Traditional Land Use and Resistance to Spanish Colonial Entanglement: Archaeological Evidence on Guam

Abstract

Documenting the continuity of traditional land use practices on Guam, from before Spanish Contact in 1521 to after the Colonial La Reducción ca. 1700, is provocative. La Reducción refers to a period after Spanish settlement in 1668 when all indigenous inhabitants of northern Guam were removed from their traditional homes and sent to six southern villages under the watchful eye of administrative and religious authorities, except those residing on the island of Rota. Recent geoarchaeological excavations at Site 66-08-0141, located on the northern plateau in South Finegayan, have exposed at least two latte sets or pre-Contact habitations with traditional Micronesian earth ovens postdating Spanish settlement. Artifacts included Latte Period pottery, marine shell adzes, a limestone sling stone, and historic to modern refuse from WWII to the modern era. Microfossil evidence of pandanus, coconuts, and likely cultivation of rice and taro have expanded our understanding of subsistence farming in micro-environments within the tropical forest a generation or more after 1700 and La Reducción. This suggests that archaeological evidence of land use continuity and indigenous resistance and accommodation to Spanish Colonial entanglement exists, while challenging prior historiography across the Pacific; such sites hold much potential to bring native voices to early communities long disenfranchised by the colonization experience.