Mission and Pueblo Santa Catalina de Guale, St. Catherines Island, Georgia (USA) : a comparative zooarchaeological analysis. (Anthropological papers of the American Museum of Natural History, no. 91)

DOI

DOI

Abstract

This volume considers the zooarchaeological evidence for animal use by Spaniards and the Guale people during the First Spanish period (a.d. 1565-1763) on St. Catherines Island, Georgia (USA). The focus is on a combined archaeofaunal assemblage containing 70,324 specimens and the remains of an estimated 510 vertebrate individuals associated with Mission Santa Catalina de Guale. This Spanish mission operated on the island from the 1580s until 1680 in a province known as Spanish Florida. Spanish Florida formerly encompassed portions of the present-day states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina, and was the first sustained European colonial enterprise north of Mexico. For many years the rich Spanish heritage of the southeastern United States was neglected as a field of study. Spanish colonists themselves often characterized Spanish Florida as a place of poverty, neglect, and ruin. Over the last 30 years, however, archaeologists have demonstrated that this concept of the colony cannot be accurate. Instead of a poverty-stricken Spanish outpost dependent upon imported goods and institutions, archaeologists find that a complex, multiethnic community existed; one in which pre-Hispanic and Spanish traditions merged to form a new relationship with the cultural and natural environments. The study of animal remains from towns and Roman Catholic missions in Spanish Florida highlights the dynamic interchange between natives and immigrants that resulted in new subsistence patterns blending native and immigrant foodways while taking advantage of the local resource base. Instead of a single, inept, transient Spanish government dominating an invisible or resistant native population, we must now think of Spanish Florida as a place where resilient Native Americans developed new patterns of animal use while influencing the diet and exploitation strategies of immigrants from Europe, Asia, and Africa. TABLE OF CONTENTS: The setting -- The cultural geography of Santa Catalina de Guale / David Hurst Thomas -- Pre-Hispanic subsistence patterns in the southern Georgia Bight -- First Spanish period vertebrate use in St. Augustine and in Apalachee and Timucua provinces -- First Spanish period vertebrate use at Mission Santa Catalina de Guale -- Variability in first Spanish period animal use within Pueblo Santa Catalina de Guale -- An interpretation of Guale hunting strategy based on white-tailed deer increment structures -- Diet, exploitation strategies, and economic contributions in Spanish colonial settings -- Appendix A. Zooarchaeological methods and materials -- Appendix B. The natural history of the southern Georgia Bight and the Carolina Province -- Appendix C. Species lists for the cocina (structure 2), garden/well (structure 2/4), and the friary (structure 4) at Mission Santa Catalina de Guale -- Appendix D. Vertebrate fauna from the auger survey and miscellaneous context assemblages -- Appendix E. Assessing density-mediated attrition in white-tailed deer remains -- Appendix F. Measurements from Convento de San Francisco, Mission Santa Catalina de Guale, Pueblo Santa Catalina de Guale (south and north), and Santa Catalina de Guale auger survey and miscellaneous contexts.

Description

275 p. : ill. (some col.), maps ; 26 cm. "Issued February 16, 2010." Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-223).

Keywords

Animal remains (Archaeology), Georgia, Saint Catherines Island, Guale Indians, Mission Santa Catalina de Guale (Saint Catherines Island, Ga.), Archaeology

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