Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T14:18:23.212Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Indigenous Routes and Resource Materialities in the Early Spanish Colonial World: Comparative Archaeological Approaches

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2021

Noa Corcoran-Tadd*
Affiliation:
Program in Latin American Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
Jorge Ulloa Hung
Affiliation:
Instituto Tecnológico de Santo Domingo (INTEC), Santo Domingo; Museo del Hombre Dominicano, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Andrzej T. Antczak
Affiliation:
Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, 2333CC Leiden; Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, 2311BE Leiden, The Netherlands
Eduardo Herrera Malatesta
Affiliation:
Lorentz Center, Leiden University, 2333CA Leiden, The Netherlands
Corinne L. Hofman
Affiliation:
Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, 2333CC Leiden; Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, 2311BE Leiden, The Netherlands
*
(noac@princeton.edu, corresponding author)

Abstract

The early colonial period witnessed new scales of connectivity and unprecedented projects of resource extraction across the Spanish Americas. Yet such transformations also drew heavily on preexisting Indigenous landscapes, technologies, and institutions. Drawing together recent discussions in archaeology and geography about mobility and resource materialities, this article takes the early colonial route as a central object of investigation and contributes to new emerging interpretive frameworks that make sense of Spanish colonialism in the Americas as a variable, large-scale, and materially constituted process. Using three case studies—the ruta de Colón on the island of Hispaniola, the routes connecting the southeastern Caribbean islands with mainland South America, and the ruta de la plata in the south-central Andes—we develop a comparative archaeological analysis that reveals divergent trajectories of persistence, appropriation, and erasure in the region's routes and regimes of extraction and mobility during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Durante el período colonial temprano las Américas fueron el centro de nuevas escalas de conectividad y proyectos extractivos sin precedentes. Sin embargo, tales transformaciones también se basaron en gran medida en los paisajes, tecnologías e instituciones indígenas preexistentes. Al integrar discusiones recientes en la arqueología y la geografía sobre la movilidad y la materialidad de los recursos, este artículo propone la ruta colonial temprana como un tema clave de investigación y contribuye a nuevos marcos interpretativos emergentes con los cuales entender al colonialismo español como un proceso variable, de gran escala, y materialmente constituido. A través de tres estudios de caso – la ruta de Colón en la isla de La Española, las rutas que conectaban las islas del sudeste del Caribe con América del Sur y la ruta de la plata en los Andes centro-sur – desarrollamos un análisis arqueológico comparativo que revela trayectorias divergentes en la persistencia, apropiación, y eliminación de las rutas y los regímenes de extracción y movilidad en la región durante los siglos quince y dieciséis.

Type
Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American Archaeology

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References Cited

Altman, Ida 2017 Key to the Indies: Port Towns in the Spanish Caribbean, 1493–1550. The Americas 74:526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amodio, Emanuele 1991 Relaciones interétnicas en el Caribe indígena: Una reconstrucción a partir de los primeros testimonios europeos. Revista de Indias 51:571606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andrén, Anders 1998 Between Artifacts and Texts: Historical Archaeology in Global Perspective. Springer, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antczak, Andrzej T., and Antczak, Maria M. 2008 Between Food and Symbol: The Role of Marine Molluscs in Late Pre-Hispanic North-Central Venezuela. In Early Human Impact on Megamolluscs, edited by Antczak, Andrzej T. and Cipriani, Roberto, pp. 231245. Archaeopress, Oxford.Google Scholar
Antczak, Andrzej T., Antczak, Maria M., Antczak, Oliver, and Buffet, Luis Lemoine 2019 Rancherias: Historical Archaeology of Early Colonial Campsites on Margarita and Coche Islands, Venezuela. In Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas, edited by Hofman, Corinne L. and Keehnen, Floris W. M., pp. 146174. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands.Google Scholar
