Abstract
Spanish artifacts make up a tiny percentage of all artifacts found on the west shore of Progresso Lagoon, a Maya community in northern Belize occupied from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. Textual references suggest that Spanish encomenderos distributed these objects as “gifts” during reduction and pacification efforts, but the careful distribution of these artifacts suggests specific political and economic choices made by Maya individuals. This article compares Spanish material culture from Progresso Lagoon with other Maya sites along the frontier of the Spanish colony, in an attempt to define how strategies of Maya consumption of foreign objects varied with intensity of colonial interaction, social status, and function. The consumption of Spanish artifacts at Progresso Lagoon suggests elite strategies for retaining legitimacy in the uncertain political and economic climate of the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries.
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Acknowledgments
Research for this article was made possible by the Belize Institute of Archaeology, under the direction of Dr. John Morris, George Thompson, and Dr. Jaime Awe. It was completed under the auspices of the Belize Postclassic Project, directed by Marilyn Masson. Funding was provided by The University at Albany-SUNY Field School, Northwestern University, the National Science Foundation Dissertation Improvement Grant (#0315331), and a dissertation grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (#7055). I extend thanks to the local communities of Progresso and San Estevan, where I lived while archaeological research was carried out, and to all of the many people that contributed to the research process over the years. I thank Victor and Sonya Ayuso y Espat, and Margaret Briggs, for opening their homes to me while I completed analysis. The map of Progresso Lagoon was created for me by Timothy Hare. I am grateful to Elizabeth Klarich, Cynthia Robin, Elizabeth Graham, and an anonymous reviewer, who provided comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Oland, M. “With the Gifts and Good Treatment That He Gave Them”: Elite Maya Adoption of Spanish Material Culture at Progresso Lagoon, Belize. Int J Histor Archaeol 18, 643–667 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-014-0274-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-014-0274-1