Pueblo Potsherds to Silver Spoons: A Case Study in Historical Archaeology from New Mexico

Abstract

The relationship between documentary and material sources continues to be a source for considerable debate within historical archaeology. Using a case study from northern New Mexico as an example, this article illuminates the material availability enjoyed by 18th- and early-19th-century Hispanos residing in the Santa Fe River valley. Testament inventories from colonial inhabitants are compared with archaeological assemblages from residential sites of the same area and period to expose two very different emphases in material culture. Relevant documents focus on tools and status items, often imported. The archaeological collections, however, consist mostly of utility ceramics obtained from Pueblo Indian communities. Why does such a contrast exist between the two sources of information? Self-identification represented by documents suggests deliberate and genuine, but uneven, Spanish cultural participation. Yet the archaeological record hints more at a type of “transculturation” occurring at least at the level of everyday material culture reflecting recent ethnogenetic models of multidirectional cultural exchanges in the Spanish Borderlands.