Antczak, Andrzej T., Castillo, Horacio Biord, Rivas, Pedro, and Antczak, Maria M. 2020 History of the Indigenous Peoples of the Sixteenth Century Province of Caracas, Venezuela. Colonial Latin American Review 29:518553.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antczak, Andrzej T., Haviser, Jay B., Hoogland, Menno L. P., Boomert, Arie, Dijkhoff, Raymond A. C. F., Kelly, Harold J., Antczak, Maria M., and Hofman, Corinne L. 2018 Early Horticulturalists of the Southern Caribbean. In The Archaeology of Caribbean and Circum-Caribbean Farmers 6000 BC–AD 1500, edited by Reid, Basil A., pp. 113146. Routledge, London.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Antczak, Maria M., and Antczak, Andrzej T. 2006 Los ídolos de las Islas Prometidas: Arqueología prehispánica del archipiélago de Los Roques. Editorial Equinoccio, Caracas.Google Scholar
Antczak, Maria M., and Antczak, Andrzej T. 2015 Late Pre-Colonial and Early Colonial Archaeology of the Las Aves Archipelagos, Venezuela. Contributions in New World Archaeology 8:744.Google Scholar
Arranz Márquez, Luis 1991 Repartimientos y encomiendas en la Isla Española (El repartimiento de Alburquerque de 1514). Fundación García Arévalo, Madrid.Google Scholar
Assadourian, Carlos Sempat 1982 El sistema de la economía colonial: Mercado interno, regiones y espacio económico. Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, Lima.Google Scholar
Bakewell, Peter 1984 Miners of the Red Mountain: Indian Labor in Potosí, 1545–1650. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Barnadas, Josep M. 1973 Charcas: Orígenes históricos de una sociedad colonial. Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado, La Paz, Bolivia.Google Scholar
Bauer, Brian S., Smit, Douglas K., Blanco, Jesús Galiano, and Rodríguez, Antonio Coello 2017 El camino del mercurio de Huancavelica a Potosí. In Nuevas tendencias en el estudio de los caminos, 2nd ed., edited by Chacaltana, Sofia, Arkush, Elizabeth, and Marcone, Giancarlo, pp. 380398. Ministerio de Cultura, Lima.Google Scholar
Beaudry, Mary C., and Parno, Travis G. (editors) 2013 Archaeologies of Mobility and Movement. Springer, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernabé Romero, Joseph A 2015. Reutilización del Qhapaq Ñan durante el periodo colonial: La “ruta del azogue” tramo Huancavelica–Chincha. Electronic document, http://repositorio.cultura.gob.pe/handle/CULTURA/309, accessed September 19, 2015.Google Scholar
Biord Castillo, Horacio, and Arvelo, Lilliam 2007 Conexiones interétnicas entre el Orinoco y el Mar Caribe en el siglo XVI: la región centro-norte de Venezuela. In Lecturas antropológicas de Venezuela, edited by Pacheco, Lino Meneses, Gordones, Gladys, and de Briceño, Jacqueline Clarac, pp. 239245. Editorial Venezolana, Mérida, Venezuela.Google Scholar
Borie, César, Castro, Victoria, Várela, Varinia, and Aldunate, Carlos 2016. Cobija y sus vías de conexión con el interior de Atacama: Desde la colonia hasta la guerra del salitre. Dialogo Andino 49:209223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carballo, David M., and Pluckhahn, Thomas 2007 Transportation Corridors and Political Evolution in Highland Mesoamerica: Settlement Analyses Incorporating GIS for Northern Tlaxcala, Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 26:607629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castilla-Beltrán, Alvaro, Hooghiemstra, Henry, Hoogland, Menno L. P., Pagán-Jiménez, Jaime, van Geel, Bas, Field, Michael H., Prins, Maarten, Donders, Timme, Malatesta, Eduardo Herrera, Hung, Jorge Ulloa, McMichael, Chrystal H., Gosling, William, and Hofman, Corinne 2020 Columbus’ Footprint: Land-Use Change before and after European Incursion in Hispaniola. PAGES Magazine 28: 2425.Google Scholar
Chacaltana, Sofia, Arkush, Elizabeth N., and Marcone, Giancarlo (editors) 2017 Nuevas tendencias en el estudio de los caminos. 2nd ed. Ministerio de Cultura, Lima.Google Scholar
Cole, Jeffrey A. 1985 The Potosí Mita, 1573–1700: Compulsory Indian Labor in the Andes. Stanford University Press, Palo Alto, California.Google Scholar
Cooke, Colin A., Balcom, Prentiss H., Biester, Harald, and Wolfe, Alexander P. 2009 Over Three Millennia of Mercury Pollution in the Peruvian Andes. PNAS 106:88308834.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Corcoran-Tadd, Noa 2017 Tambos and the Andean Longue Durée: Landscapes of Mobility in Far Southern Peru. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. DASH depository (41142044).Google Scholar
