From <i>Casta</i> to <i>Californio</i>: Social Identity and the Archaeology of Culture Contact

Abstract

In culture contact archaeology, studies of social identities generally focus on the colonized–colonizer dichotomy as the fundamental axis of identification. This emphasis can, however, mask social diversity within colonial or indigenous populations, and it also fails to account for the ways that the division between colonizer and colonized is constructed through the practices of colonization. Through the archaeology of material culture, foodways, and architecture, I examine changing ethnic, racial, and gendered identities among colonists at El Presidio de San Francisco, a Spanish‐colonial military settlement. Archaeological data suggest that military settlers were engaged in a double material strategy to consolidate a shared colonial identity, one that minimized differences among colonists and simultaneously heightened distinctions between colonists and local indigenous peoples.