Abstract book ISBN:
978-80-907270-3-8 (EuropeanAssociation of Archaeologists); 978-84-9168-140-3 (Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, vol. 1); 978-84-9168-143-4 (Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona, vol. 2)
Content:
Historical archaeologists working in the Spanish colonial Americas have widely recognized the significant efforts that colonial agents made to "recreate" Iberian foodways in the New World. Independently of their greater or lesser success, scholars have also signalled the important consequences that the previous efforts had on native communities. In this paper, and drawing from the previous scholarship, we will move to the western Pacific and discuss the social implications that food imperial politics had in Guam (Mariana Islands) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The incorporation of Guam by the colonial network of the Spanish empire took place in 1565, but the permanent occupation of the island began latter, in 1668, in the framework of Jesuit global missionization. Since then, new animals, plants, recipes, culinary equipment and cooking technologies were introduced to “recreate” foodways deemed appropriate by missionaries. Importantly, new forms of land exploitation and native labour followed, as well as new attitudes towards food in terms of gender and class.
Through the analyses of historical and archaeological evidence we will discuss how these new foodscapes took shape through everyday life practices, and their main repercussions for Guam’s indigenous inhabitants –the Chamorro– in terms of food production, cooking and consumption.