Corcoran-Tadd, Noa 2019 Life beyond the City: Historical and Archaeological Perspectives on Colonial Andean Mobility. In Power, Political Economy, and Historical Landscapes of the Modern World: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by DeCorse, Christopher, pp. 203226. SUNY Press, Albany.Google Scholar
Cruz, Pablo, Téreygeol, Florian, Küng, Nina, Fernández, Soledad, and Casanovas, Claudia Rivera 2017 Las minas de Oruro en el cruce de la historia y la arqueología. Mundo de Antes 11:195223.Google Scholar
Deagan, Kathleen 2003 Colonial Origins and Colonial Transformations in Spanish America. Historical Archaeology 37(4):313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deagan, Kathleen, and Cruxent, José María 2002 Columbus's Outpost among the Taínos: Spain and America at La Isabela, 1493–1498. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earle, Timothy 2009 Routes through the Landscape: A Comparative Approach. In Landscapes of Movement: Trails, Paths, and Roads in Anthropological Perspective, edited by Snead, James E., pp. 253268. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Ferry, Elizabeth Emma, and Limbert, Mandana E. (editors) 2008 Timely Assets: The Politics of Resources and their Temporalities. School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico.Google Scholar
Galloway, Patricia Kay (editor) 1997 The Hernando de Soto Expedition: History, Historiography, and “Discovery” in the Southeast. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.Google Scholar
García-Albarido, Francisco 2017 The Potosí-Cobija Route: Archaeology of Colonial Transportation in the South-Central Andes. Master's thesis, Department of Anthropology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins.Google Scholar
Gil Montero, Raquel 2009 Mountain Pastoralism in the Andes during Colonial Times. Nomadic Peoples 13(2):3650.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glave, Luis Miguel 1989 Trajinantes: Caminos indígenas en la sociedad colonial, siglos XVI/XVII. Instituto de Apoyo Agrario, Lima.Google Scholar
Goetz, Rebecca Anne 2016 Indian Slavery: An Atlantic and Hemispheric Problem. History Compass 14:5970.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
González Godoy, Carlos 2017 Arqueología vial del Qhapaq Ñan en Sudamérica: análisis teórico, conceptos y definiciones. Boletín del Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino 22(1):1534.Google Scholar
Guerrero, José G., and Maggiolo, Marcio Veloz 1988 Los inicios de la colonización en América (La arqueología como historia). Universidad Central del Este, San Pedro de Macorís, Dominican Republic.Google Scholar
Hauser, Mark W. 2017 A Political Ecology of Water and Enslavement: Water Ways in Eighteenth-Century Caribbean Plantations. Current Anthropology 58:227256.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herrera Malatesta, Eduardo 2011 Una reevaluación de la Serie Valencioide. Antropológica (Venezuela) 55:71100.Google Scholar
Herrera Malatesta, Eduardo 2018 Una isla, dos mundos: Estudio arqueológico sobre el paisaje indígena de Haytí y su transformación al pasiaje colonial de La Española (1200–1550). Sidestone Press, Leiden, Netherlands.Google Scholar
Hicks, Dan, and Horning, Audrey 2006 Historical Archaeology and Buildings. In The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology, edited by Hicks, Dan and Beaudry, Mary, pp. 273292. Cambridge University Press, New York.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hofman, Corinne L., Hung, Jorge Ulloa, Malatesta, Eduardo Herrera, Sony Jean, Joseph, Sonnemann, Till, and Hoogland, Menno 2018 Indigenous Caribbean Perspectives: Archaeologies and Legacies of the First Colonised Region in the New World. Antiquity 92:200216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hofman, Corinne L., and Keehnen, Floris W. M. (editors) 2019 Material Encounters and Indigenous Transformations in the Early Colonial Americas. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyslop, John 1984 The Inka Road System. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Johansen, Peter G., and Bauer, Andrew M. 2018 On the Matter of Resources and Techno-Politics: The Case of Water and Iron in the South Indian Iron Age. American Anthropologist 120:412428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, Harold, and Hofman, Corinne L. 2019 The Archaic Age of Aruba: New Evidence on the First Migrations to the Island. In Early Settlers of the Insular Caribbean: Dearchaizing the Archaic, edited by Hofman, Corinne L. and Antczak, Andrzej T., pp. 149164. Sidestone Press, Leiden, Netherlands.Google Scholar
Kulstad-González, Pauline Martha 2015 Striking It Rich in the Americas’ First Boom Town: Economic Activity at Concepción de la Vega (Hispaniola) 1495–1564. In Archaeology of Culture Contact and Colonialism in Spanish and Portuguese America, edited by Paulo, Pedro Funari, A. and Senatore, Maria Ximena, pp. 313337. Springer, New York.Google Scholar
Laffoon, Jason E., Rojas, Roberto Valcárcel, and Hofman, Corinne L. 2013 Oxygen and Carbon Isotope Analysis of Human Dental Enamel from the Caribbean: Implications for Investigating Individual Origins. Archaeometry 55:742765.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larsen, Clark Spencer, Griffin, Mark C., Hutchinson, Dale L., Noble, Vivian E., Norr, Lynette, Pastor, Robert F., and Ruff, Christopher B. 2001. Frontiers of Contact: Bioarchaeology of Spanish Florida. Journal of World Prehistory 15:69123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Las Casas, Bartolomé de 1875 [1561] Historia de las Indias. Imprenta de Manuel Ginesta, Madrid.Google Scholar
León Guerrero, María Montserrat 2000 El segundo viaje colombino. PhD dissertation, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, University of Valladolid, Valladolid, Spain.Google Scholar
Lohmann Villena, Guillermo 1949 Las minas de Huancavelica en los siglos XVI y XVII. CSIC–Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos, Seville, Spain.Google Scholar
López Beltrán, Clara 2016 La ruta de la plata de Potosí al Pacífico: Caminos, comercio y caravanas en los siglos XVI y XIX. Plural de Ediciones, La Paz, Bolivia.Google Scholar
Mira Caballos, Esteban 2000 Nicolás de Ovando y los orígenes del sistema colonial español, 1502–1509. Centro de Altos Estudios Humanísticos y del Idioma Español, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Timothy 2011 Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. Verso, New York.Google Scholar
Mol, Angus A. A. 2014 The Connected Caribbean: A Socio-Material Network Approach to Patterns of Homogeneity and Diversity in the Pre-Colonial Period. Sidestone Press, Leiden, Netherlands.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Axel E. 2001 Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives on Caravan Trade in the South-Central Andes. In Ethnoarchaeology of Andean South America, edited by Kuznar, Lawrence, pp. 163201. International Monographs in Prehistory, Ann Arbor, Michigan.Google Scholar
Nielsen, Axel E., Berenguer, José, and Sanhueza, Cecilia 2006. El Qhapaqñan entre Atacama y Lípez. Intersecciones en Antropología 7:217234.Google Scholar
Olsen Bogaert, Harold 2015 Inventario de la selección de bienes de las investigaciones arqueológicas en el proyecto Pueblo Viejo de Cotuí y su entorno. Prepared for Museo Arqueológico Pueblo Viejo de Cotui, Dominican Republic.Google Scholar
Ortega, Elpidio 1988 La Isabela y la arqueología en la ruta de Cristóbal Colón. Universidad Central del Este, San Pedro de Macorís, Dominican Republic.Google Scholar
Otte, Enrique 1977 Las perlas del Caribe: Nueva Cádiz de Cubagua. Fundación John Boulton, Caracas.Google Scholar
Platt, Tristan, and Quisbert, Pablo 2008 Tras las huellas del silencio: Potosí, los inkas y el virrey Toledo. In Mina y metalurgia en los Andes del Sur, desde la época prehispánica hasta el siglo XVII, edited by Cruz, Pablo José and Vacher, Jean-Joinville, pp. 231277. Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos, Sucre, Bolivia.Google Scholar
Ransijn, Sven 2021 Reconstructing Landscapes of Interaction in the First Colonized Area of the Americas: Analysing Landscape Affordances through GIS-Based Movement and Visibility Analysis in the Area of the Ruta de Colón, Northern Dominican Republic (AD 800–1500). Master's thesis, Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.Google Scholar
Restall, Matthew 2004 Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Oxford University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Richardson, Tanya, and Weszkalnys, Gisa 2014 Introduction: Resource Materialities. Anthropological Quarterly 87:530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rolston, Jessica Smith 2013 The Politics of Pits and the Materiality of Mine Labor: Making Natural Resources in the American West. American Anthropologist 115:582594.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanhueza, Cecilia 2011 Tráfico caravanero, arriería y trajines en Atacama colonial: síntesis y discusiones sobre un proceso de adaptación andina. In Temporalidad, interacción y dinamismo cultural, edited by Hubert, Andre, 289321. Ediciones Universitarias, Universidad Católica del Norte, Antofagasta, Chile.Google Scholar
