The Peninsula of Baja California, a Terra Ignota Before and Now

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The colonization process in the Baja California Peninsula began with the arrival of Hernán Cortés in Bahía de la Santa Cruz in 1535. Then, the peninsula was called Terra Ignota, a Latin term used in cartography for regions that have not been mapped or documented.

Its geographical isolation from the rest of New Spain made it a territory wrapped in fantasy and mystery for those first explorers and missionaries. Paradoxically, the peninsula remains Terra Ignota after almost 500 years of European contact. However, its geographical isolation has allowed it to be considered by many scientists as an archaeological, biological, and geological laboratory.

The accelerated impact caused by the colonization led the native communities to their total extinction from the Los Cabos region to El Rosario, northwest of the peninsula, leaving only a handful of ethnohistorical records on their cultural and religious practices.

For this reason, the Cochimi, who occupied almost half of the peninsular territory in its middle part, were a cultural group that we know little about but left abundant material records of their way of life, funerary practices, and religiosity.

Here, we present the results of three archaeological expeditions in different geographic settings of the Cochimi Desert.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39805.0