Spanish colonialism (Other Keyword)
1-17 (17 Records)
We will present an overview of our ongoing archaeological project on Hoping Dao, Taiwan, where, according to the historical written sources, a Spanish colony was founded in 1626. Starting from the local scale, the excavation of the Spanish colonial posts and Taiwanese native settlements, we aim to understand the reasons, mechanisms and long-term consequences (local, regional and global) of the social interaction that gathered together Europeans, Taiwanese native people (themselves extremely...
Before San Francisco: The Archaeology of El Polin Spring in the Presidio of San Francisco (2015)
Archaeological research at El Polín Spring in the Presidio of San Francisco illuminates the early history of the city before San Francisco and Yerba Buena. Initial historic research and archaeological excavation at El Polín revealed what was interpreted to be the home and associated refuse midden of two intermarried colonial families. This is the first known Spanish-colonial occupation outside the walls of El Presidio de San Francisco, dating to sometime after 1812. More recent excavation at the...
Bureaucratic Reforms on the Frontier: Zooarchaeological and Historical Perspectives on the 1767 Jesuit Expulsion in the Pimeria Alta (2017)
The introduction of livestock to the Pimeria Alta (northern Sonora and southern Arizona), was one prong of Spanish imperial expansion into North America initiated largely by Jesuit missionization. Unlike other areas of North America, the missions in this region experienced an enormous bureaucratic transition following the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767, and the subsequent arrival of Franciscan missionaries. Historians and historical anthropologists debate the social and economic impacts of...
Ceramic Production in the Colonial Moquegua Valley (2016)
Recent scholarship demonstrates a growth in archaeological analysis of Spanish colonial reducciónes (which is the resettlement of several small villages into one larger Spanish controlled town) in Andean South America. Critical to understanding the impact of reducciones on indigenous populations is examining the ways in which the production and circulation of craft goods was reworked with Spanish conquest. In characterizing the elemental composition of archaeological pottery, Laser Ablation...
Cubism, History and Narrative in Archaeology: shifting borders and disciplinary boundaries from New Mexico to California (2015)
Throughout his career David Hurst Thomas' work has stretched the disciplines of archaeology and history in novel and unexpected directions. Mr. Thomas essay on cubism and archaeology is one such example. This essay traces the shifts in borderlands archaeology using Thomas' powerful metaphor, and demonstrates the unique creativity and flexibility that characterizes Thomas' approach to the past. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center...
Discovering the Blue Ridge Exploradores: Celebrating Thirty Years of Public Engagement at the Berry Site (2017)
Juan Pardo and his men arrived in western North Carolina 450 years ago hoping to establish an overland route from the capital of Spanish Florida at Santa Elena (Parris Island, SC) to the silver mines of Zacatecas, Mexico. Excavations at one of the Pardo-established forts (known as Fort San Juan, Joara, and the Berry Site) began in 1986. Public engagement has been a key component from the first field season. This paper will discuss the evolving role outreach has played in the continuing...
The "Discovery" of the Spanish Sea: First Encounters and Early Impressions (2016)
Today, the Gulf of Mexico is known for its abundant marine life, seafood industries, offshore oil and gas development, and as ground zero for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. To the first Spanish expeditions that "discovered" and explored this immense water body in the 16th century, the Gulf was an enigmatic sea. Spain’s earliest attention focused on establishing ports and settlements along the southern Gulf coast and Caribbean islands to consolidate control in the New World. As the...
Elite domestic spaces and daily life in a reduccion (2017)
The archaeology of Spanish colonialism in the Andean region is coming into increasing focus with the documentation of Spanish colonial doctrinas and reducciónes, along with the excavation of religious structures, public spaces, and elite and common indigenous households. However, we still lack a clear comparative diachronic perspective of how Spanish colonialism affected the daily lives and values of indigenous Andean peoples. This paper presents the results of the 2016 excavations of three...
Finishes and Flourishes: Ceramic Encounters at the Edges of Empire in Spanish Colonial Central Mexico (2017)
Spanish colonialism introduced a host of new pottery types to Indigenous peoples in central Mexico, creating material entanglements not present in the preceding Aztec imperial context. However, the possibilities afforded by these newly-arrived objects were not inevitable. This paper examines how several households at the peripheral Indigenous town of Xaltocan selectively and creatively consumed, appropriated, ignored, and rejected Spanish iconographic and technological elements. This analysis...
