Russell K. Skowronek

The Spanish Philippines: Archaeological Perspectives on Colonial Economics and Society

When scholars consider Spanish colonialism in the Philippines their impressions are based largely on documentary evidence of their 377-year colonial presence and on romanticized impressions of the larger Spanish empire. In the New World, wherever Europeans settled, there is a clear break in the archaeological sequence of pre-Columbian cultural traditions. In the systemic context these changes continue to be evidenced in architectural style, city plan, and diet. Today, however, archaeologists working in Luzon, Cebu, and Mindanao are revealing vast differences between the nature of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines and that seen in the Americas. There, the remoteness of the colony from Europe, combined with its geographical position on the doorstep of China, created a unique Spanish colonial adaptation that reveals the significance of Asia in the world economic order.

Empire and ceramics: The changing role of illicit trade in Spanish America

Commercial colonial states of the early modern era are noteworthy in their movement of both luxury and bulk goods between the core and the periphery of empires. Frequently, for archaeologists studying the role of trade in the Spanish New World empire, the recovery of imported ceramics of non-Hispanic origins has suggested the presence of foreign interlopers in these closed mercantilist marketplaces. In this study, the ceramic assemblage of colonial Florida is examined against data from the larger Spanish empire to discern more parsimoniously the extent of this perceived illicit trade. Information for this paper is derived from the sites of colonial Santa Elena and St. Augustine in Spanish Florida, as well as from other contemporary Spanish colonial habitation and merchant shipwreck sites in the New World.

Ceramics and Commerce: The 1554 flota revisited

The remains of the 1554 flota, commonly known as the Padre Island shipwrecks, are well known to historical archaeologists not only for the protracted court cases associated with one of the wrecks but for the high quality of archaeological and historic research conducted on them. This paper reevaluates the recovered ceramic materials in light of the past decade’s ongoing research in this area of Hispanic 16th century material culture. This information is utilized to pose future research questions and to suggest how submerged and terrestrial site evidence can be integrated to afford a more holistic view of the dynamic Spanish world-system whose static remains are the essence of archaeological study.

Locally-made or Imported? Identifying Ceramic Composition Variation in the San Francisco Presidio Jurisdiction

In the late 18th century, representatives of the Spanish empire occupied the San Francisco Bay Area and rapidly transformed the region through the introduction of agriculture, animal husbandry, Roman Catholicism, the Spanish language, and the use of pottery. This paper focuses on the latter, evaluating questions of local manufacture or importation of ceramic materials among missions, the presidio, and pueblos within the San Francisco Presidio Jurisdiction. Through the application of instrumental neutron activation analysis of ceramic materials, local production of earthenwares at each of the missions is shown whereas glazed ware patterns reveal a mix of local and nonlocal sources. These patterns provide insights into the manufacture, supply, and exchange of ceramics in the San Francisco Bay Area, and through them a window on the materiality of the colonial encounter.

European ceramics and the elusive “Cittie of Raleigh”

Since 1947 archaeologists have sought to identify the location of the “Lost Colony’s” settlement, the “Cittie of Raleigh.” However, the exact location of this 16th-century habitation site has remained elusive due in part to the greater antiquity and transitory nature of this site’s occupation vis-à-vis later English New World settlements. Now, at the time of the Columbian Quincentenary, archaeological research on other 16th-century sites has revealed, in growing detail, the varied manifestations of the European Old and New World experiences. One aspect of this current research is the more accurate identification of European-made ceramics as to age and point of origin. This article reviews and reevaluates the ceramic collections made during past excavations at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, North Carolina, and suggests approaches to future research at the site.

Cinnamon, Ceramics, and Silks: Tracking the Manila Galleon Trade in the Creation of the World Economy

We live in a global society connected by satellites, telephones and computers. In an instant a retailer in Europe can contact a manufacturer in Asia with specifications and the fabrication of the item will begin. Within weeks or months the completed item will move overland by truck or train and then by sea to consumers across the globe. Today’s hot new exotic trends are embraced by the world’s elites.

Discovering the Plan behind the Gordian Knot:New Trends in Social and Liberal Sciences

At the beginning of December 2015, Dr. Tamer Balcı, one of the founding editors for New Trends in Social and Liberal Sciences, asked me to “write an essay or a welcome message indicating the significance of interdisciplinary studies.” It is a rare but rather daunting honor to be asked to write an opening essay for a new journal. How does one who is immersed in such interdisciplinary research share that excitement with others who are similarly engaged; or more provocatively, with those who are not? Perhaps by recognizing that interdisciplinary studies is not “new” per se but rather that it is the most dynamic means of understanding phenomena in the social and liberal sciences.

CHARACTERISTICS AND GENESIS OF EL SAUZ CHERT, AN IMPORTANT PREHISTORIC LITHIC RESOURCE IN SOUTH TEXAS

Abstract Stone tools ranging in age from Early Archaic (3500–6000 B.C.) to Late Prehistoric (A.D. 700 to historic times), made of a distinctive light gray but sometimes colorful chert, have been identified in private collections in south Texas for at least 50 years. The source of this stone, known in the archeological literature as “El Sauz chert,” are two small bedrock outcrops in Starr County associated with altered rhyolitic ash of the Catahoula Formation. Physical characteristics, field evidence and major element chemical composition are used to infer an in situ origin of the chert associated with the devitrification of the volcanic ash and the remobilization of silica by ground and meteoric water. Distinctive characteristics of El Sauz chert include abundant vugs, opalized veins, smeared colorations, high aluminum content, and pale yellowish-green fluorescence under short-wave ultraviolet light. These geologically distinctive characteristics distinguish this material from other cherts and, as a result, have important implications for archaeologists interested in prehistoric exchange and resource procurement.