Abstract
In 1976, I co-authored an article on the Guevaví Mission site, founded in 1701, as one of the northernmost Jesuit missions in the American Southwest (Robinson and Barnes, 1976). My contribution to this article was the description and analysis of the material culture recovered in archaeological investigations (1964–1966). Like many other southwestern Spanish colonial mission sites, Guevaví had been the target of “treasure hunting,” casual surface collecting of artifacts, and post-Jesuit occupation disturbance, so “only broken, worn, or lost items remained” (Robinson and Barnes, 1976). Slightly more than 5,000 pieces of Native American pottery were recovered in excavations, but how much of this material pre- or post-dated this eighteenth century Jesuit mission was unknown. All of the imported ceramics (Mexico, Spain, and China), broken glass and beads, and metal fragments fit neatly into three archival drawers in the Arizona State Museum and did not exceed 100 items, or one half of one percent of the total number of recovered artifacts.
As an archaeologist who has specialized in the research of Spanish colonial material culture, I was most interested in reviewing Jeffrey Quilter's work on the colonial town and church of Magdalena de Cao along the Pacific coast of Peru to see how artifacts recovered from South America missions compared to those of North America. The differences between Magdalena de Cao and Guevaví were readily apparent in terms of size of occupation, environment, and the amount and variety of artifacts.
Magdalena de Cao was originally the site of a major prehistoric Moche town and monumental huaca or earthen mound complex, located on the El Brujo Terrace adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. Decades of archaeological investigations on sites on this terrace was the basis for the development of a tourist facility, as this area appears to have been continuously occupied for as long as 14,000 years, and where in the last quarter of the sixteenth century the Spanish created a reduccion, or mission “to keep the indigenous people under control and to Christianize and civilize them” (Quilter, 2020: 5, 13). Jeffrey Quilter accepted the task to study the historic period occupation—16th to 17th centuries—of the El Brujo Terrace, which he admits is only a “start” to the study of the cultural resources of this area and time period (Quilter, 2020: 18).
As Quilter notes in Chapter 2, “very little is known about the Colonial Period in Peru except through historical records written by Spaniards (Italics added)”, which while important “do not offer much information about the everyday lives of ordinary people” (2020: 29). Initial investigations in 2002 and 2004 demonstrated the potentially rich remains associated with the Colonial Period that might be interpreted for tourists, such as painted murals from the colonial church ruins and the unexpected “dense deposit of colonial trash in which were found numerous paper fragments dating to the colonial era” (Quilter, 2020: 31). Throughout the period of 2005 to 2013, the Catholic church complex and associated indigenous town were subjected to investigations. Resulting in the recovery of a significant amounts of preserved organic material, such as textiles, paper, leather, bones, and wood due to the exceptionally dry conditions at the site (Quilter, 2020: 33–74). In addition, there were recovered ceramics (local and imported), glass (beads), and metal (copper, iron, and silver) such as may be found at any Spanish colonial site.
In the succeeding chapters, various authors discussed and pictured an impressive array of artifacts associated with the procurement and processing of native and imported food and preserved food remains (Chapter 3); analysis of approximately 28 intact and partially intact human burials of the colonial period, including a cranium of an African male of the colonial period (Chapters 4 and 5); textile and clothing remains of traditional Andean and imported Spanish cloth (Chapter 6); imported glass beads (Chapter 7); locally produced indigenous and lead-glazed earthenware, and imported Panamanian Majolica, Chinese porcelain, and Spanish “olive” jars (Chapters 8 and 9); and metal consisting of an nearly endless variety of copper, iron, and silver (coins) objects (Chapters 10 and 11).
Although not specifically discussed in the work at Magdalena de Cao, the immense amount of colonial material culture recovered—as opposed to what would be found at missions on the frontier of northern New Spain (today the United States)—appears to be due to the relative proximity of Magdalena de Cao to a major urban center of Lima, Peru. And, in addition to better access to major markets, the dry environmental conditions at Magdalena accounted for the recovery of organic materials from the mission and town of Cao. Whereas missions studied in the United States were often at the end of a trade route that might take nearly a year for goods to reach their final destination, and once deposited or lost the artifacts (particularly organic ones) would have been subjected to environments not favorable to preservation.
