Household Craft Production at San Gabriel Mission, California

Summary

This is an abstract from the "AD 1150 to the Present: Ancient Political Economy to Contemporary Materiality—Archaeological Anthropology in Honor of Jeanne E. Arnold" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Over a decade of research, archaeologists working at San Gabriel Mission (active from 1771 to 1834) explored contexts outside of the mission quadrangle that revealed evidence of the numerous ways in which native residents navigated their colonial world, including areas of agricultural production, Native American ceremony, and Catholic ritual. Unique among these is an unusually well-preserved Native American house floor feature that contained evidence of domestic consumption and craft production, including fiber processing using ceramic spindle whorls. Set apart from the large-scale adobe housing blocks, communal kitchens, and collective production areas that were primary foci of the Franciscan missionary efforts, this small tule reed hut appears to have been a locus of more autonomous crafting, cooking, and dining. This paper compares the San Gabriel Mission household crafting assemblage to contemporary collections at California missions and native rancherias (villages), assessing the role each productive unit played in local economic systems.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• AD 1150 to the Present: Ancient Political Economy to Contemporary Materiality—Archaeological Anthropology in Honor of Jeanne E. Arnold   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38656.0