Incorporation Of Ethnic Minorities In Colonial Contexts

University Of California-Berkeley, Berkeley CA

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Adela Amaral, of the University of California, Berkeley, along with an international team of American graduate students and Mexican researchers, will conduct research in the state of Oaxaca to investigate 1) colonial black runaway slavery, or marronage 2) the process through which new ethnicities are created in a colonial context, and 3) the disparity between how places were constructed in colonial texts and how they were experienced by colonized people. These questions will be investigated in Amapa, a town founded by black slaves escaping plantation slavery during Mexico's late colonial in 1769. In the Americas, including the United States, maroon communities have been characterized as existing in obscured and marginal places such as swamps or mountains. This research, however, focuses on a town that was not consigned to geographic backwoods, but that was legally founded by black runaway slaves, or maroons, with the approval of colonial officials. Despite their legal and spatial relocation, however, the Amapa settlers were nonetheless perceived as maroons by others and depicted in a hostile light. The process of incorporating the maroonsinto colonial society rested on the assumption that they were capable of becoming docile colonial subjects. Towns, in effect, were the cornerstones of colonial civility. Paradoxically, the Amapa maroons continued to be portrayed as savages" unworthy, and perhaps incapable, of "civilization". What has not been examined is how the process of colonial incorporation was realized in the everyday experiences of Amapa residents. This research is of broader relevance because it provides a context and comparative case for understanding problems of perception of minorities and their incorporation into a multi-ethinc societies such as that which exist in the United States today. Similar processes are also occurring currently in many other regions of the world. This issue will be explored through a combination of archaeological investigations, artifact analysis, and archaeometric work. Excavated materials from Amapa will be compared to information recorded in colonial documents about the maroons' social and material practices both prior to and after their resettlement. Specifically, this project will focus on four categories of evidence: a) settlement space, b) food acquisition, preparation, and consumption, c) artifact use, and d) circulations of regional ceramics through archaeometric analysis. The latter will examine the chemical content of selected materials to track the provenance and movement of pottery. In addition to contributing original, scientific data to maroon studies and Mexican colonial history, the proposed project will involve the present-day Amapa community in all steps of the research design, fieldwork, and interpretation. Training American graduate students and local residents in archaeological thinking and methodology is also a main objective.