Room for All: A Pluralistic Approach to Privileged Spaces

Summary

During the 18th and 19th centuries, California Rancho adobe residences were the center of daily interactions between laborers, visitors, traders, owners, and overseers. Common interpretive recreations of the region’s adobe residences emphasize the land owners and residential uses of adobe structures. This is done to the exclusion of understanding the pluralistic nature of the adobe uses in space and time, and the diverse community of colonists and indigenous laborers who worked and lived within these adobes. In this paper, we focus on artifacts related to indigenous practices recovered from Rancho household spaces, such as flaked stone materials and modified imported goods. In doing so, we illuminate how Rancho adobes in California’s central coast can be conceptualized as pluralistic spaces in which indigenous traditions were maintained within privileged family spaces.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeology of Spanish and Mexican Ranchos: Daily life, labor, and heritage management   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2017

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 380