Style and resistance in the seventeenth century salinas province

Katherine A. Spielmann, Jeannette L. Mobley-Tanaka, James M. Potter

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

29 Scopus citations

Abstract

This paper draws upon James Scott's insights concerning the "public" and "hidden" transcripts of subjugated peoples to investigate Pueblo responses to Spanish colonization in the seventeenth century. We focus on the marked changes that occurred in the decoration of two ceramic wares produced in the Salinas Pueblo region of central New Mexico, and suggest that these changes express one aspect of native resistance to Spanish missionary efforts to eradicate Pueblo religious practices. We document that differences in the impact of missionization between the northern and southern Salinas pueblos led to marked and divergent changes in the ways women decorated glaze and white ware vessels. Women who made glaze ware bowls lived in villages under the direct control of Spanish missionaries, and appear to have deliberately simplified and masked the iconography on their vessels. Women who made white ware jars, however, lived in villages without resident Spanish missionaries. Following Spanish colonization, these women began decorating their vessels with detailed, diverse ritual iconography, apparently in an effort to reinforce, and probably to teach, religious knowledge. Copyright

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)621-647
Number of pages27
JournalAmerican Antiquity
Volume71
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 2006

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • History
  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
  • Archaeology
  • Museology

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