Glass in Colonial and Early Independent Mexico: Investigating its Context of Use and Symbolic Value

Summary

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

After arriving in Mexico in the 16th century, glass, and the technology to make it, slowly found their way into the everyday life of colonial populations in Mexico City, Puebla, and other areas of New Spain. While glass routinely appears in archaeological excavations of colonial and 19th-century contexts in Mexico, it is not as deeply studied as other colonial materials such as ceramics. Understanding how it was represented in art can offer us insights into its context of use and symbolic value, which can help us place the material in its social context and consider it in relation to other elements of material culture. By looking at representations of glass objects in colonial and 19th-century paintings, historical documents, and glass from Mexican museums and archaeological collections, this paper explores the place glass occupied in colonial and 19th-century Mexican society.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39723.0