Party on the Plaza: Risk and Resilience in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century New Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany Part 1" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Spanish colonial efforts in New Mexico began in 1598 with the establishment of a capital in Santa Fe, as well as missions, ranches, and farms. Documents from the early colonial period (AD 1598–1680) are rife with colonists’ concerns about the New Mexican environment, indicating struggles at the household scale to establish European-style agriculture in New Mexico. Eventually, mismanagement of the colony and cruel treatment of the local Pueblo peoples led to the 1680 Pueblo Revolt and the first colony’s abandonment. In 1692, the Spanish Crown recolonized New Mexico. Returning colonists faced major disruptions in the form of the rise of the Comancheria. However, in spite of these challenges, the second New Mexican colony proved more resilient. I examine plant microremains (phytoliths), macrobotanical remains, and ceramics from two sites, a LA20,000 (a seventeenth-century ranch) and the Plaza del Embudo (an eighteenth-century settlement) in order to reconstruct risk-management practices among the colonists. I explore the ways that seventeenth-century Spanish colonial risk management strategies differed from those of the eighteenth century and suggest that the colonists second colonial was more successful because of their greater knowledge of the local environment and stronger community ties.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Advances in Macrobotanical and Microbotanical Archaeobotany Part 1   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37960.0