Contact and Colonial Impact in Jamaica: Comparative Material Culture and Diet at Sevilla la Nueva and the Taíno Village of Maima

Abstract

For the many indigenous cultures encountered in the Americas by the Renaissance voyages of discovery, and particularly those on the islands of the Caribbean, the arrival of Europeans on their shores led to rapid demographic and cultural decline. Introduction of European diseases, violent confrontations, enslavement, Crown-sanctioned forced labor, and the destruction of traditional cultural patterns resulted from this devastating contact and colonialism. But to simplify these initial encounters into narratives of conquest and devastation is to ignore the profound social change to both the indigenous peoples of the Caribbean and settler European groups that this encounter provoked (Deagan 2004, 597; Patterson 2010, 133). Fifty years of historical and archaeological research has explored both indigenous and European responses to issues of cultural survival and continuity, resistance and power negotiations, accommodation, acculturation, transculturation, and ethnogenesis. This research has demonstrated that depending on the time, geographic setting, and context of these intercultural encounters, there will be significant variations in responses by both the indigenous peoples and European settlers (Deagan 2004, 598). This chapter looks at both the transformation of Iberian material culture, social practices, and diet in households of the elite and non-elite residents of Sevilla la Nueva, the first Spanish capital on the island of Jamaica, as well as the concurrent social adjustment and resistance to the Iberian colonizing efforts that occurred in the adjacent indigenous Taíno village of Maima. The Spanish colony of Sevilla la Nueva has been explored and analyzed archaeologically on and off through the past century. Excavations reveal a largescale attempt at building the colony into an extensive and productive trading port, capable of supporting further colonization throughout the Caribbean. Excavations conducted at Sevilla la Nueva show the extent of the construction and expectations of this colony, including the building of a town, governor’s fort, and abbey. The role and presence of the indigenous so-called ‘Taíno’ at