Shifting Colonial Narratives at the Edge of the Spanish Colony: 15th-17th Century Maya Archaeology at Progresso Lagoon, Belize

Author(s): Maxine Oland

Year: 2019

Summary

This is an abstract from the "After Cortés: Archaeological Legacies of the European Invasion in Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

There is no question that colonialism in the Americas brought huge and unanticipated changes for both European and Indigenous peoples. Yet Indigenous people often contextualized colonial efforts within their own worldview, or ontology, even as they interacted with European people, things, and colonial structures. This was perhaps most true at the edges of colonies, where European supervision was minimal, and Indigenous lifeways were allowed to continue. This paper draws on colonial period research at Progresso Lagoon, Belize, to suggest that Maya and Spanish actors along the Belize frontier had fundamentally different understandings of colonial events. I argue that we can use archaeology and ethnohistory to deconstruct Eurocentric narratives of colonialism, and to re-envision the colonial experience through a Mayacentric worldview.

Cite this Record

Shifting Colonial Narratives at the Edge of the Spanish Colony: 15th-17th Century Maya Archaeology at Progresso Lagoon, Belize. Maxine Oland. Presented at The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Albuquerque, NM. 2019 ( tDAR id: 450620)

Keywords

Geographic Keywords
Mesoamerica: Eastern

Spatial Coverage

min long: -95.032; min lat: 15.961 ; max long: -86.506; max lat: 21.861 ;

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22855