Placemaking through Objects: The Global World in 19th Century Towns in the Philippines

Summary

This paper will explore the idea of placemaking in Philippine towns established in the latter part of 19th century AD under the Spanish colonial period. The Spanish regime through the Laws of the Indies significantly altered the indigenous concepts of territory and space. I propose that the Europeanised local elites straddled between the European and indigenous ideas of boundaries and space. Following the colonial religious and administrative boundaries and the customary notions of interactions, I hypothesise that the rise of the middle class, referred to as ilustrados, marked their new place in the landscape through the acquisition of foreign items. These foreign items, commonly seen as status symbols, have a wider impact in the notion of placemaking. I will integrate archaeological model of interactions, political economy model, and placemaking in urban planning to interpret the presence of foreign objects in areas considered to be peripheries.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20321