Cultural development in La Florida

Abstract

In contrast to the rather exciting and somewhat colorful exploits that took place during the ini tial period of colonization, the middle period of Spanish settlement was not a time of world changing events. The experimental and conquest phase of colonization had drawn to an end, ef fective adaptations had been worked out, and basic cultural patterns had already been estab lished. Consequently, Spanish America during the late 16th and 17th centuries has often been characterized as an "inwardly pulsating" time of relative stability and embellishment of preexist ing patterns (Leonard 1959:viii). A general con sensus exists among historians that this period of Spanish-American cultural development was one in which the basic framework or pattern estab lished during the initial years of settlement was expanded and became more elaborate. What remains unclear, however, are the pro cesses and their associated archaeological pat terns which characterized that stage of Spanish colonial cultural development between initial settlement and established society. The archaeo logical characterization and synthesis of 17th century St. Augustine provides the material ba sis for considering the forces that influenced the development of a colonial tradition in Spanish Florida during this post-contact phase (Hoffman 1994). In the case of St. Augustine, the multidisciplinary perspective of historical archae ology assumes a particularly significant role in this study because of the unexplored and, at times, "lost" nature of the 17th-century docu mentary record in St. Augustine, and because of its access to a comparatively sizeable archaeo logical database (Figure 1). Perhaps more impor tantly though, historical archaeology also pro vides a glimpse into "everyday life" and the behavior and lives of the common people who represented an essential component of colonial society.