Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marlieke Ernst. Corinne Hofman.

Placed within the context of the ERC-NEXUS1492 research, this paper focusses on transformations in indigenous social and material worlds in Early Colonial Hispaniola. The initial intercultural encounters in the New World have led to the creation of entirely new social identities and changing material culture repertoires in the first decennia after colonization. The incorporation of European earthenwares in the indigenous sites of El Cabo and Playa Grande will be contrasted with the presence of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Perry Gnivecki. Mary Jane Berman.

There are numerous examples of material and bodily flows (e.g., human transfer, enslavement) between the Lucayans and the Spanish during the period of late fifteenth and early sixteenth century colonial encounters. A variety of indigenous and Spanish items circulated, as relationships were established. These are known from ethnohistoric accounts and archaeological evidence from several different islands and sites located in the Bahama archipelago, including San Salvador, Andros, Long Island,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Menno Hoogland. Corinne Hofman.

During the colonisation processes, vast webs of social relationships emerged between Amerindians, Europeans, and Africans in the Lesser Antilles. The intercultural dynamics that materialized during this period were likely contingent on local and regional networks of peoples, goods and ideas which had developed in the Caribbean over the previous 5,000 years. This paper focusses on the impacts of colonial encounters on indigenous Carib societies by studying transformations in settlement pattern...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shea Henry.

In June 1503, Columbus and his two battered ships were run aground in the sheltered harbor of St. Anns Bay Jamaica, 1.4 kilometers from the Taino village of Maima. After spending a year marooned there, the Spanish left with the knowledge of the people and resources of the area. Six years later, in 1509, the Spanish returned to found the Jamaican colonial capital of Sevilla la Nueva. By the time Sevilla la Nueva was abandoned in 1534, Maima was deserted. Historical records kept by the colonists...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Roberto Valcárcel Rojas. Menno Hoogland.

Northeastern Cuba, particularly the modern-day province of Holguin, is one of the areas of the Caribbean with the largest number of indigenous sites yielding European objects. In the sixteenth century, most of these sites maintained direct or indirect links with Europeans, while others were transformed into permanent colonial spaces by the Spaniards. The study of European objects found at these sites suggests that some of these items were acquired through exchange or as gifts. However, the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jaime Awe.

As a number of researchers who have focused attention on Maya – Spanish interaction along the Belize colonial frontier have noted, the relationship between these two contrasting cultures was anything but amicable. As a result of this bellicose relationship, few material goods of European origin were traded into frontier settlements. The only exception were a few objects that were brought in by overzealous friars as gifts to the "heathen" Maya they sought to convert to their Christian faith. And...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Rus Sheptak. Rosemary Joyce.

Archaeological excavations in Caribbean coast Honduras explored the site of Ticamaya, described in 16th-century Spanish documents as the seat of a leader of indigenous resistance. Yet despite testing confirmed deposits from the period covering initial conflict with the Spanish, roughly 1520-1536, these excavations produced no use of European goods until the late 18th century. Contemporary with Ticamaya, the site of Naco to the west hosted troops sent by Cortes, and at least one majolica vessel...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Cobb. James Legg.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only William Fowler. Jeb C. Card.

Mapping and excavations of the Conquest-period and early colonial site of Ciudad Vieja, the ruins of the first villa of San Salvador, El Salvador, afford a view of material culture encounters and indigenous transformations in northern Central America. The Ciudad Vieja archaeological research has focused on material culture encounters between Spanish and indigenous populations in the realms of landscape, architecture, technology, economy, society, and religion. The time span for Ciudad Vieja runs...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrzej T. Antczak. Maria Magdalena Antczak.

Little is known from the present-day archaeological perspective of early colonial realities of Margarita and Coche islands located in north-eastern Venezuela, in the state of Nueva Esparta. Moreover, the island of Coche has never been surveyed archaeologically. This paper discusses the preliminary results of systematic archaeological surveys of Coche and the southern coast of Margarita Island, carried out within the frame of the Nexus 1492 ERC research project coordinated by Leiden University....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Shannon Iverson.

Archaeological assemblages from two early colonial religious sites at Tula, Hidalgo, are nearly indistinguishable from pre-Columbian assemblages at the same sites. These findings indicate that colonial changes in material culture were much more gradual than we expected, and driven to a surprising degree by Indigenous traditions and aesthetic prerogatives. These data led us to reconsider various models of social change that would adequately account for the observations of material culture at...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alberto Sarcina.

What kind of relationships were created between the indigenous people of the western region of the Gulf of Urabá (Colombia) and the Spaniards in the early years of the conquista? What happened in Santa Maria de la Antigua del Darién (1510-1524), the first European city founded on the American mainland, in the course of its short history, and immediately after its abandonment? We have a number of clues that can be drawn from contemporary historical sources (Oviedo), sources immediately following...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Floris Keehnen.

This paper discusses the cultural implications of European materials recovered from early colonial indigenous spaces on the island of Hispaniola. The exchange of exotic valuables was vital for the emergent relationships between European colonists and indigenous peoples during the late 15th- and early 16th-century Caribbean. As the colonial presence became more pressing and intercultural dynamics more complex, formerly distinct material worlds increasingly entangled. Archaeologists have long...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Clay Mathers.

Although conflict and conquista campaigns characterized many of the earliest encounters between Native and European groups in New Spain and La Florida, the transformation of objects, communities, and strategic policies in these areas was locally variable and changed dramatically by the close of the sixteenth century. Materials characteristic of these changes and variegated responses are found widely in the archaeological record of the American Southwest, but have seldom been explored for the...