Spanish colonial (Temporal Keyword)
1-25 (26 Records)
The Mission San Antonio de Valero (known as The Alamo) was established in 1718, by Father Antonio Olivares. The mission was believed to be located in its first location for about 12 months before it was moved to a second location. The third and final location is where it is located today in Alamo Plaza. The first site location has been lost for almost 300 years. In February, 2013, Kay Hindes, City Archaeologist for the City of San Antonio located a number of artifacts that are colonial in age in...
37 Pounds of Beads!: Reconstructing Provenience and Looking for Change and Continuity in an Orphaned Collection (2017)
This paper aims to understand processes of change and continuity by examining how the introduction of European manufactured glass beads in the 16th-19th centuries affected preexisting native shell bead consumption strategies in Southern California. Data from two different coastal burial sites that were occupied by the Tongva/Gabrieliño people will be analyzed; one from an 1877 excavation on Santa Catalina Island that has virtually no provenience information, and another from more recent...
3D Printing an Archaeological Site Map: Photogrammetric Recording and Printing of the Pillar Dollar Wreck (2017)
During the 2016 East Carolina University field school at Biscayne National Park, photogrammetric data was collected to 3D print a sitemap using a ZCorp 3D printer. This printer is a resin-based printer that uses a 24-bit color pallet to print a full range of color. In addition to Photoscan, this process utilizes a free, open-source 3D rendering and animation software called Blender to perfect and render the model usable for 3D printing software. The sitemap was then 3D printed for use in the...
Adding and Subtracting: Manipulating Ceramic Manufacture to Signal Cultural Identity Among Indigenous Populations of the San Antonio Missions (2017)
The analysis of ceramic assemblages was a corner stone of Dr. Gilmore's approach to Spanish Colonial Studies. Following this tradition, the presentation uses the results of pertrographic analyses of native-made ceramics assemblages from several of the South Texas and coastal plains missions to track the manipulation of manufacture techniques among ethinically distinct indigenous groups. The combination of microscopic ceramic fabric characteristics with macroscopic decorative approaches suggest...
All Them Ditches: The Spanish Colonial Water Management System of San Antonio de Bexar (2017)
Remnants of one of the largest and most extensive Spanish Colonial acequia water systems in the United States can be found in San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. Acequias contributed to the flourishing of the missions and colonial farming settlements in San Antonio de Bexar. This extensive system of ditches redirected water in various parts of present day Bexar County for agricultural and household purposes. At least six principal acequias and numerous secondary branches have been identified with...
A Beta Test of the North American Gunflint Inventory by Volunteer Citizen Scientists at San Antonio Missions National Historical Park (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Archeology, Citizen Science, and the National Park Service" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In 2018 San Antonio Missions National Historical Park agreed to be a beta testing site for a new North American Gunflint Inventory Database project. This project is being developed by Steve Davis, publisher of the online journal Texas Archeology and History.org. It establishes a standard methodology for measuring and...
Conservation of a Spanish Breastplate from the 1559 Luna Colony (2020)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This poster recounts the 2017-2018 conservation process of a Spanish breastplate recovered after being submerged for over 400 years from the wreck site of the Emanuel Point I . The Emmanuel Point I is the name given to the first Spanish ship from the Luna Colony of 1559-1561, found by divers from the State of Florida and the students/staff of Archaeology Department of the University of...
Defining the 1722 Presidio de Bexar: A Closer Look at the 2018 Calder Alley Data Recover Investigations, Military Plaza, San Antonio Bexar County, Texas. (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plus Ultra: An examination of current research in Spanish Colonial/Iberian Underwater and Terrestrial Archaeology in the Western Hemisphere." , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In summer 2018, Raba Kistner Environmental, Inc., conducted archaeological data recovery investigations along San Pedro Creek in San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. The data recovery investigations focused on the eastern bank of the...
