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European
Exploration
Skeletal diagram used by bioarchaeologists.
The heritage we study begins
when Europeans sailed west and met with diverse peoples living on the vast
continent and island chains of North America. Beyond the mythic history of
Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of America with support
from the Spanish crown, Spain’s important role in colonizing North America
is an oft-slighted chapter of American history.
The Spanish and their Catholic
missions introduced new ideas and ways of life to the peoples of North America,
but they also brought new perils. We still live with the mix of Spanish and
Native cultures in our southern borderlands, where corn tortillas and earthen
pueblos co-exist with Spanish place-names and Catholic churches. Archaeologists
like Jerald Milanich have teamed with bioarchaeologists like Clark Spencer
Larsen to learn more about those fateful encounters between Catholic clerics
and Native villagers. Others looked back to Spain, to understand the people,
culture, and objects that traveled the Atlantic to New Spain.
Florence and
Robert Lister took an object-centered approach, studying the Spanish-tradition
pottery used in the New Spain colonies. Lister describes the ceramics as “fissured
with global history.” The Listers’ efforts to tell the story of
these ceramics and their makers spanned several decades, and led them around
the world to observe archaeological sites and contemporary potters at work
in Morocco, Italy, Panama, Peru, the Caribbean, Taiwan, Morocco, and the southern
United States..
Projects in the Book
(Click on bold link to view an excerpt)
Jerald T. Milanich - Spaniards and Native Americans
at the Missions of La Florida
Clark Spencer Larsen - Bioarchaeology of the Spanish
Missions
