An Exploration of the Moral Ecologies of Spanish and English Colonists in North America

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Environmental Intimacies: Political Ecologies of Colonization and Anti-Colonial Resilience", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Particularly during the early years of Spanish and English colonies in North America, the relationships colonists created with the environment were focused on subsistence production. Colonists’ practices in these efforts frequently entangled Indigenous people. Despite introducing many of the same plants and animals, Spanish and English colonists had markedly different engagements with the Indigenous peoples and lands they colonized. Establishing the complex relationships among colonizers, novel environments, and Indigenous people was facilitated by colonizers’ moral ecologies – the internal system of right and wrong each community has for justifying actions. Spanish and English colonists arrived with different moral ecologies, which provided them with different understandings of their place and goals in relation to land and people. Here we use archaeological data and the concept of moral ecology to explore the different the human-environment relationships Spanish colonists in New Mexico and English colonists in New England created during the 17thcentury.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Environmental Intimacies: Political Ecologies of Colonization and Anti-Colonial Resilience   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow