A Global Taste: Rethinking Foodways in Colonial New Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Chicanx Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

"I was a global creature before globalization became a buzzword; I am a Heinz 57, a mestizo with my taste buds on several continents" (Arellano 2014: 10).

Previous research on colonial-era foodways in New Mexico has often focused on the arrival and use of Old World foods as a way to maintain a distinct Spanish identity. Yet, many of the earliest colonists, despite claiming a peninsular identity, were born in Mexico and had mixed ethnic heritage. Later settlers continued to have highly diverse ethnic backgrounds, including indigenous Mexican, Native American, African and European, further complicating our notion of what "Spanish" meant during the colonial period. This paper considers what moving beyond the traditional Spanish versus Indigenous notion of foodways in New Mexico would mean for developing a Chicanx Archaeology of a Spanish land grant community. I present preliminary phytolith data from an ongoing study that offers insights into the ways that members of the community utilized both native and foreign plant species in their daily lives.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24443