From The Leaves On The Trees In The Forest To The Stones And Sands Of The River: Archaeobotanical Investigations Of Spanish New Mexican Land Use

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 17th-century New Mexico, subsistence activities were the major ways Spanish colonists engaged plants and created landscapes. Colonists’ relationships with plants were developed through a combination of existing notions of human-environment interactions and the creation of new practices that suited the social and environmental conditions in the colony. Documents reveal Spanish prescriptions for the way land was conceived, partitioned, and used, such as grazing lands, gardens, and common lands or ejidos. Archaeological analyses shed light on pragmatic implementation of land concepts and the nature of plant use. Here I use palynological data from cores and macrobotanical data from 17th-century sites, in conversation with documents, to explore how these relationships were created during the early years of the colony. Archaeobotanical analyses provide information about the variety of ways plants were used and the range of Spanish landscape types that were engaged.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• New Avenues in the Study of Plant Remains from Historical Sites   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology