Game Theory, Chaos Theory, and the Archaeology of Indigenous Responses to Global Spanish Colonialisms

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Dominant historical narratives have favored interpretations that conquered groups yielded to the political and economic might of colonizing powers. Recent models in archaeology, however, emphasize that indigenous responses to colonialism are more complex than succumbing or capitulating to colonial and imperial hegemony, and that indigenous peoples significantly shaped the historical courses of culture contact. This paper considers the applicability of game theory and chaos theory towards explaining indigenous engagements with Spanish colonists in the Philippines and the Native American South. These cases offer examples of indigenous groups making decisions and pursuing strategies meant to ensure that local communities would both survive and thrive in changing geopolitical landscapes, including cases in which groups resisted or accommodated colonial enterprises, or both at once. For example, the Ifugao of the Philippines shifted from dry-rice to wet-rice cultivation after Spanish contact. Although the Spanish colonial regime favored wet-rice cultivation, this practice generated monetary power and political capital for the Ifugao, and enabled successful resistance by the Ifugao to Spanish colonial hegemony. Archaeological and historical sources illustrate that Native American groups navigated and managed the Spanish colonial presence in the American South within indigenous frameworks of warfare and diplomacy, trade and exchange, and monumentality.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32391