Diving into the PAST: Developing a Public Engagement Program for Pensacola’s Emanuel Point Shipwrecks (2016)
Remnants of Spain’s failed attempt to settle modern-day Pensacola in 1559, the Emanuel Point shipwrecks are legacies of Florida’s long colonial history. Community interest in the sites has been profound since the discovery of the Emanuel Point I wreck in 1992, but challenging dive conditions have limited opportunities for public access. After award of a grant to explore Emanuel Point II in 2014, the University of West Florida (UWF) Division of Anthropology and Archaeology began considering new...
An Early "Treasure" – Reexamining the 1554 Spanish Plate Fleet Shipwrecks of Texas at 50 years (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plus Ultra: An examination of current research in Spanish Colonial/Iberian Underwater and Terrestrial Archaeology in the Western Hemisphere." , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In April of 1554, three vessels from the Spanish plate fleet were blown off course during a storm and lost at Padre Island in modern-day Texas. Subsequent private salvage of these shipwrecks in the late 1960s resulted in the enactment...
Faunal Data from Calder Alley, San Antonio, Texas (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plus Ultra: An examination of current research in Spanish Colonial/Iberian Underwater and Terrestrial Archaeology in the Western Hemisphere." , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Raba Kistner recently conducted excavations in Calder Alley, located in downtown San Antonio, Texas, between the Presidio San Antonio de Béjar (traditionally known as the Spanish Governor’s Palace) and San Pedro Creek. Excavations...
The Foundation of Fransciscan Missions: Trial and Error and Implications for Archaeological Research and Resource Management (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plus Ultra: An examination of current research in Spanish Colonial/Iberian Underwater and Terrestrial Archaeology in the Western Hemisphere." , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The locations and layouts of Franciscan missions was prescribed in great detail by the Crown. Yet, as it often happens with rules and regulations and their implementations, the realities of building a shield against perceived or real...
Geo-locating Community Memory and Archaeological Heritage Via an Adaptive App (2018)
The New Mexican dicho "cada cabeza es un mundo," is especially true as hordes of tourists, academics, and others descend on rural northern communities and misunderstandings erupt between keepers of heritage places and those for whom those spaces are invisible. As the result of community-engaged archaeology, partnered research into historically-silenced pasts has led to expanding mandates for project deliverables. One innovation is the development of a smartphone-based historical tour for which...
Glass Beads at San Luis de Talimali: The Social Context and Spatial Distribution of Color (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plus Ultra: An examination of current research in Spanish Colonial/Iberian Underwater and Terrestrial Archaeology in the Western Hemisphere." , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Glass beads recovered from archaeological sites that date to the Spanish Colonial period of Florida’s history offer archaeologists an opportunity to refine site chronology, determine the origin of manufacture of the beads, and explore...
In Aguayo's Steps: From Thatched Jacals to Adobe Walls and Beyond--Archaeological Investigations at the 1722 site of the Presidio San Antonio de Bexar (2018)
From 2013 to 2014, the City of San Antonio hired CAR, UTSA to conduct archaeological monitoring and test excavations at the site of the 1722 Presidio San Antonio de Bexar, also known in the 19th and 20th centuries as the Plaza de Armas. The presidio represents one of the founding triad of mission, presidio and villa in what is modern day San Antonio. The 300th Anniversary of the founding of the City of San Antonio is being celebrated in 2018, and the discovery of archaeological deposits...
Investigating Spanish Colonial Features Using GPR in Urban Settings (2017)
Archaeologists at Raba Kistner Environmental, Inc. (RKEI) have been utilizing 3-D ground penetrating radar (GPR) surveys to rediscover Spanish Colonial features such as acequias and foundations in San Antonio, Texas. Many Spanish Colonial sites in San Antonio are located in urban settings and are often covered by roads, parking lots, and sidewalks. Use of 3-D GPR, archival research, and, in some cases, subsurface testing, has allowed us to determine under what geomorphological and burial...
The Luna Expedition: An Overview from the Documents (2017)
The 1559-1561 expedition of Tristán de Luna was the largest and most well-financed Spanish attempt to colonize southeastern North America up to that time. Had it succeeded, New Spain would have expanded to include a settled terrestrial route from the northern Gulf of Mexico to the lower Atlantic coast. While a hurricane left most of the fleet and the colony’s food stores on the bottom of Pensacola Bay just five weeks after arrival, the colonists nonetheless struggled to survive over the next...
Pottery in the colonies: the silent marker revisited (2013)
The contact between the European and the Native American worlds was the beginning of a period of conquest and colonization that disrupted the tradition of the native populations, giving pass to a new political, economical, religious, and town-planning period. While the first European foundations were just survival driven ones, they became a strategic foundation in order to develop a proper colonial enterprise. The European culture arrival into the Americas brought also a new material culture...
Recent Archaeological Investigations at Mission San Juan Capistrano, Texas: Indigenous Identity in Spanish Colonial and Modern Times. (2017)
This paper will discuss the results of the archaeological investigations that were conducted as part of the establishment of a platted reburial area at Mission San Juan. The discovery of human remains during the stabilization and restoration of the Mission San Juan church led to a creative partnership between the Archdiocese of San Antonio and the National Park Service to provide a respectful reburial area that complied with the Texas Health and Safety Code, and did not compromise the integrity...
Recent Archaeological Investigations at the 1559-1561 Settlement of Tristán de Luna y Arellano on Pensacola Bay (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plus Ultra: An examination of current research in Spanish Colonial/Iberian Underwater and Terrestrial Archaeology in the Western Hemisphere." , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Four years of archaeological investigations have now been conducted by the University of West Florida at the site of the port settlement established by Tristán de Luna y Arellano on Pensacola Bay in 1559, and devastated by the loss of...
Revisiting "Mission Impossible" and the other Zacatecan Missions of East Texas and West Louisiana (2017)
This presentation will give updates on the following 18th century Zacatecan Missions: Guadalupe, Dolores, and San Miguel. Mission Guadalupe has not been found--some clues to its location will be discussed. Kathleen Gilmore called Mission Dolores, "Mission Impossible," because she had difficulity locating it in the early 1970s. James Corbin of Stephen F. Austin State University (SFA) did eventually locate the site and conducted the major excavations in the mid-1970s and 1980s. A...
San Antonio Missions in the Late 18th Century - Decline or Success? (2018)
Discussion of the Spanish Colonial period in San Antonio in the last quarter of the 18th century often focuses on the decline of the missions, the lack of indigenous people in the missions and the crumbling structures. This characterization contradicts the successful completion of some of the most significant colonial structures in San Antonio such as the church at Mission San José. This paper will begin to look at evidence from the archeological and archival records that suggest that rather...
Set in Stone: A Look at What Archaeology and Archival Research Tells Us About the Construction of the Stone Church and Convento at Mission San Antonio de Valero (41BX6). (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plus Ultra: An examination of current research in Spanish Colonial/Iberian Underwater and Terrestrial Archaeology in the Western Hemisphere." , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. As archaeologists prepared for current excavations associated with the Church and Convento at Mission San Antonio de Valero (41BX6) in San Antonio, Texas, previous archaeological and archival research was revisited to piece together...
Site Study and Reconstruction of the Pillar Dollar Wreck, Biscayne Bay, Florida (2015)
Long known to treasure hunters, the "Pillar Dollar" Wreck in Biscayne Bay, Florida, remains relatively unstudied. Ballast scatters and some wooden structures are visible on the sand, though what remains buried underneath is still a mystery. This project aims to uncover that mystery, and, if possible, reconstruct the vessel in an effort to gain more information regarding its origins and identity.
Spanish Colonial Dam & Acequia Systems in Brackenridge Park San Antonio Texas (2018)
Report on archaeological investigations of two Spanish Colonial dams and associated irrigation canals (presas y acequias). The San Antonio de Valero begun in 1719 and the Labores de Arriba (or Upper Labor) begun in 1776. The Valero system supported irrigation for the eponymous Mission Pueblo. The Upper Labor system was for settlers in the Villa de San Fernando. Both systems have their headworks in the upper reach of the San Antonio River within the current Brackenridge Park. The Valero system...