Appropriating Fort San Juan: Daily Practice and Contested Space at the Berry Site

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Forts in Comparative, Global, and Contemporary Perspective", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

From December 1566 to March 1568, Captain Juan Pardo established a network of six small garrisons extending beyond the Atlantic Coast through modern-day North and South Carolina and across the Appalachian Mountains into eastern Tennessee. The first of these, Fort San Juan, was intended to serve as the base of operations for Spain’s imperial designs in the interior of northern La Florida, yet the subsequent destruction of all six forts during an Indigenous uprising brought these imperial ambitions to an unexpected end. Although short-lived, Pardo’s forts constitute the earliest Spanish presidio system in the Western Hemisphere. Two decades of archaeological research at the Berry site in North Carolina have revealed the location of Fort San Juan and the Indigenous context of its construction, use, and annihilation. Here we discuss this work in reference to the place, space, pace, and care of colonial fortifications more generally.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Colonial Forts in Comparative, Global, and Contemporary Perspective   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow