Methodological Considerations for Examining the "Slave Diet" at Colonial Wine Producing Estates in Nasca, Peru

Summary

The 2012-2013 season of the Haciendas of Nasca Archaeological Project focused on the recovery of material correlates of domestic production, consumption, and discard from two Jesuit coastal haciendas, San Joseph and San Xavier, where the majority of the labor was enslaved and of African descent. Our systematic analysis of macrobotanical remains and sediment samples aimed at branching our understanding of: a) colonial foodways beyond the Native Andean/European dichotomy, as several years of incorporation into a flourishing global economy had been underway by the time the Jesuits acquired the properties in the early 17th C; and b) the impact of the use of dry screening vs. flotation as processing techniques that yield different results with regards to quantity and quality of the materials recovered. The results of dry screening demonstrate that the enslaved population of San Xavier and San Joseph consumed fully domesticated animal and plant species of both New and Old World origin that either grew within or around the haciendas or that could be obtained through market transactions. Flotation results, on the other hand, were more sensitive to the presence of wild species.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Like Frejoles in a Pod: Examining the Current State of Paleoethnobotany in Peru   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage