Preliminary Programme

Wed 24 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Thu 25 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Fri 26 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.15

Sat 27 March
    11.00 - 12.15
    12.30 - 13.45
    14.30 - 15.45
    16.00 - 17.00

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Friday 26 March 2021 12.30 - 13.45
P-10 RUR10 Shaping the New World: Iberian Colonialism, Agricultural Change and Landscape Transformation in the Atlantic (14th-18th C.)
P
Network: Rural Chair: Ignacio Díaz Sierra
Organizers: Ignacio Díaz Sierra, Eduardo Herrera-Malatesta Discussant: Joshep Sony Jean
Konrad Antczak : Seditious Seascapes: Maritime Mobilities and Informal Trade in the Southeastern Caribbean, 17th–18th Century
During the 17th and 18th century, Papiamentu, the creole language spoken on the islands of Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire became a lingua franca for informal maritime trade with the Spanish Province of Venezuela. Curaçaoan Sephardim, enslaved Africans, freedmen, indigenous peoples, maroons, pardos, and Europeans and their descendants on the islands ... (Show more)
During the 17th and 18th century, Papiamentu, the creole language spoken on the islands of Aruba, Curaçao, and Bonaire became a lingua franca for informal maritime trade with the Spanish Province of Venezuela. Curaçaoan Sephardim, enslaved Africans, freedmen, indigenous peoples, maroons, pardos, and Europeans and their descendants on the islands and the mainland, effectively used Papiamentu and interacted trans-imperially across the seascapes of the Southeastern Caribbean. The sea enabled the mobilization of goods such as Venezuelan cacao and indispensable ceramics by this diversity of seafarers who fluidly sailed across the geopolitical, ethnic, and socio-economic lines “separating” them. The colonizers, the colonized, and those at the margins of empire, however, each harnessed the potential of these seascapes with differing goals in mind and with varying results. Here I present some of the preliminary results of project ArCarib (Archaeology of Informal Commerce in the Colonial Caribbean), the first cross-border archaeological study to bridge the past and present geopolitical maritime boundaries separating the ABC islands and Venezuela. By taking an unabashedly aquacentric approach, I contrast the colonial transformation of Venezuelan cacao plantation landscapes on the continental coast with the adjacent Southeastern Caribbean seascapes. I seek to understand how the colonial transformation of the first impacted on the understanding and use of the latter by different social actors, and how by utilizing the sea’s unique mobilities potential, colonial seafarers circumvented the restrictive and acculturating policies imposed by the colonizer. (Show less)

María Cruz Berrocal : Early Colonialism in the Pacific: Potential Landscape and Cultural Transformations Unattended
The study of the impacts for local populations of the first contact with Europeans in Asia-Pacific in the 16th and 17th centuries has not received sufficient historical, anthropological and archaeological attention, beyond a mere recognition that there was an early presence by Iberian and others that is considered as an ... (Show more)
The study of the impacts for local populations of the first contact with Europeans in Asia-Pacific in the 16th and 17th centuries has not received sufficient historical, anthropological and archaeological attention, beyond a mere recognition that there was an early presence by Iberian and others that is considered as an anecdotic collection of events without further social and historical significance. However, this so far underplayed presence must have had cultural, demographic and ecological consequences for the local peoples and landscapes. The early establishment of direct relations and indirect effects mainly caused by the introduction of new species into the local environments could have shaped the history of the region in ways that have not been well described or envisioned yet. Processes such as human-driven environmental changes (e.g. erosion associated with European presence or local abandonment), unintended introduction of commensal species, intended introduction of new plant species, and the unavoidable introduction of new diseases into a number of islands make of the Pacific a player in global history in parallel with other world regions at around the same time frame. (Show less)

