Expanding mission archaeology: A landscape approach to indigenous autonomy in colonial California

Abstract

a b s t r a c tRather than simply an arena for Euroamerican domination, recent archaeological research on Spanish missionization along the North American Borderlands points to opportunities for indigenous autonomy under missionary colonialism. We build from these discussions to foreground autonomy as it was expressed in multiple spatial contexts during the colonial period (ca. 1770s-1850s) in central California.Our goals are to evaluate freedom of action within the situational constraints imposed by Spanish missions in California and also to challenge archaeologists to move beyond prevailing narratives of decline to critically assess how native people negotiated colonialism across the landscape. Drawing on three archaeological examples from central California-including Mission Santa Clara de Asís, the marshlands of the San Joaquin Valley, and persistent Coast Miwok villages in the northern San Francisco Bay region-we outline a conceptual model comprised of three spatial zones: colonial settlements as native places; native homelands/colonial hinterlands; and interior worlds and interspaces. The model offers a way in which to expand mission archaeology by illuminating the opportunities for indigenous autonomy in social, political, and economic relationships that intersected colonial modes in various ways across time and space.

Consequences of colonialism: A microbial perspective to contemporary Indigenous health

“…As part of this process, Indigenous populations were forced from their villages and homes and were bound to reside within mission centers (Larsen, ). The spatial organization of missions imposed close living conditions on diverse multiethnic populations, with no organizational attention to linguistic barriers or tribal animosities, which fractured families and impeded traditional courtship customs and practices (Panich & Schneider, ; Van Buren, ). Even in the absence of aggressive missionization, exposure to European customs and behaviors prompted far‐reaching cultural adaptations.…”

Investigating native Californian tobacco use at Mission Santa Clara, California, through morphometric analysis of tobacco (Nicotiana spp.) seeds

“…Although Native people have long been characterized as passive victims in California mission settings, contemporary scholarship shows they maintained a degree of autonomy from colonial systems (Panich and Schneider, 2015). At Mission Santa Clara, archaeological evidence demonstrates that some neophytes had access to exotic goods, including obsidian, shell beads, and certain wild animals .…”

“…Many archaeologists have examined the Spanish missions of California as loci of cultural hybridity and colonial entanglement (Allen, 1998;Arkush, 2011;Lightfoot, 2005;Panich and Schneider, 2015;Robinson, 2013). Archaeology provides multiple avenues to explore these relationships by documenting changes in contextual use of material culture.…”

The Double Binds of Indigeneity and Indigenous Resistance

“…Contestation over rights, livelihood security, and self-determination are key features in interactions between indigenous peoples, contemporary state actors and often-globalized non-governmental and commercial interests [1][2][3][4][5]. While continuities and instructive parallels can be traced in encounters by indigenous peoples with colonial and imperial powers during the earlier twentieth century and beyond (e.g., [6][7][8][9][10]), the underlying dynamics of these struggles have evolved markedly since the later twentieth century with the ascendancy of the concept of "indigeneity". Indigenous peoples have broadly embraced this concept and identity, using it to articulate their cultural distinctiveness and independence, justify claims to land and resources, forge wide-ranging alliances, and achieve a global visibility that is twinned with a moral forcefulness to demand attention and redress from policy makers and organs of national and international governance and law [11][12][13][14][15].…”