Looking Beyond the Colonial/Indigenous Foods Dichotomy: Recent Insights into Identity Formation via Communal Foodways from Mission Santa Clara de Asís.

Summary

The Spanish Colonial mission complexes (churches, quadrangles, and outlying buildings and structures) brought about new order on native landscapes with the introduction of European urban planning. As a result, many researchers maintain that Old World plants and animals rapidly supplanted and displaced many types of native species, and they often define "wild" foods as supplemental to agricultural foods. Additionally, many scholars continue to support the notion that agriculture is an active practice of food production in contrast to the passive and marginalized state of hunters and gatherers. Using recent archaeological data from Mission Santa Clara, we argue that it is beneficial to think about all foods on equal grounds as possible resources available to a population. Instead of assuming superiority of colonial foods over traditional ones, we seek to understand how native peoples may have incorporated Spanish grains, fruits, vegetables and livestock into existing yet dynamic indigenous foodways.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Environmental Archaeology and Historical Ecology: Present and Future Directions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 743