What Happened at Joara, Cuenca, and Fort San Juan: Archaeological Finds from the Berry Site in Western North Carolina

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Archaeologies of Contact, Colony, and Resistance" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Between 1566 and 1568, expeditions led by Captain Juan Pardo sought to establish permanent Spanish colonial towns and forts along an overland route connecting Santa Elena, the capital of La Florida, in coastal South Carolina, with New Spain and the rich silver mines near Zacatecas, Mexico. Written accounts chronicle the movements of Pardo himself and some of his men, and they record some of the major events that took place at Native American towns in the Carolinas and eastern Tennessee, but documentary sources only record the broad contours of what happened, and why. Written accounts also do not shed much light on how Native Americans themselves interpreted these developments, nor how they responded to the challenges and opportunities created by encounters and entanglements with Spanish conquistadors and colonists. This paper considers recent archaeological finds at the Berry site, in western North Carolina, the location of the Native American town of Joara and the Spanish colonial town of Cuenca and Fort San Juan, with particular emphasis on evidence about how the people of Joara managed interactions with colonial newcomers and neighbors, and impacts of Spanish colonial history on native groups in the northern borderlands of La Florida.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Archaeologies of Contact, Colony, and Resistance   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23666