Colonial Transformation: Euro-American Cultural Genesis in the Early Spanish-American Colonies

Abstract

Archaeological and historical data from two of the earliest sites of Spanish settlement in the Americas (La Isabela, Dominican Republic, 1493-1498; and Puerto Real, Haiti, 1503-1578) indicate that the transformation of Iberian social practice and identity to Iberian-American society and identity was well under way in the households of nonelite Spanish colonists by the early sixteenth century. It is argued that this transformation was conditioned as much by new forms of domestic accommodation--most notably Spanish-Indian-African intermarriage and labor--as it was by European economic, technical, or political developments. Social adjustment to the Americas is strikingly revealed in the archaeological records of households in Spanish colonial towns, particularly when that record is organized and considered from a gendered perspective. Historical archaeology, with its unique multidisciplinary evidential base, has been the best source of information about the daily choices and adjustments made by the European,...