The Archaeology Of Spanish And Mexican Colonialism In The American Southwest

Winner of the 2017 Arizona Literary Award for Published Nonfiction Focusing on the two major areas of the Southwest that witnessed the most intensive and sustained colonial encounters, New Mexico and the Pimería Alta compares how different forms of colonialism and indigenous political economies resulted in diverse outcomes for colonists and Native peoples. Taking a holistic approach and studying both colonist and indigenous perspectives through archaeological, ethnohistorical, historical, and landscape data, contributors examine how the processes of colonialism played out in the American Southwest. Although these broad areas—New Mexico and southern Arizona/northern Sonora—share a similar early colonial history, the particular combination of players, sociohistorical trajectories, and social relations within each area led to, and were transformed by, markedly diverse colonial encounters. Understanding these different mixes of players, history, and social relations provides the foundation for conceptualizing the enormous changes wrought by colonialism throughout the region. The presentations of different cultural trajectories also offer important avenues for future thought and discussion on the strategies for missionization and colonialism. The case studies tackle how cultures evolved in the light of radical transformations in cultural traits or traditions and how different groups reconciled to this change. A much needed up-to-date examination of the colonial era in the Southwest, New Mexico and the Pimería Alta demonstrates the intertwined relationships between cultural continuity and transformation during a time of immense change and highlights contemporary thought on the colonial experience. Contributors: Joseph Aguilar, Jimmy Arterberry, Heather Atherton, Dale Brenneman, J. Andrew Darling, John G. Douglass, B. Sunday Eiselt, Severin Fowles, William M. Graves, Lauren Jelinek, Kelly L. Jenks, Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, Phillip O. Leckman, Matthew Liebmann, Kent G. Lightfoot, Lindsay Montgomery, Barnet Pavao-Zuckerman, Robert Preucel, Matthew Schmader, Thomas E. Sheridan, Colleen Strawhacker, J. Homer Thiel, David Hurst Thomas, Laurie D. Webster

Spanish-led entradas—expeditions bent on the exploration and control of new territories—took place throughout the sixteenth century in what is now the southern United States. Although their impact was profound, both locally and globally, detailed analyses of these encounters are notably scarce. Focusing on several major themes—social, economic, political, military, environmental, and demographic—the contributions gathered here explore not only the cultures and peoples involved in these unique engagements but also the wider connections and disparities between these borderlands and the colonial world in general during the first century of Native–European contact in North America. Bringing together research from both the southwestern and southeastern United States, this book offers a comparative synthesis of Native–European contacts and their consequences in both regions. The chapters also engage at different scales of analysis, from locally based research to macro-level evaluations, using documentary, paleoclimatic, and regional archaeological data. No other volume assembles such a wide variety of archaeological, ethnohistorical, environmental, and biological information to elucidate the experience of Natives and Europeans in the early colonial world of Northern New Spain, and the global implications of entradas during this formative period in borderlands history.

“Compelling new evidence, careful documentation, and an artfully woven narrative make The Archaeology of Ethnogenesis a path-breaking book for sociocultural scholars as well as for general readers interested in the politics of identity, ethnicity, gender, and the colonial and U.S. Western history.”—Transforming Anthropology “Voss’s lucid explanations of method and theory make the book accessible to a broad range of audiences, from upper-level undergraduate and graduate students to professionals and lay audiences. . . . Its interdisciplinarity, indeed, may help to sell archaeology to audiences who do not typically consider archaeological evidence as an option for identity studies.”—Current Anthropology “The book reminds historians that other disciplines can offer fruitful methodological forays into well-trodden areas of study.”—Journal of American History “Those scholars studying various aspects of the Hispanic worldwide empire would be well advised to peruse Voss’s work.”—Historical Archaeology “[W]ell written, theoretically sophisticated, and unburdened by abstract concepts or hyper-qualified verbiage.”—H-Net Reviews “[E]ngaging. Overall, the text belongs in the library of every student of Spanish and Mexican Alta California. . . . The Archaeology of Ethnogenesis will become an anthropological standard.”—Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology “[A] must-read for all interested not only in colonial California, but for all historical archaeologists and to any archaeologist interested in the examination of identities.”—Cambridge Archaeological Journal “Shows how individuals negotiate ethnic identity through everyday objects and actions.”—SMRC Revista In this interdisciplinary study, Barbara Voss examines religious, environmental, cultural, and political differences at the Presidio of San Francisco, California, to reveal the development of social identities within the colony. Voss reconciles material culture with historical records, challenging widely held beliefs about ethnicity.

Archaeologists, anthropologists, historians, and Native American scholars offer new views of the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 that emphasize the transformative roles of material culture in mediating Pueblo Indian strategies of resistance and Colonial Spanish structures of domination.

Published in cooperation with the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies, Southern Methodist University Settlers at Santa Fe and outlying homesteads during the seventeenth century established a thriving economy that saw the exchange of commodities produced by indigenous peoples, settlers, and Franciscan friars for goods manufactured as far away as China, France, and Turkey. This early Spanish colonial period in New Mexico provides an opportunity to explore both economic activity within a colony and the relations between colony and homeland. By examining the material remains of this era from 1598 to 1680, Heather Trigg reveals a more complete picture of colonial life. Drawing on both archaeological and historical sources, Trigg analyzes the various levels of economic activity that developed: production of items in colonial households, exchanges between households, and trade between the colony and Mexico. Rather than focusing only on the flow of products and services, she also explores the social mechanisms that likely had a significant impact on the economic life of the colony. Because economic activity was important to so many aspects of daily life, she is able to show how and why colonial society worked the way it did. While focusing on the colonists, she also explores their relations with Pueblo peoples. Through her analysis of these two pools of data, Trigg generates insights not usually gleaned from the limited texts of the period, providing information about average colonists in addition to the governors and clergy usually covered in historical accounts. By using specific examples from historical documents and archaeological materials, she shows that colonists from all levels of society modified both formal and informal rules of economic behavior to better fit the reality of the colonial frontier. With its valuable comparative data on colonization, From Household to Empire provides a novel way of examining colonial economies by focusing on the maintenance and modification of social values. For all readers fascinated by the history of the Southwest, this book provides a fuller picture of life in early New Mexico than has previously been seen.

"Illustrated in color throughout, The California Missions: History, Art, and Preservation combines engaging text with historical paintings, archival photographs, and recent photography to create a vivid chronicle of these iconic institutions. The narrative recounts their founding and early history, surveys mission art and architecture, and examines their role in shaping the history and culture of California. A final chapter discusses recent advances in preserving the mission heritage for future generations. The second part of the book provides concise historical profiles for each of the twenty-one missions." --Book Jacket.