Tales of Extinction: Natives in the Narratives of Early Colonial Panama, Historical Representations, and Archaeology

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Previous historical and archaeological narratives on colonial Panama emphasize the annihilation of indigenous communities after European conquest. Although the Spanish occupation in Panama had devastating consequences on the local population through epidemic diseases, war, and slavery, the documentary evidence provides insights on different ways local populations negotiated and adapted to their new situation. Inspired by postcolonial debates that introduced the notions of agency into archaeology, this paper explores indigenous responses to colonial occupation in Panama using sixteenth and seventeenth-century documents. This revision of documentary evidence brings forth different native strategies that have gone unnoticed both in historical and archaeological interpretations. In this paper, I will discuss the problem of historical representations and the impact of these narratives on the colonial Panamanian period archaeological research.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26028