Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Identity Beyond the Colonial Core: Spanish Colonialism and Ceramic Technology of the Dismal River Aspect Culture (1675-1725 CE)

University Of Iowa, Iowa City IA

Investigators

Abstract

Under the guidance of Dr. Margaret Beck, Sarah Trabert will analyze ceramics from Dismal River aspect sites in Colorado and Wyoming and submit ceramic sherds from Nebraska and Kansas for sourcing analyses. The Dismal River aspect dates to A.D. 1675-1725 and these people lived at an important crossroads between the Great Plains and the U.S. Southwest, where goods, technology, social practices, and people moved between Native American societies. Dismal River aspect groups also lived during a time of economic, political, and social instability following the European colonization of the Americas. It is well known that Native Americans in direct contact with Europeans experienced epidemic diseases, political and economic disruption, forced social change, and demographic expansion and collapse. What is less understood is how far the wave of these effects spread beyond the borders of European controlled colonies. To escape Spanish oppression, Puebloan people from Northern New Mexico moved out of their homelands and brought their own social practices and worldviews with them when they interacted with Great Plains peoples such as Dismal River aspect groups. The analysis of Dismal River aspect culinary technology and resource acquisition will reveal if and how Spanish colonization led to changes in ceramic production and foodways on the Great Plains. Thus, this research will contribute new and important knowledge on the indirect impact that colonization has on material culture and social identities. This research addresses the worldwide effects of colonialism beyond the core colonized areas, the regional impact of Spanish colonialism in North America, methods of defining social identity archaeologically during the protohistoric and early historic periods, and details of Dismal River aspect foodways and adaptations. It also emphasizes the importance of the protohistoric period for studying the emergence of new social identities produced by Spanish activity and Puebloan population movement out of the Southwest. The archaeological record during this volatile period, although quite complicated and ephemeral, can inform researchers and descendant groups alike as to how Native peoples accepted, adapted to, and resisted the profound social, political, and economic changes associated with the colonization of the North American continent. The effects of Spanish colonialism on Native American groups outside of the core area of contact is an understudied part of Native North American history. Information regarding the social identity and ancestry of Dismal River aspect groups may be of interest to descendent communities today who are striving to regain access to land and a voice in how Dismal River aspect mortuary remains are handled. The results of this study will be disseminated in a series of publications and will be available in detail through a digital archive for archaeological records, allowing scholars access to the final interpretations and raw data. These results will be shared with the public institutions where the collections are housed and with the individual state historical societies so that the information can be disseminated to the public through displays of Dismal River aspect material culture. Sharing ideas with museums, historical societies, local archaeologists, descendent groups, and the public will ensure that more is known about the emergence of new and resilient social identities among Native American groups, and how these people resisted colonial dominance and cultural extinction during the protohistoric period.