Labor Relations and Ceramic Technology in Spanish Northwest Florida (1698-1763)

Summary

This is a poster submission presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Archaeologists have traditionally applied a dichotomy to the classification of ceramics recovered from Northwest Florida presidios, reflecting broad assumptions about labor relations in the Spanish Southeast U.S. Ceramic sorting typically begins with the assumption that low-fired, hand-formed wares were produced by Native potters of the Southeast U.S. High-fired, wheel-thrown, or lead-glazed pottery are sorted as European-style imports. Recent technological style analysis and provenance studies indicate another possibility. That is, colonists of mixed Spanish, Native, and African descent from Mexico were producing pottery in Northwest Florida. I present evidence for the local production of ceramics by colonists at the presidios and briefly consider implications for the understanding of labor relations in this region of the Spanish American empire.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• 2023 SHA Poster Submissions

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow