Comales and Colonialism - Identifying Colonial Inequality through a Spatial Analysis of Foodways on a Seventeenth Century New Mexican Spanish Estancia.

Summary

During the late sixteenth and seventeenth century colonization of New Mexico by Spanish colonists and indigenous Mexican auxiliaries, rural ranches or estancias, were established in close proximity to autonomous Pueblo villages along the Rio Grande. These estancias were the setting for complex negotiations of colonial power structures which were based upon the exploitation of labor from indigenous peoples. At LA-20,000, an early colonial estancia located off a branch of El Camino Real near Santa Fe, people from a diverse array of backgrounds worked and lived, side-by-side, within the structures of Spanish colonialism. I will illustrate how the spatial distribution of foodway materials - ceramics, comales, hornos, and faunal remains - represent the daily negotiation of colonial inequality between Spanish landowners, Pueblo Indians, and enslaved Apache people.

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 486