In Chapter 12, Quilter has an excellent archival history of the town and mission of Cao and how this coastal area, once a heavily populated area, eventually was abandoned. The Spanish required tribute services of the Indigenous people, which could be so burdensome that the caciques would under count the numbers of men in the community to lessen the impact of these services, but in the end individuals and whole families would leave the area for larger towns, due to intrusion of Spanish settlers on their lands and to avoid tribute service (2020: 322). In addition, Magdalena de Cao, which was established in early 17th century lost their church—possibility as a result of an earthquake. Without priestly assistance to help rebuild the community, Spanish settlers began to divert irrigation water from the Indigenous people's field which reduced the production of food for the population, causing the complete abandonment of Cao between 1760 and 1785 (2020: 323).
Probably the most interesting and singular artifacts recovered are discussed in Chapter 13 and 14. These were some 2,500 fragments of paper, with printing or writing, from documents, manuscripts, liturgical music scores, books, and playing cards. It is reasoned that the church archives were perhaps buried and preserved under adobe bricks when the church collapsed due to an earthquake or structural failure, and it was felt the recovery of this material was “more trouble than it was worth,” with the curious exception of the use of paper fragments to serve as rolling paper to smoke tobacco. The study of these papers is still ongoing, but they are producing most interesting results, such as the bulk of the items are in Spanish, but also Quingnam a native language, indulgences for the remission of temporal punishments for sins, and printed Playing Cards—a Latin deck of cards containing 48 vs. 52 cards, probably made in Spain from 1590 to 1690 (2020: 351–400).
In the last chapter (Chapter 16), Jeffrey Quilter provides some interesting “Concluding Thoughts.” He admits that his reasons for getting involved in historic sites archaeological was due in part to his appreciation for the wide range of colonial resources studied at Dumbarton Oaks where he was the Director of Pre-Columbian Studies Program, but a slight annoyance at the “sense of superiority among those who worked with documents—the historians and ethnohistorians” (2020: 427–428). To Quilter, it did not seem appropriate that his own field of endeavor—archaeology—in looking at colonial resources would say, “Well, you know, Jeffrey, in Peru when we say ‘archaeology’ we mean prehistoric archaeology” (2020: 427). The discovery of written fragments of documents in this colonial site and how historic artifacts are in themselves documents that can be “read” (2020: 249), is what drew him to the investigation of Magdalena de Cao. He concludes that more work remains to be done on the artifacts from Magdalena, such as the study of preserved footwear, and this publication is just the beginning. Quilter is now undertaking a “crowd sourcing” effort to get assistance from people on the internet to help with the research and interpretation of colonial artifacts from Magdalena, an innovative approach to understanding the story of South America historic sites and their material cultural (2020: 431).
This reviewer can relate to the feelings of Jeffrey Quilter noted above. In 1967, I enrolled at the University of Arizona, archaeological programs and started volunteering on weekends at the Tucson Urban Renewal investigations in downtown Tucson, where the Department of Housing and Urban Development was funding the removal of historic adobe buildings to construct a Convention Center as part of an effort to revitalize the downtown area. Over the next five years, I was part of a major salvage effort to recovery literally millions of artifacts from the initial founding of the Presidio of Tucson (1776) through the 1930s. Many were the times my colleagues and I endured the smirks of our “prehistoric” friends. When I published my first article—on Mexican majolica from the Mission of San Xavier del Bac—the Department Chair praised it as “mercifully short.”
At the start of this review, I mentioned the Jesuit mission site of Guevaví in southern Arizona. After my work was published in 1976, I was selected to write a study for the Secretary of Interior who designated the property as a National Historic Landmark (1990). This site was acquired by the Archaeological Conservancy and held until it was transferred to the National Park Service as an outlier mission to Tumacacorí National Monument. The site is open to the public on a limited basis and long-term research is being conducted on the mission site for future preservation and interpretation. Similarly, it is hoped that the preservation of the Spanish colonial church and town site of Magdalena de Cao, within a preserved environment, as a tourist facility, to interpret the prehistory and history of El Brujo Terrace, will lead to further discoveries at this site and will serve as a potential template for other colonial sites in Latin America. Quilter's publication has already provided me with an interesting comparison between the missions of northern New Spain and Peru.