Missionization and Indigenous Foodways: Analyzing Mission-Era Shell Middens on St. Catherines Island, GA

Summary

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

In the 17th century the Mission de Santa Catalina de Guale was established on St. Catherines Island, GA, creating a pluralistic community of aggregated indigenous populations and Spanish missionaries. Previous discussions of the effects of Guale-Spanish interaction and the resulting redirection of indigenous labor upon traditional foodways on St. Catherines Island have lacked data regarding the invertebrate component of Guale diets during the Mission era (ca. 1565-1680 CE). This paper presents zooarchaeological analysis of invertebrate fauna recently collected from shell middens in five Mission-era pueblo neighborhoods on St. Catherines and discusses the significance of intra-community variation in molluscan collection and consumption. Stable isotope analysis conducted on oyster samples from the Mission-era will provide another avenue for examining the variation in collection practices between neighborhoods. The paper will also compare the summed Mission-era results to similar data from the Irene Period (ca. 1300-1580 CE) to assess the temporal change and continuity in indigenous subsistence strategies during missionization. This paper aims to look at what the maintenance and alteration of traditional Guale foodways reflects about the effects of colonization on their daily practices, identity, and social landscape.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25884