The Religious Network in the Early Spanish Colonialism in Asia: A Comparative Study of Seventeenth-Century Church Sites in Archaeological Contexts

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Evangelization of China and Japan was one of the missions of Spanish colonial projects in Asia, and churches, as critical monuments in colonial landscapes, could be an access to investigate European colonial activities. However, unlike the rich studies of missionary archaeology in the Americas, although some church sites have been excavated or documented in recent years in Asia, their meanings and connections in local and regional contexts have not been explored. Based on network theory, the present project compares several seventeenth-century church sites, including Santo Domingo Church site (Nagasaki, Japan), Todos los Santos Church site (Keelung, Taiwan), Iglesia de San Michael Arcangel ruin (Nassiping, Philippines), and Saint Raymond of Peñafort Parish Church (Rizal, Philippines), in order to investigate the development of the religious network, especially those of the Dominicans, in early Spanish colonialism. The focus includes the colonial contexts of the sites, construction materials, building techniques, designs, orientations, and associated archaeological findings. Through these architectural remains, the persistence and flexibility of the missionary agenda are partially revealed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36024.0