British Ceramics in Indigenous, Colonial, and Post-Independence Latin America
Part of: Society for Historical Archaeology 2017
"Spanish America is free, and if we do not mismanage out affairs sadly, she is English" -George Canning, British Foreign Secretary, 1824
During the 18th century, British ceramics became one of the first consumer goods that marked the increasingly global scale in the movement of peoples and products. British ceramics penetrated colonial frontiers and were used by indigenous societies while some vessels made their way to Spanish colonial sites, overcoming trade regulations designed to prevent British goods from reaching Latin America. This session asks participants to examine the role of British ceramics in Spanish, Afro-Latino, and indigenous sites across Latin America. By investigating the exchange and consumption of British ceramics throughout Latin America, this session offers a perspective on interaction between the British and Spanish imperial systems, the daily lives of subaltern groups within these empires, and the interplay between consumer demand, material culture, and early globalization in the Americas.
Other Keywords
Ceramics •
Maya •
Identity •
Latin America •
Mining •
Commerce •
Plantation •
Iconography •
Slavery •
Sugar
Temporal Keywords
18th-19th Centuries •
18th and 19th centuries •
Colonial •
1800-1900 •
1850-1900 •
1700-1900 •
Late 19th-century/Early 20th-century •
1880-1904 •
1830-1899 •
18th century and the 19th century
Geographic Keywords
North America •
Massachusetts (State / Territory) •
New York (State / Territory) •
New Hampshire (State / Territory) •
Idaho (State / Territory) •
Maine (State / Territory) •
Wisconsin (State / Territory) •
Michigan (State / Territory) •
Washington (State / Territory) •
Minnesota (State / Territory)
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)
- Documents (10)
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British Ceramics at the Empire’s Edge: Economy and Identity Among Subaltern Groups in Late 19th-Century British Honduras (2017)
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Following the outbreak of the Caste War in the Yucatán (1847-1901), a group of approximately 1,000 Maya migrated into northwestern British Honduras (Belize) and settled 20 small villages. Far from the principal population centers of the Yucatán, the Petén, and Belize City, the only other inhabitants in this region were logging gangs predominantly composed of descendants of African slaves who seasonally inhabited the mahogany camps of the Belize Estate and Produce Company’s (BEC) vast land...
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British Ceramics, Indigenous Miners, and the Commercialization of Daily Practice in Late Colonial Huancavelica (2017)
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Throughout the 18th century, indigenous Andean miners at the Huancavelica mercury mine increasingly entered into wage labor agreements with Spanish mine owners in order to avoid the harsher conditions of the mita labor draft. This shift from forced to free labor increased the circulation of specie within the mining community, and as a result, the miners began increasingly participating in local, regional, and global markets. Drawing upon recent excavations at the indigenous mining settlement of...
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Ceramics, Foodways, and Identity in Bocas del Toro, Panama (2017)
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The Island of Isla Colon in the western Caribbean archipelago of Bocas del Toro, Panama has long been a place of trade and exchange. In the period shortly before Old World contact, different native groups visited the region producing an array of material evidence. Regionally diverse ceramics found on the island demonstrate a plethora of styles and traditions from both northern and southern regions during this ancient period. The practice of ceramic diversity on Isla Colon continued well into the...
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Mahogany and Sugar for Tobacco, Booze, and Salt-Pork: Consumerism and Consumption at 19th-Century Lamanai, Belize (2017)
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This presentation outlines archaeological research focused on the nineteenth-century, British sugar plantation settlement at Lamanai, northwestern Belize. Little is known about the eighteenth- and nineteenth- centuries at Lamanai, and this ongoing project aims to answer questions regarding how life (residential, industrial, and administrative) was structured. Archaeological data presented here includes the results of recent archaeological excavations (2014) and a study of previously excavated...
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The preferences for British earthenwares among 18th- and 19th-century Limeños: A perspective from the historical archaeology of the Casa Bodega y Quadra, Lima, Peru. (2017)
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Archaeological research at the Casa Bodega y Quadra, located in the historic city-center of Lima, Peru, has recovered of a large number of colonial and republican-era artifacts, including pottery sherds of a variety of types and origins. A percentage of these ceramics correspond to British earthenwares. This material evidence reflects the intense and sustained trade between England and Peru that developed at the close of the 18th century and the 19th century. This study examines the...
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Refined earthenware ceramics among enslaved Afro-Andeans at the post-Jesuit haciendas of San Joseph and San Xavier in Nasca, Peru (2017)
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In excavated contexts at the vinicultural haciendas of San Joseph and San Francisco Xavier de la Nasca, refined earthenwares of British manufacture first begin to appear in post-1767 strata. This period marks the Jesuit expulsion and the expropriation of the estates by the Spanish Crown. Administrators for the Crown likely found it difficult to replicate the material conditions on the haciendas under their Jesuit predecessors and turned to other exchange networks for provisioning the newly...
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To the ends of the Earth: European Tablewares in El Progreso, Galápagos (1880-1904) (2017)
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In 1878 Manuel J. Cobos founded a large-scale agricultural operation on the island of San Cristóbal, Galápagos. A merchant from the Ecuadorian coast, Cobos’ El Progreso operation, with 300 labourers at its peak, produced sugar, cane alcohol, leather, and a variety of other agricultural products exported to the city of Guayaquil on the Ecuadorian mainland. His home was several days sailing from Guayaquil to San Cristóbal, and 8 km uphill by oxcart or on horseback to the interior of the island....
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Tools of Royalization: British Ceramics at a Military Outpost on Roatán Island, Honduras (2017)
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During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the British Crown viewed the Caribbean as the geographical hub within which it would be able to obtain key resources and to challenge the growing power of the Spanish Empire. In 1742, Augusta was established as a British military outpost on Roatán Island, Honduras, because of its strategic location across the Bay of Honduras from the Spanish settlement of Trujillo. In this paper, I use the term "royalization" to refer to the strategies employed by...
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Venezuela between Spanish and English: an identity formed through images (2017)
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Previous analysis of ceramics from the historic center of Barcelona in Venezuela demonstrated that the decorative motifs of English ceramics and other European countries influenced the shaping of the identity of Barcelona during the 19th century. In this paper, we compare the Barcelona study with collections with the Historical Center of Caracas, in order to establish whether this change and unification of patterns and customs in everyday life was also reflected in the capital of Venezuela. This...
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You Don’t Have to Live Like a Refugee; Consumer Goods at the 19th Century Maya Refugee Site at Tikal, Guatemala (2017)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
In the mid-nineteenth century Maya refugees fleeing the violence of the Caste War of Yucatan (1857-1901) briefly reoccupied the ancient Maya ruins of Tikal. These Yucatec speaking refugees combined with Lacandon Maya, and later Ladinos from Lake Petén Itza to form a small, multi-ethnic village in the sparsely occupied Petén jungle of northern Guatemala. The following paper will discuss the recent archaeological investigation of the historic refugee village at Tikal, with a focus on the recent...