Creating and Contesting Male Personhood on the Last Spanish Colonial Frontier

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Gender in Historical Archaeology (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Gender roles were an especially visible aspect of Spanish Colonial evangelization in Alta California. Part of the worldview Franciscan missionaries attempted to impart to Indigenous neophyte communities was a particular model of manhood, rooted in medieval European ideology and medicant philosophy. Missionaries also attempted to morally govern the gendered behavior of soldiers assigned to guard the missions. Neophytes and mission soldiers embodied alternative models of manhood to that espoused by the missionaries, however. This paper examines how male personhood was constructed and contested within the pluralistic mission community of San Antonio de Padua. I examine and compare two all-male mission households, occupied respectively by unmarried neophytes and colonizing soldiers assigned to guard the mission.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Gender in Historical Archaeology (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2021

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology