After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

On April 21, 1519, Hernán Cortés landed on the coast of Veracruz and, as the saying goes, the rest is history. In this session, we challenge the notion that the Spanish invasion predestined the next 500 years of sociocultural change in Mesoamerica. Participants present innovative studies based on the archaeology of everyday life that show how Native communities and immigrant groups mediated macroregional economic shifts, power relations, resistance, religious conversion, technological innovation, consumption, and mestizaje through material practice. Participants use diverse sources of material, written, and ethnographic evidence to interrogate cause and effect. The short-term, singular voice contexts of written and oral histories are read against the long-term cumulative voice of the material record to reveal continuity and change from the sixteenth century to the present. The papers highlight the transformation of landscapes, households, religious institutions, markets, commodity production, craft workshops, agriculture and animal husbandry from locales across Mexico and Central America. The tangible and material legacies of the conquest in contemporary society, and the tales archaeologists tell that validate or discredit social memories of the invasion, are long overdue for explicit analysis.

Other Keywords
Historic • Historical Archaeology • contact period • Colonialism • Ethnohistory/History • Ceramic Analysis • figurines • Maya • Architecture • Survey

Geographic Keywords
United Mexican States (Country) • North America (Continent) • Belize (Country) • Tabasco (State / Territory) • Yucatan (State / Territory) • Corozal (State / Territory) • Quintana Roo (State / Territory) • Campeche (State / Territory) • Peten (State / Territory) • Orange Walk (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)

  • Documents (12)
Documents
  • 350 Years after the Conquest: British Influences on a Multiethnic Refugee Maya Community (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only James Meierhoff.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the late-nineteenth century, Maya refugees fleeing the violence of the Caste War of Yucatan (1847-1901) briefly reoccupied the ancient Maya ruins of Tikal. Unlike the numerous Yucatec refugee communities established to the east in British Honduras, those who settled at Tikal combined with Lacandon Maya, and...

  • Beyond First Encounters: Mechanisms of Social Transformation at the Colonial Port of Veracruz (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Krista Eschbach.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Port of Veracruz was significant not only as the landing site of Hernán Cortés, but also as a central gateway for European colonists and African slaves entering New Spain. First encounters between immigrants and natives had significant long-term consequences, but initial interactions were only a starting...

  • Crosses, Burned Churches, and Kidnapped Priests: Ambivalent Maya Catholics in 19th-century British Honduras (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Christine Kray. Minette Church. Jason Yaeger.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Spanish colonization of New Spain rested upon a pragmatic, yet conflicted, alliance between Cross and Crown. Following independence, many republican and neocolonial governments also relied on the soft power of the Church. In the 19th century, Yucatec Maya religious sentiments appear to have been indelibly...

  • From Narrative Picture Writing Bands to Pseudo Cartographies. How Native Scribes Invented Powerful New Media after the Conquest (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Viola Koenig.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have always believed that maps and cartographiies did exist in preconquest Mesoamerica. The large amount of early colonial Native maps seems to be evidence for such geographic media. But as yet, no pre-Hispanic lienzos and maps have become known. However, the earliest lienzos do show pre-Hispanic...

  • From the Canopy to the Caye: Two of Britain's Colonial Ventures in Nineteenth-Century Belize (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Tracie Mayfield. Simmons Scott.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the nineteenth century, Latin America was a hotbed of trade and commerce driven principally by extractive industries such as agriculture and hardwood collection. Such ventures required large injections of capital into the creation and maintenance of productive landscapes as well as for hiring, housing,...

  • Landscape with Bees: Apiculture in Yucatán after the Spanish Invasion (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Hector Hernandez. Mario Zimmermann. Rani Alexander.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper we examine how European colonization and the shift to industrial capitalism altered beekeeping in Yucatán from AD1600 to the present. Honey and wax produced from stingless bees were circulated throughout the Mesoamerican world system during the Postclassic period. In the wake of the European...

  • Lies the Spaniards Told (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Kepecs.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Spaniards characterized the northeast corner of Yucatán state as being demographically depleted and possessed of unhealthy terrain and a lack of exploitable minerals. This picture has been perpetuated by historians, who lack independent lines of evidence against which to check it. Yet archaeological...

  • Material Culture and Technological Innovation in Colonial Soconusco, Chiapas, Mexico (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Janine Gasco.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Soconusco region of Chiapas, Mexico, quickly attracted the attention of the Spanish invaders in the Early Colonial period because of the valuable cacao produced in the area. Intensive trade brought long-distance merchants to Soconusco bringing trade goods to exchange for cacao, as had been the case in the...

  • Mirrors of Time: Figurines in the New World Order (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Otis Charlton. Patricia Fournier.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Small ceramic figurines are ubiquitous in the preconquest central highlands of Mexico and are seemingly tied to household ritual. The arrival of the Spanish caused immense change at some levels, some reflected in these small objects. Archaeological evidence shows figurines briefly transitioning, but their...

  • The Peal of Domination at San Bernabé, Petén, Guatemala (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Pugh. Evelyn Chan. Katherine Miller Wolf.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 1718, Bishop Juan Gómez de Pareda, the 20th bishop of Yucatan, consecrated a number of bells destined for churches in what is now Petén, Guatemala. At least two of these bells swung in the San Bernabé mission church. The mission was established on the western end of the Tayasal peninsula in Petén, Guatemala...

  • Shifting Colonial Narratives at the Edge of the Spanish Colony: 15th-17th Century Maya Archaeology at Progresso Lagoon, Belize (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Maxine Oland.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. There is no question that colonialism in the Americas brought huge and unanticipated changes for both European and Indigenous peoples. Yet Indigenous people often contextualized colonial efforts within their own worldview, or ontology, even as they interacted with European people, things, and colonial...

  • "They came to loot our treasures": Indigenous, Pirates, and Indigenous-Pirates on the Mexican Pacific Coast (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Zborover. John Pohl.

    This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies show that the Spanish conquest of the Oaxacan Pacific Coast was shaped, and even orchestrated, by indigenous kingdoms (Zapotecs, Mixtecs) and allied groups (Pochutecs, Chontal) that vied for control over key trading ports. These same indigenous players continued their cycles of conflicts,...