Setting the Table: Ceramics, Dining, and Cultural Exchange in Andalucía and La Florida explores issues of cultural exchange and identity among eighteenth-century Spaniards and Spanish Americans via the archaeological remains and documentary evidence form Jerez de la Frontera, Spain, and St. Augustine, Florida. These lines of evidence indicate that there were substantial and similar changes to dining practices on both sides of the Atlantic almost simultaneously. As a result, this book takes the stance that early modern individuals from Spain and Spanish America were developing and expressing a distinct Spanish-Atlantic identity that was neither wholly Spanish nor wholly Spanish-American but rather combined new ideas and goods from an increasingly global network while also maintaining some Spanish traditions. Although archaeologists have researched Spanish colonial sites in Florida and the Caribbean for decades, only two projects have adopted a trans-Atlantic perspective, and this work is the first to use this approach with eighteenth-century sites. Additionally, it is the first book to conduct a detailed study of Spanish ceramic vessel forms and their possible uses and meanings for the users. As a result, this project sheds new light on the Spanish Atlantic and calls into question several existing interpretations of life in Spanish Florida as well as foodways in both St. Augustine and Spain.
Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century: Studies in Spanish Colonial History and Administration.
