Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría

Eating Like an Indian: Negotiating Social Relations in the Spanish Colonies

Food and eating were important aspects of the negotiation of social relationships and power in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. A comparison of archaeological assemblages in Spanish households in sites in Florida, the Caribbean, and the Andes reveals a variety of patterns of incorporation of indigenous pottery, especially serving vessels, into the daily lives of the colonizers. Archaeological patterns in several Spanish houses in Mexico City, combined with historical documents, reveal that patterns of incorporation of indigenous pottery, food, and eating practices varied also at a local level from household to household. Focusing on pottery and food remains in these archaeological assemblages, I argue that in spite of moral judgments against Spaniards for eating like an Indian, some colonizers ate with Indians and incorporated indigenous food and pottery to negotiate social relationships with indigenous elites. These relationships provided the Spaniards with material rewards and served to negotiate power. This model challenges the common assumption that the Spaniards generally used cultural separatism as a strategy for obtaining power and demonstrates the roles of material culture in the negotiation of power between Spaniards and Indians.Food and eating were important aspects of the negotiation of social relationships and power in the Spanish colonies in the Americas. A comparison of archaeological assemblages in Spanish households in sites in Florida, the Caribbean, and the Andes reveals a variety of patterns of incorporation of indigenous pottery, especially serving vessels, into the daily lives of the colonizers. Archaeological patterns in several Spanish houses in Mexico City, combined with historical documents, reveal that patterns of incorporation of indigenous pottery, food, and eating practices varied also at a local level from household to household. Focusing on pottery and food remains in these archaeological assemblages, I argue that in spite of moral judgments against Spaniards for eating like an Indian, some colonizers ate with Indians and incorporated indigenous food and pottery to negotiate social relationships with indigenous elites. These relationships provided the Spaniards with material rewards and served to negotiate p...

Incumbents and Challengers: Indigenous Politics and the Adoption of Spanish Material Culture in Colonial Xaltocan, Mexico

Historical documents record instances in the 16th and 17th centuries in which elites from Xaltocan, an indigenous town in the northern Basin of Mexico, requested permission to wear Spanish clothes, carry swords, and ride horses. Spanish artifacts, especially tin-enameled serving vessels known as majolica, are found scattered in peripheral contexts in Xaltocan, but they are not associated with the main plaza or indigenous elite areas around the plaza. Combined, these data suggest that at least two groups of indigenous people adopted Spanish material culture with different goals and strategies in mind: upper elites who marked their bodies with the insignia of power (Spanish dress and weaponry), and lower elites or commoners who adopted Spanish ceramics in feasts for display that could help them subvert structures of power and move up in the social hierarchy.

The genetic impact of aztec imperialism: Ancient mitochondrial DNA evidence from Xaltocan, Mexico

In AD 1428, the city-states of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan formed the Triple Alliance, laying the foundations of the Aztec empire. Although it is well documented that the Aztecs annexed numerous polities in the Basin of Mexico over the following years, the demographic consequences of this expansion remain unclear. At the city-state capital of Xaltocan, 16th century documents suggest that the sites conquest and subsequent incorporation into the Aztec empire led to a replacement of the original Otomí population, whereas archaeological evidence suggests that some of the original population may have remained at the town under Aztec rule. To help address questions about Xaltocans demographic history during this period, we analyzed ancient DNA from 25 individuals recovered from three houses rebuilt over time and occupied between AD 1240 and 1521. These individuals were divided into two temporal groups that predate and postdate the sites conquest. We determined the mitochondrial DNA haplogroup of each individual and identified haplotypes based on 372 base pair sequences of first hypervariable region. Our results indicate that the residents of these houses before and after the Aztec conquest have distinct haplotypes that are not closely related, and the mitochondrial compositions of the temporal groups are statistically different. Altogether, these results suggest that the matrilines present in the households were replaced following the Aztec conquest. This study therefore indicates that the Aztec expansion may have been associated with significant demographic and genetic changes within Xaltocan.

