Early Colonial Material Entanglements at Tlaxcallan, Mexico: Insights from a Polychrome Ceramic Sherd Disk

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Plus Ultra: An examination of current research in Spanish Colonial/Iberian Underwater and Terrestrial Archaeology in the Western Hemisphere." , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In October 1519, the fiercely independent Tlaxcallan state first sent aid for Cortés’s conquest efforts, establishing a community of people who identified as Indigenous conquerors. By the mid-16th century, Indigenous peoples in Tlaxcala had forged a thriving community, though they remained Spanish subjects. This presentation explores the process of creative appropriation and material engagement as Indigenous conquerors negotiated their roles within this entangled social context. It does so through a detailed examination of a single hybrid artifact: a polychrome sherd disk featuring painted designs echoing Spanish accounting scripts, recovered in an early Colonial household midden. Drawing on Conneller’s updated chaîne opératoire framework, the sherd disk is traced back in time and across space, a process that takes us in many different, “rhizomatic” directions, and to many distinct materials. Tracing these materials and their encounters provides insight into social change and the active creation and maintenance of traditions under Spanish colonialism.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Plus Ultra: An examination of current research in Spanish Colonial/Iberian Underwater and Terrestrial Archaeology in the Western Hemisphere.

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 931