemalan maiolica from extensive survey and excavations. The relative importance of maiolica vs. maiolica attributes on indigenous-made pottery gives a view into daily life under extreme conditions of colonialism and the process of reductión.
In the late fall of 1597, Guale Indians murdered five Franciscan friars stationed in their territory and razed their missions to the ground. The 1597 Guale Uprising, or Juanillo's Revolt as it is often called, brought the missionization of Guale to an abrupt end and threatened Florida's new governor with the most signifcant crisis of his term. To date, interpretations of the uprising emphasize the primacy of a young Indian from Tolomato named Juanillo, the heir to Guale's paramount chieftaincy. According to most versions of the uprising story, Tolomato's resident friar publicly reprimanded Juanillo for practicing polygamy. In his anger, Juanillo gathered his forces and launched a series of violent assaults on all five of Guale territory's Franciscan missions, leaving all but one of the province's friars dead. Through a series of newly translated primary sources, many of which have never appeared in print, this volume presents the most comprehensive examination of the 1597 uprising and its aftermath. It seeks to move beyond the two central questions that have dominated the historiography of the uprising, namely who killed the fve friars and why, neither of which can be answered with any certainty. Instead, this work aims to use the episode as the background for a detailed examination of Spanish Florida at the turn of the 17th century. Viewed collectively, these sources not only challenge current representations of the uprising, they also shed light on the complex nature of Spanish-Indian relations in early colonial Florida.
Over more than a century, a growing body of books, articles, and dissertations has emerged that can now be recognized as part of the archaeology of ethnogenesis. Regardless of whether this work concerns people in the far reaches of antiquity or the more recent past, archaeologists are grappling with a variety of social forces, historical processes, contexts, and dimensions of social identity making. As with much contemporary anthropological social theory, prevalent themes include politics and economics as well as specific topics such as colonialism, frontiers, ethnonymy, persistence, nativism, migration, instrumentalism, slavery, and religion. There are few major regions of the world where archaeologists have not applied ethnicity or ethnogenesis theories. Although many archaeologists' attitudes toward investigating these forms of social identity involve skepticism or ambivalence, there is growing support. For similar and different reasons, native and descendent communities share this range of opinions about ethnogenetic research.
Five hundred years away from the events that initiated the conquest and subordination of the Caribbean-the first America-by the power centers of the world, the historiography of the region still suffers from a failure to adequately disclose and discuss in an integral and coherent manner the economic processes successively imposed on the region. This is particularly true of sixteenth-century Caribbean history, in which the region consistently has been downplayed and misconstructed as a borderland at the fringes of the world. Within this traditional context, modern archaeology-mainly United States oriented-has contributed very little to the efforts of the region's inhabitants to extricate themselves from the mantle of colonial historical misinterpretations. I argue for a rereading of the early colonial period from an integral multidisciplinary perspective.
The first contacts between the prehistoric cultures of the Canary Islands and western civilization occurred in the European expansion of the late Middle Ages. Their ultimate colonization was intimately related to this expansion, driven by new economic forms, including ‘commercial capitalism’ or ‘pre-capitalism’, which affected economic and intellectual structures throughout Europe, the economic characterized from then on by innovation, risk and increasing turnover; and the intellectual by the concept of ‘profit’ in place of ‘service’.
The practical transition can be seen in the technology that supported expansion: transport (new types of ships, cartography, systems of navigation, etc.); financial systems (nonmonetary payment, insurance, commercial credit, etc.); and mercantile institutions (commercial societies, consulates, postal services, etc.).
The arrival of Spanish conquistadors and colonists to the Caribbean in the late fifteenth century set in motion the processes that produced the post-1500 New World. The sixteenth-century cultural and ecological exchanges among Europe, Africa, and the Americas that took place during the early contact period greatly affected the social and economic patterns of life in both the Old and the New Worlds. Nowhere was this change manifest as profoundly and dramatically as in the sixteenth-century Caribbean. This essay explores the archaeological insights into the processes of encounter between the Amerindian peoples of the Caribbean region and the first permanent Europeans in the Americas and the responses of each to contact with the other. Archaeological research has informed our understanding of this seminal era in New World cultural development in important ways. It had also allowed the documentation of both the cultural and demographic disintegration of the Caribbean Indians and the formation of Euro-American culture.
In the present note the author presents history of the discovery and of the status of the excavation of the site La Isabela,
the first settlement planned by Columbus in the New World during his second trip to America in the summer of 1493.
In the present note an outline of the project and of the cooperation established with the Museum of the Hombre Dominicano
is outlined.