Santoro, Calogero M., Williams, Verónica, Valenzuela, Daniela, Romero, Álvaro, and Standen, Vivien G. 2010 An Archaeological Perspective on the Inka Provincial Administration from the South-Central Andes. In Distant Provinces in the Inka Empire: Toward a Deeper Understanding of Inka Imperialism, edited by Malpass, Michael A. and Alconini, Sonia, pp. 4474. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sauer, Carl 1966 The Early Spanish Main. University of California Press, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Schapira, Diego, Irene Montaño, A., Antczak, Andrzej T., and Posada, Juan M. 2009 Using Shell Middens to Assess Effects of Fishing on Queen Conch (Strombus gigas) Populations in Los Roques Archipelago National Park, Venezuela. Marine Biology 156:787795.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slayton, Emma Ruth 2018 Seascape Corridors: Modeling Routes to Connect Communities across the Caribbean Sea. Sidestone Press, Leiden, Netherlands.Google Scholar
Smit, Douglas K. 2018 Mercury and the Making of the Andean Market: An Archaeological Study of Indigenous Labor in Colonial Peru. PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Chicago.Google Scholar
Smith, Greg C. 1995 Indians and Africans at Puerto Real: The Ceramic Evidence. In Puerto Real: The Archaeology of a Sixteenth-Century Spanish Town in Hispaniola, edited by Deagan, Kathleen, pp. 335376. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.Google Scholar
Snead, James E., Erickson, Clark L., and Darling, J. Andrew 2009 Making Human Space: The Archaeology of Trails, Paths, and Roads. In Landscapes of Movement: Trails, Paths, and Roads in Anthropological Perspective, edited by Snead, James E., Erickson, Clark L., and Darling, J. Andrew, pp. 119. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
TePaske, John J. 2010 A New World of Gold and Silver. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tripcevich, Nicholas, and Capriles, José M. (editors) 2016 The Archaeology of Andean Pastoralism. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.Google Scholar
Trombold, Charles D. (editor) 1991 Ancient Road Networks and Settlement Hierarchies in the New World. Cambridge University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt 2005 Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulloa Hung, Jorge 2014 Arqueología en la línea noroeste de la Española: Paisajes, cerámicas e interacciones. INTEC, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.Google Scholar
Ulloa Hung, Jorge, and Herrera, Eduardo Malatesta 2015 Investigaciones arqueológicas en el norte de la Española: Entre viejos esquemas y nuevos datos. Boletín del Museo del Hombre Dominicano 46:75107.Google Scholar
Ulloa Hung, Jorge, and Sonnemann, Till F. 2017 Exploraciones arqueológicas en la fortaleza de Santo Tomás de Jánico: Nuevos aportes a su comprensión histórica. Ciencia y Sociedad 42(3):1127.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Buren, Mary 2010 The Archaeological Study of Spanish Colonialism in the Americas. Journal of Archaeological Research 18:151201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Buren, Mary, and Weaver, Brendan J.M. 2012 Contours of Labor and History: A Diachronic Perspective on Andean Mineral Production and the Making of Landscapes in Porco, Bolivia. Historical Archaeology 46(3):79101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vargas Arenas, Iraida, Toledo, Maria I., Molina, Luis, and Montcourt, Carmen E. 1997 Los artífices de la concha: Ensayo sobre tecnología, arte y otros aspectos socio-culturales de los antiguos habitantes del Estado Lara. Museo Arqueológico de Quibor, Quibor, Venezuela.Google Scholar
Voss, Barbara L. 2008 Gender, Race, and Labor in the Archaeology of the Spanish Colonial Americas. Current Anthropology 49:861893.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wernke, Steven A. 2013 Negotiated Settlements: Andean Communities and Landscapes under Inka and Spanish Rule. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wesson, Cameron B. 2012 De Soto (Probably) Never Slept Here: Archaeology, Memory, Myth, and Social Identity. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 16:418435.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whitley, Thomas G., and Hicks, Lacey M. 2003 A Geographic Information Systems Approach to Understanding Potential Prehistoric and Historic Travel Corridors. Southeastern Archaeology 22:7791.Google Scholar