Eduardo Herrera-Malatesta : People, Water and Land: the Impact of Colonization on the Landscape
The arrival of Christopher Columbus on the indigenous island of Hayti in 1492 and the subsequent event had a severe impact on the indigenous population and their environment. The Spanish establish different systems to implement control over the human and natural resources. Since the beginnings of the colonization process, Columbus ... (Show more)
The arrival of Christopher Columbus on the indigenous island of Hayti in 1492 and the subsequent event had a severe impact on the indigenous population and their environment. The Spanish establish different systems to implement control over the human and natural resources. Since the beginnings of the colonization process, Columbus demanded the payment of taxes to the indigenous people that force them to increase agricultural production and gold extraction. Later, the encomienda system gave them the justification to implement ‘legal’ slavery over the indigenous population to force them to work for a particular Spanish encomenderos. These approaches to control de local population affect the distribution of indigenous settlements, the vegetation and also the water sources on the inland. In this presentation, we will discuss two examples of the impact that colonization had on people, water and land on the first colonized area of the Caribbean and the Americas. The first case is temporally framed in the late 15th and early 16th-century, and geographically in today’s northwestern Dominican Republic. Here we will discuss the case of the Yaque river basin, an area where the Spanish had to implement a strong control since 1493 as it was in between the villa of La Isabela and the gold mines of Janico. For the second case, we will discuss the case of 17th-century sugar plantations in the French Saint-Domingue, today's north-eastern Haiti. This was the most productive in the Caribbean and grounded on the massive exploitation of enslaved Africans. By using a multidisciplinary perspective based on archaeological fieldwork, remote sensing surveys, and historical archives (i.e. maps, plans, and chronicles), this presentation seeks to bring new insights on the way how both French and Spanish colonizers acted and transformed people, water and land differently. (Show less)

Jacob Morales-Mateos : Agricultural Change in the Canary Islands: the Transition from the Pre-hispanic to the Colonial World (14-17th Centuries AD)
The Canary Islands were first colonized between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD by North-western African populations, who stayed isolated from the mainland until European seafarers contacted with them in the 14th century AD. The colonizers were farmers who introduced a set of crops and domesticated animals to ... (Show more)
The Canary Islands were first colonized between the 1st century BC and 3rd century AD by North-western African populations, who stayed isolated from the mainland until European seafarers contacted with them in the 14th century AD. The colonizers were farmers who introduced a set of crops and domesticated animals to the archipelago, which lacks large terrestrial animals and has a small number of edible plants. Agricultural resources became a very important supply of food, being the staple for the indigenous populations of some islands, such as Gran Canaria. After European explorers contacted with them in the 14th century AD, new domesticated plants and animals started to being introduced in the Canaries. Among them, it needs to be highlighted the arrival of sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum), which in a short time became an important cash crop, modifying the landscape of the islands and building the basements for the later sugarcane plantations in the American colonies. In the current paper we are reviewing and presenting the archaeological and textual evidence of crops and domesticated animals introductions in the archipelago between the 14 and 17th centuries AD. Our aim is to evaluate the transformations in agricultural activities that were produced by the new colonial rule, as well as to assess the resilience performed by the indigenous populations. (Show less)

Félix Retamero Serralvo : Irrigation Systems in Settler Colonial Contexts. The Case of Catamarca, Argentina (16th-17th c.)
The seventy Spaniards who entered the Catamarca Valley in April 1591 brought with them weapons, carts, Indians, horses, sheep and cattle. Also, they conveyed a new agricultural program which they put into practice as soon as the land seized from the local population was distributed as a reward for their ... (Show more)
The seventy Spaniards who entered the Catamarca Valley in April 1591 brought with them weapons, carts, Indians, horses, sheep and cattle. Also, they conveyed a new agricultural program which they put into practice as soon as the land seized from the local population was distributed as a reward for their military participation in the conquest. There had been many previous experiences of conquering, settling, dominating native populations and developing new productive strategies in Central and South America at the end of the 16th century. Nonetheless, the earlier conquests and colonisations developed in the Iberian Peninsula from the 12th c. on and, later, in the Atlantic islands, constituted the longest and foundational background in the formation of the settlers’ ‘tool-kit’.

This presentation will focus on the preliminary results of the work carried out by researchers of the Escuela de Arqueología (Universidad Nacional de Catamarca) and of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona on the Spanish settlement of the Catamarca Valley, in NW Argentina. Specifically, the study of the irrigation systems forming part of the estancia of Autigasta, the first merced documented in the area (1591), will be presented. Soon after the establishment of the estancia, vineyards and cotton were planted in the pre-existing irrigated fields. What were the logics of the design and the productions during the early colonial period; what were the new productive and managerial priorities, and how and to which extent the new productive organisations fitted -or not- into the previous peasant layouts and practices, are some of the guidelines of this work. Also, this case study will be compared with other Iberian and Canarian colonial experiences of irrigation management during the 15th-16th centuries. (Show less)



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