Indigenous Ware or Spanish Import? The Case of Indígena Ware and Approaches to Power in Colonial Mexico

For the last two decades, archaeologists have believed that a ceramic type known as Indfgena Ware was an imitation of European majolica, produced by colonial Nahuas in Mexico City for lower-class Spanish families. Ideas surrounding the production and consumption of Indfgena Ware, as well as majolica in general, have been based on the concepts of Spanish domination and indigenous acculturation. These ideas emphasize European interests in displaying high-value imports to obtain distinction along racial and class lines, and fail to consider indigenous strategies for obtaining power through craft production and display. We begin by critically evaluating the stylistic, iconographic, and technical evidence archaeologists have used to suggest that Indfgena Ware was an indigenous product. We present the results from neutron activation analysis of 250 ceramic sherds indicating that Indfgena Ware forms its own compositional group, different from Aztec pottery and Spanish majolica, and suggest that Indigena Ware is most likely a Spanish import. The problems this ware presents for classification reveal the limitations of locating power exclusively in the hands of the Spanish and point to ways in which we could overcome this theoretical problem for the study of colonialism in Mexico.

THE TRADE IN COOKING POTS UNDER THE AZTEC AND SPANISH EMPIRES

Abstract Elizabeth Brumfiel studied the local production and exchange of pottery in Xaltocan as part of her ongoing efforts to study the link between womens work and political change. We give continuity to Brumfiels work by presenting a chemical characterization study of Plain Ware and lead-glazed earthenware in Xaltocan, Mexico. These wares were mostly used by women for cooking and storage. The pattern shows that the people of Postclassic Xaltocan increased their reliance on Plain Ware from nearby Cuauhtitlan through time, before and after they were conquered by the Aztecs. After the Spanish conquest, the people of Xaltocan relied more heavily on locally produced Plain Ware and began using lead-glazed earthenware. These two different empires affected the trade in cooking tools even though it was not part of their policies to affect the domestic economy directly.

The Material Worlds of Colonizers in New Spain

A combination of historical and archaeological data helps reexamine the material worlds of the Spanish colonizers in Mexico City during the sixteenth century. The historical data consist of the probate inventories of 39 Spanish colonizers, and they reveal information on the wealth of the colonizers and their personal belongings. Of the different kinds of material culture in the probate inventories, I focus only on cloth, clothing, and slaves, as well as on the wealth of colonizers. The archaeological data were obtained by the Programa de Arqueologia Urbana in the historic center of Mexico City, and they consist of houses of Spanish colonizers. These data allow us to examine two daily necessities of colonizers: food (including plants and animals) and ceramic pottery. Bringing together these two lines of data reveals the patterns of consumption of colonizers in New Spain and helps us identify different strategies that guided these patterns, including reproducing an acceptable material world modeled after life in Spain, competing in the local social hierarchy, forging relationships with local indigenous people, controlling labor and production, and domesticating a foreign world to meet the expectations of the conquest.

Technological Transformations: Adaptationist, Relativist, and Economic Models in Mexico and Venezuela

Anthropologists have tried to explain technological change among indigenous people after contact with Europeans from two main theoretical positions. Some scholars have proposed adaptationist models in which indigenous people adopted European technologies, including steel, firearms, and others, in recognition of their superiority and higher efficiency. Other scholars have proposed cultural relativist models that view efficiency as a cultural construction and emphasize the varied patterns of technological change and continuity among indigenous people everywhere. We propose a third theoretical position that considers economic factors among the many relevant causes of technological transformation among indigenous people. To evaluate the adaptationist, relativist, and economic position, we present a comparison of patterns of commerce and technological exchange among indigenous people in two distant colonial settings: central Mexico and southern Venezuela. We argue that economic factors played a crucial role in the process of transferring technologies and the adoption—or not—of methods of manufacturing among indigenous peoples. A focus on the inter-relation of productive and technological systems, the commercialization of foreign goods and wild resources, and the commoditization of indigenous subsistence staples offers the opportunity to apprehend the complexities and variations of native socio–cultural dynamics within larger structures of interaction.