Breaking and Making Identities: Transformations of Ceramic Repertoires in Early Colonial Hispaniola

Summary

Placed within the context of the ERC-NEXUS1492 research, this paper focusses on transformations in indigenous social and material worlds in Early Colonial Hispaniola. The initial intercultural encounters in the New World have led to the creation of entirely new social identities and changing material culture repertoires in the first decennia after colonization. The incorporation of European earthenwares in the indigenous sites of El Cabo and Playa Grande will be contrasted with the presence of indigenous ceramics and new manufacturing traditions in the early Spanish colonial sites of Cotuí and Concepción de la Vega. The transformation processes in ceramic repertoires will be assessed through a multi-pronged approach using theories of gift giving, appropriation and imitation combined with archaeological and ethnoarchaeological studies of the operational sequence (chaine opératoire) of ceramic manufacture. The paper presents new insights into the dynamics of Amerindian-European-African interactions, mutual influences and resilience at the onset of colonial encounters in the Americas.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15771