Competing with the Crown: Early Spanish Mission Settlement Decisions in a Human Behavioral Ecology Model

Summary

Models developed from principles in human behavioral ecology have long benefited archaeological research. Drawing on natural features in the modern landscape, locations of prehistoric settlements can be evaluated in terms of calculable suitability. Such models also have predictive potential, as they can rank loci in terms of any combination of environmental conditions appropriate to the archaeological context being investigated. Where available, careful examination of ethnohistoric and cartographic documentation have pointed to parsimonious locations validated by excavation. When this documentation is unavailable, surface collections or remote sensing will afford some surveyed areas a second look. Such has been the case for the archaeology of many 16th- and 17th-century Spanish missions in the Southeast U.S. This paper considers environmental conditions and cultural landscapes encountered by Spanish missionaries, confirmed mission loci, and the royal directives for new mission towns as criteria for a testable, predictive model of early Spanish mission settlement locations. Using the ideal despotic distribution as a scaffold, criteria in this model are affected by the competition between royal ordinances and the "realities" of the natural and social landscape experienced by 16th-century Spaniards as they navigated the Atlantic coast of La Florida.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22486