Global Currents and Local Currents in Northern La Florida: Recent Finds at the Berry Site in Western North Carolina (2018)
Spanish exploration and colonization of the American South encompassed a great deal of movement, including the movements of Spanish conquistadors, flows of goods to coastal entrepots and inland along the routes of Spanish entradas, rearrangements of Native American groups within the cultural landscape, and practices of placemaking that created common ground and borders between natives and newcomers. One site at which to consider these dimensions of the Spanish colonialism in La Florida is the...
Indigenous Appropriations of Spanish Metal Goods in Southeastern North America (2017)
Broadly speaking, iron and copper-alloy objects of Spanish origin in southeastern North America seem to fall into three categories that variably dominate from one site to another: 1) essentially unaltered; 2) trade goods modified by Europeans to conform to Native American demand; 3) assemblages that consist of both categories 1 and 2, but were re-worked by Native Americans. This diversity was a complex product of the convergence of structure, agency, and serendipity. The timing and nature of...
Investigating Activities in Spanish Colonial Ranches in 17th-Century New Mexico (2015)
In 17th-century New Mexico, Spanish colonists’ households were an important location for ethnogenesis as colonists and indigenous Pueblo peoples together labored at basic subsistence activities. LA 20,000, a Spanish ranch located about 12 mi southwest of Santa Fe, has the potential to shed light on colonists’ activities and their interactions with indigenous Pueblo and Plains peoples. This site is the most complex rural ranch of the period, with extensive architecture and material culture. Using...
A Lithic Analysis of Paraje San Diego, New Mexico, United States (2017)
For nearly three hundred years of official use, with long periods of unofficial use both pre- and post-dating the road, the Camino Real del Tierra Adentro served as one of the major conduits of transportation in New Mexico. Along the route, campsites, known as parajes, were established to provide adequate stopping points and access to resources for the variety of travelers which used the road. Paraje San Diego, one of the most established of these stopping points in the Jornada del Muerto, was...
Monumental Haciendas: The Spanish Colonial Transformation of Pre-Columbian Seats of Power in Northern Ecuador (2018)
Early Spanish colonial accounts of northern highland Ecuador were exceptionally verbose about Inka imperial frontier architectural feats, however these same writings are silent on regional ethnic groups’ pre-Inka monumental earthen platform mound creations, known as tolas. This is in exceptional contrast to the detail provided in then-contemporary Spanish accounts of similar earthen structures in the U.S. Southeastern Woodlands. Tolas could tower over the regional landscape up to 20 m tall and...
Placing Intramuros in global history: Insights from the ceramic consumption in Spanish Manila (2017)
Manila was a critical link between Asia, Europe, and the New World during a pivotal period in world history; however, little attention has been paid to its colonial live. This paper aims to fill this void by re-examining consumption patterns of various types of ceramics excavated from sites in the Spanish walled city. The result shows that the Spanish colonists consumed better products than other subordinate groups and demonstrated their power by using customized Chinese goods rather than their...
Political Economy, Praxis, and Aesthetics: The Institutions of Slavery and Hacienda at the Jesuit Vineyards of Nasca, Peru (2016)
At the time of its expulsion from the Spanish Empire in 1767, the Society of Jesus was among the largest slaveholders in the Americas. The two Jesuit Nasca estates (San Joseph and San Xavier) were their largest and most profitable Peruvian vineyards, worked by nearly 600 slaves of sub-Saharan origin. Their haciendas and annex properties throughout the Nasca valleys established agroindustrial hegemony in the region. This paper explores the political and economic dynamics among enslaved subjects...
Post-AD 1600 Origins of the Ifugao Rice Terraces: Highland Responses to Spanish Colonial Aims in the Philippines (2015)
Local wisdom and nationalist sentiments would have us uphold the long-held belief in the age of the Ifugao Rice Terraces, pegged at ca. 2,000 years old. Recent findings by the Ifugao Archaeological Project (IAP), however, indicate that landscape modification (terraced wet-rice cultivation) intensified between c. AD 1600 and AD 1800, suggesting increased demand for food, which could indicate population growth, a period that coincided with the arrival and subsequent occupation of the Spanish of...