Communal Ritual, Communal Feasting, and the Creation of Community in Colonial-Era Los Angeles

Summary

This paper examines archaeological and ethnohistoric data that speak to the role of communal events and practices in the creation and maintenance of real and imagined communities during the colonial era for native people in the Los Angeles Basin. Communal ritual and associated feasting had a long tradition in this region, and persisted into the colonial era despite the incorporation of many native people into Mission San Gabriel and the Pueblo of Los Angeles. Archaeological data suggest such communal activities served to sustain native communities, in part by creating persistent places of memory and commemoration in the rapidly changing colonial landscape revealed especially by mission records.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The Forging of Communities in Colonial Alta California, 1769-1834

Keywords

Spatial Coverage