The Iron in the Posthole: Witchcraft, Women's Labor, and Spanish Folk Ritual at the Berry Site (original) (raw)
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In recent years, circular earthworks have been documented in Galicia (NW Spain) that stand out slightly in the landscape, and which because of their apparent formal characteristics were considered as small fortified settlements dating from the Iron Age. However, the excavations carried out in two of these sites have revealed that they were not domestic in nature, and that they do not date from the Iron Age. The information from these two sites has made it possible to identify several more in field work that may have these same characteristics. The aim of this work is to present the new findings and the possible preliminary interpretations of these sites. At a contextual level, a part of the activities carried out in these circular sites may have been funerary, but at a territorial level, they serve to organise a completely new type of ritual landscape in the region.
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The Politics of Provisioning: Food and Gender at Fort San Juan de Joara, 1566-1568.
Beginning with Kathleen Deagan's description of the St. Augustine Pattern, in which domestic relations between Spanish men and Native American women contributed to a pattern of mestizaje in Spanish colonies, gender has assumed a central role in archaeological perspectives on colonial encounters. This is especially true for those encounters that accompanied colonialism in the Americas during the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Gender relations were essential to the creation of new cultural identities during this time, as indigenous communities encountered immigrant, European settler groups often comprised mostly or entirely of adult men. Yet as significant as gender is for understanding how an encounter unfolded in time and space, it can be a challenge to identify and evaluate the archaeological correlates of such relations through material culture patterns. In this paper, we use the related domains of food and foodways, particularly in the social context of provisioning, to evaluate how gender relations changed during the occupation of Fort San Juan de Joara (1566- 1568), located at the Berry site in western North Carolina. Our research contributes to reappraisals of the St. Augustine Pattern, which posits well-defined roles for Native American women and Spanish men, by likewise situating the agency of Native American men.
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