Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Archaeology of Culture Contact in Northern Honduras

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Ms. Kira Blaisdell-Sloan will collect data for her doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Dr. Rosemary Joyce. Ms. Blaisdell-Sloan will continue her archaeological excavations at the site of Rancho Ires, located in the Ulua River Valley, in Honduras. Rancho Ires was occupied continuously from the Postclassic (c. AD1400) to Late Colonial period (c. AD1800). This long occupational span is unusual for colonial period indigenous sites in Honduras. Such long term occupation allows archaeologists to explore the changing nature of contact to colonial period life through the archaeological examination of differences in architecture, diet, trade goods, and locally produced goods both between different households at a given time and within a given households over multiple generations. This project will use an "agent-centered" approach to examine the varied and changing strategies of cultural retention and identity creation employed by individuals and groups of individuals living at Rancho Ires as their traditional social and economic networks were disrupted and new ones formed. An "agent-centered approach" will place a critical focus upon the strategic choices that people (as individuals and groups) made as they interacted with colonial powers beyond their control. Rancho Ires provides an ideal situation to use such an approach. Ethnohistorical research indicates that the Ulua Valley, one of the most fertile river valleys in Central America, was of considerable inter-regional economic importance before the arrival of the Spanish. When the Spanish arrived and attempted to dominate the area, they were met with hostility, and conflict ensued. The seat of this resistance was a town called Quitamay. Based on ethnohistorical and archaeological research, the archaeological site of Rancho Ires appears to be the town identified in the documentary as Quitamay. Despite their initial rejection of the Spanish and the disruptions caused by Spanish domination, documentary and preliminary archaeological evidence indicates that the settlement continued to have dealings with the Spanish. To address the dynamic nature of the intercultural contact experienced by the residents of the community of Quitamay from an agent-centered perspective, this project will focus on the domestic group. Though there have been explicitly agent-centered approaches to culture contact and colonialism, as yet these have not been rooted in household archaeology. However, the household is the finest scale at which we, as archaeologists, can identify discrete cooperative groups. These then will be linked to larger perspectives, allowing for an understanding of the relationship between individuals, groups communities and cultures. The significance of this research is threefold. First, it will provide the data to test the efficacy of an agent-centered approach to contact and colonization in a household context. Second, it will contribute specific archaeological knowledge of under documented colonial settings in Latin America. Beyond being a matter of simple historical curiosity, our understanding of these early contacts between Aboriginal and European people is important because they shaped many subsequent developments in the countries in which they occurred. In Spanish America in particular, current race relations, systems of inequality, social stratification and many issues of identity relate back to the original colonial setting. Finally, as a doctoral project, this project will also aid in the training of a young scientist with great potential.