The Politics of Provisioning: Food and Gender at Fort San Juan de Joara, 1566-1568. (original) (raw)
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Gender and race are central to archaeological investigations of empire. In research on the Spanish colonization of the Americas, one prominent theory, the St. Augustine pattern, argues that cohabitation between Spanish men and Native American and African women in colonial households resulted in a distinctly gendered form of cultural transformation: indigenous, African, and syncretic cultural elements appear within private domestic activities associated with women; and European cultural elements are conservatively maintained in publicly visible male activities. This article reconsiders the St. Augustine pattern through analyses of new research that has revealed considerable diversity in the processes and outcomes of colonization throughout the Spanish Americas. Archaeological methodologies such as the St. Augustine pattern that rely on binary categories of analysis mask the complexity and ambiguity of material culture in colonial sites. Additionally, the abundance and ubiquity of indigenous, African, and syncretic material culture and foodstuffs in colonial households in the circum-Caribbean indicate that macroscale economic, trade, and labor relationships, rather than household composition, were important causes of colonial cultural transformation in the Americas. An analytical focus on labor in colonial settings provides a multiscalar methodology that encompasses both institutional and household-level entanglements between colonizers and colonized.
Fort San Juan and the Limits of Empire: Colonialism and Household Practice at the Berry Site.
Built in 1566 by Spanish conquistador Juan Pardo, Fort San Juan is the earliest known European settlement in the interior United States. Located at the Berry site in western North Carolina, the fort and its associated domestic compound stood near the Native American town of Joara, whose residents sacked the fort and burned the compound after only eighteen months. Drawing on archaeological evidence from architectural, floral, and faunal remains, as well as newly discovered accounts of Pardo's expeditions, this volume explores the deterioration in Native American–Spanish relations that sparked Joara's revolt and offers critical insight into the nature of early colonial interactions.
Historical Archaeology, 2023
Colonoware—a low-fired earthenware pottery made by enslaved African and enslaved and free Indigenous potters across the Lowcountry region of South Carolina—is a clear material consequence of colonial-identity formation. This process certainly involved African and Indigenous groups, but it also drew in English, French, and Spanish colonial powers, and the various economic, political, and social networks that bound them together. While scholars have recently offered nuanced and inclusive theoretical frameworks to help situate colonoware production within the process of colonial-identity formation, these studies thus far have lacked analytical methods that operationalize the link between potting practices and colonial-identity formation through the analysis of archaeological data. In this article, we present our attempt to forge the link between practice and data by analyzing a number of attributes that illustrate various choices potters made while constructing vessels. In particular, we are interested in comparing the methods of pottery manufacturing employed by local Indigenous potters in the “Low- country” region around Charleston, South Carolina, prior to European colonization to the methods used by resident potters at early colonial settlements in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
The Iron in the Posthole: Witchcraft, Women's Labor, and Spanish Folk Ritual at the Berry Site.
Apotropaic devices--folk ritual objects and deposits intended to ward away witchcraft or ensorcellment--were often deliberately concealed near the vulnerable parts of a structure (doors, windows, hearths, and chimneys). Since such devices typically consisted of otherwise mundane materials, they can be difficult to identify in archaeological deposits. It is the unusual context of the deposit that alerts us to the potential of its apotropaic meaning and intent. Here, I discuss the social and spatial contexts of an iron jackplate fragment concealed near the doorway of a Spanish colonial kitchen at the Berry site. Berry, located in present-day western North Carolina, was the site of Fort San Juan de Joara (1566-1568), the first European settlement in the interior of what is now the United States. Recognizing the iron jackplate fragment as a potential apotropaic device opens a window onto Spanish male anxieties about women’s labor, especially the domestic labor associated with food. Spaniards and other Europeans believed that “wild” women regularly used ensorcelled food to entrap or punish male victims. And nowhere were fears of ensorcelled food more pronounced than along the frontiers of colonial America, where indigenous women usually prepared meals for Spanish men as wives, servants, and concubines.
Identifying Fort San Juan: A Sixteenth–Century Spanish Occupation at the Berry Site, North Carolina
Southeastern Archaeology, 2006
In January 1567, a Spanish expedition under the command of Captain Juan Pardo arrived at the native town of Joara, located deep in the interior along the upper Catawba River in what is now western North Carolina. Here, Pardo founded a garrison, Fort San Juan, and manned it with 30 soldiers. Fort San Juan de Joara was occupied for nearly eighteen months and was the earliest European settlement in the interior of the present-day United States. This was the most important of several forts that Pardo built during the course of his expedition across the Carolinas and eastern Tennessee, but all were destroyed by natives in 1568. Archaeological research indicates that the Berry site (31BK22), located near Morganton, North Carolina, was the site of Joara and Fort San Juan. In this paper, we use documents from Pardo’s expeditions to suggest material correlates for Fort San Juan; we then compare these specific correlates with archaeological data from the Berry site. These data include sixteenth-century Spanish ceramics and hardware which we have recovered in association with a compound of several burned buildings and large features. We conclude that this compound represents material remains from Fort San Juan.
American Antiquity, 2020
Hernando de Soto's expedition through the southeastern United States between 1539 and 1543 is often regarded as a watershed moment for the collapse of Indigenous societies across the region. Historical narratives have proposed that extreme depopulation as a result of early contact destabilized Indigenous economies, politics, networks, and traditions. Although processes of depopulation and transformation were certainly set in motion by this and earlier colonial encounters, the timing, temporality, and heterogeneous rhythms of postcontact Indigenous histories remain unclear. Through the integration of radiocarbon and archaeological data from the Mississippian earthen platform mound at Dyar (9GE5) in central Georgia, we present a case of Indigenous endurance and resilience in the Oconee Valley that has long been obfuscated by materially based chronologies and typologies. Bayesian chronological modeling suggests that Indigenous Mississippian traditions persisted for up to 130 years beyond contact with European colonizers. We argue that advances in modeling radiocarbon dates, along with meaningful consultation/collaboration with descendant communities, can contribute to efforts that move us beyond a reliance on materially based chronologies that can distort and erase Indigenous histories.