Pottery in the colonies: the silent marker revisited

Summary

The contact between the European and the Native American worlds was the beginning of a period of conquest and colonization that disrupted the tradition of the native populations, giving pass to a new political, economical, religious, and town-planning period. While the first European foundations were just survival driven ones, they became a strategic foundation in order to develop a proper colonial enterprise. The European culture arrival into the Americas brought also a new material culture that modified the already existing native cultural world. At the same time, the European culture was also modified, and new cultural expressions emerged from these new complex societies. Pottery, as perdurable material remains, is a privileged record of these processes. Thus, chemical and technological analyses on majolica and glazed wares, as well as indigenous and European-influenced pottery, have been carried out from Spanish production centers and colonial sites in the Canary Islands and the Americas.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Territory, settlement and material culture in the Iberian colonial empires (16-18th centuries)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2013

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 587