Foodways within the Alta California Mission System: Assessing Colonial and Indigenous Diet within Mission Santa Clara de Asís

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Chronicles of Colonialism: Unraveling Temporal Variability in Indigenous Experiences of Colonization in California Missions", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Within Alta California, research on Spanish mission sites has focused on how diverse Indigenous populations residing within mission settlements continued to incorporate traditional objects into their daily practices, as well as modify the production, exchange, and use of these items. This contribution examines the subsistence strategies and culinary traditions of Native Californians and Colonists who resided within Mission Santa Clara. These faunal assemblages from Mission Santa Clara are then evaluated alongside published faunal assemblages from Mission and Presidio settlements throughout Alta California, providing a regional understanding of subsistence strategies and culinary practices. The comparison between Colonial and Indigenous foodways progresses our understanding of the differing strategies employed in the procurement and utilization of domestic and wild food resources, representing a pattern of Indigenous foodway persistence and reorientation of culinary practices within the constraints of the Mission system.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Chronicles of Colonialism: Unraveling Temporal Variability in Indigenous Experiences of Colonization in California Missions

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow