War and Peace in the Sixteenth-Century Southwest: Objected-Oriented Approaches to Native-European Encounters and Trajectories

Abstract

Although the Southwestern United States was the focus for the largest sixteenth-century entrada in North America, evidence for the indigenous use, modification, and consumption of early European objects in this region has been surprisingly modest.1 In reviewing the archaeological record of sixteenth-century Southwestern entradas there is a notable scarcity of early European artifacts in indigenous domestic, mortuary, and other contexts. While sixteenth-century European objects are present in the Southwest, they are linked predominantly with sites associated with Spaniards and their indigenous Mexican allies, rather than indigenous Americans. More striking is that although large assemblages of European contact period items are found where Spanish-led expeditions spent the most time and encountered the greatest indigenous resistance, these same areas present limited evidence that early European objects were utilized in any significant way by indigenous communities – as tools, for display, or for ceremonial purposes. Elsewhere in the Southwest, where more peaceful relations prevailed, early contacts did result in materials being exchanged and incorporated into indigenous contexts, though these objects seldom bear signs of purposeful modification. This discussion argues that the clash and entanglement of material culture and ideational systems at the earliest phase of contact in the Southwest cannot be understood