From Slavery to Servitude: Approaching Hacienda Worker Health through Transformations in Labor and Foodways in Nineteenth-Century South Coastal Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to the Archaeology of Health: Sewers, Snakebites, and Skeletons" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The nineteenth century was a dynamic period for hacienda workers on the south coast of Peru. Once Jesuit vineyards with two of the largest enslaved Afro-descended populations in rural coastal Peru, the haciendas of San José and San Javier and their annexes in Nasca’s Ingenio Valley underwent dramatic changes with the replacement of their grapevines with cotton, and the introduction of new types of workers. Cantonese indentured workers were contracted beginning in the 1830s, and 1855 brought legal emancipation to the majority enslaved workforce. Seasonally, highland Andean workers joined the demographically shifting permanent hacienda population. This paper uses evidence from excavated midden contexts at San Javier, San José, and San José’s annex of Hacienda La Ventilla to explore these changing agroindustrial dynamics and worker health through the lenses of labor and foodways.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Approaches to the Archaeology of Health: Sewers, Snakebites, and Skeletons

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32080