Champagne and Angostura Bitters: Entertaining at a Galapagos Sugar Plantation, 1880-1904

Summary

From 1880 to 1904 Manuel J. Cobos ran the El Progreso Plantation in the highlands of San Cristóbal in the Galapagos Islands.  This operation focused on sugar, cattle, coffee, and fruit production, exploiting the labour of convicted prisoners and indentured peons from mainland Ecuador.  Excavation of the household midden in 2014 and 2015 demonstrates that Cobos imported a variety of goods that tied this remote location in Pacific South America to a global supply chain of luxury consumer products from Europe and beyond.  Visiting scientific expeditions remarked on the lavish nature of Cobos’ hospitality, made more remarkable by the remoteness of the agricultural village, and his eventual death at the hands of his own workers in 1904.

Cite this Record

Champagne and Angostura Bitters: Entertaining at a Galapagos Sugar Plantation, 1880-1904. Ross W. Jamieson, Fernando Astudillo, Florencio Delgado, Peter Stahl. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Washington, D.C. 2016 ( tDAR id: 434806)

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Keywords

General
alcohol Consumption Plantation

Geographic Keywords
Canada North America

Temporal Keywords
early 20th late 19th

Spatial Coverage

min long: -141.003; min lat: 41.684 ; max long: -52.617; max lat: 83.113 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 920