Colonial Encounters in Lucayan Contexts

Consumption patterns are informed by context, so, when studying indigenous consumption of European items, it is necessary to consider how colonial contexts varied (Dietler 1998; Lightfoot and Simmons 1998; Oland 2014, 646). Much of what has been written about the indigenous consumption of European artifacts during the early period of Spanish colonialism of the Caribbean has focused on the patterns observed at colonial settler sites such as La Isabela (Deagan 1988; Deagan and Cruxent 2000a,b), Puerto Real (Deagan 1995), and Concepción de la Vega (Ortega and Fondeur 1978) on Hispaniola or encomienda sites such as El Chorro de Maíta on Cuba (Valcárcel Rojas 2016). At these sites, the indigenous occupants and the Spanish lived and worked in close proximity under colonial scrutiny in mines, workshops, fields, and households (Kulstad-González 2015; Valcárcel Rojas et al. 2013). Indigenous sites located on the geographic and political frontiers of colonial settlements also offer insights about local consumption of European goods during the early period of Spanish colonization. These communities were not subject to the same level of regulation as those in the colonial centers and their autonomy offered different opportunities for indigenous agency (Lightfoot and Martinez 1995; Oland 2014). In some cases, local peoples did not have direct contact with the Spanish, but acquired European objects by way of down-theline trade. Such was the case of El Cabo, an indigenous site in southeastern Dominican Republic, which did not experience direct colonial control during the early years of colonization of Hispaniola (Hofman et al. 2014; Samson 2010; Valcárcel Rojas et al. 2013). The Bahama archipelago, home to the Lucayans, the indigenous occupants of these islands, offers another opportunity to view native consumption of European goods during the early period of Spanish colonization. The Spanish regarded the Bahama Islands as useless, referring to them as islas inútiles (Anderson-Córdova 2017, 131) and did not establish settler communities or institute the encomienda system here as they did elsewhere in the Antilles. With the decimation of many of its indigenous inhabitants and the formal establishment of the encomienda system on Hispaniola in 1503, the Spanish