Zooarchaeology of Mission Santa Clara de Asìs: Bone Fragmentation, Stew Production, and Commensality

Through the analysis of faunal remains from refuse features associated with the Native Californian living quarters at Mission Santa Clara de Asìs, the article examines Indigenous diet within this colonial mission settlement. In Alta California, Native Californians from differing sociolinguistic groups were relocated to Spanish missions, creating an ever shifting pluralistic society. Within these mission settlements, Native Californians were tasked with maintaining the vast agricultural fields for which they received ingredients for two Spanish-style meals, atole and pozole. This study examines the diet of Native Californian families living within Mission Santa Clara, specifically focusing on the breakage patterns of cattle bones and the communal preparation, cooking, and consumption of these daily meals. These results illustrate change and continuity of foodway practices, expanding our understanding of mission political economies and Native Californian persistence within this colonial system.

The office of the prefect apostolic, Clemente Fernandez, o.p. (1913–1920) in difficulties: analysis on Jean de Guébriant's report to Propaganda fide

PurposeThe study discovers a crisis of authority and administration in Catholic mission of Taiwan during 1910 and 1920s. It aims to discover the reasons and the significance of the problem.Design/methodology/approachThe author works on the reports and correspondence of Jean de Guébriant, apostolic visitor of China missions in 1919–1920. He received some reports from the Dominican Prefect Apostolic of Formosa, Clemente Fernandez.FindingsThe author discovers a severe problem of authority brought about some conflicts between the Prefect Apostolic Clemente Fernandez, o.p. and some Dominican missionaries in the mission, conflicts reflecting ambiguous status of this prefecture apostolic with regard to not only the Dominican Provincia del Santo Rosario, headquarters of Dominican missions in East Asia, but also the Dominican apostolic vicariate of Southern Fujian in China, and even the Japanese Catholic church, because Taiwan had been conceded to the Japanese empire since 1895 until 1945.Research limitations/implicationsThe author has not yet consulted the archives in Propaganda Fide in Vatican circle and in Dominican archives. Still, some questions remain unanswered for lack of related archives. This study calls for further works in the future.Originality/valueVery few relevant studies are found on the Dominican mission in Taiwan during 1860–1949. This study reveals a serious problem on the structure of Catholic mission due to an unclear status of Taiwan. It reflects, in fact, the delicate situation in ecclesial and political aspects between China, Japan and Spanish missions in Manila, Philippines.

Making Parallel Histories out of Spanish Missions

This chapter explores the mission celebrations that developed in Southern California, among newly arrived Anglo settlers and tourists, and between the 1880s and World War I. It talks about mission writers who celebrated the Spanish Franciscans that were led by Junípero Serra and founded missions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It also argues that the celebrations in the Midwest elevated Catholic missionaries to the status of regional and national founding fathers in ways that naturalized U.S. territorial expansion. The chapter mentions the Serra celebrations that contended with the recent history of violence in Southern California. It describes the war with Mexico and ongoing violence against Mexicans, as well as the murder and displacement of Native Americans.

California’s Coast

The origins and natural features of California’s coast and seaward islands, which Douglas understood well, are surveyed, followed by a chronological overview of ever-increasing development from the Spanish missions of the late 18th century to the eve of passage of Proposition 20 in 1972. Plate tectonics, the Southern California Bight, the California Current, the Franciscan Complex, El Niño, and more are explained in the first part of this chapter. The built environment, spurred by the gold rush and followed by real estate booms, population explosion, urbanization, and industrialization, is taken up in the last half of the chapter. Rapid development along California’s scenic shore set the stage for a rising public concern about a vanishing coast.

Connecting visual presents to archival pasts in multilingual California

Linguistic Landscape (LL) research has emerged as an approach to document and analyze language use in public spaces in present-day multilingual California and elsewhere in the world. This paper extends the conceptual and methodological frame of LL beyond the visual, ethnographic present. It seeks to create dialogue between text-oriented archival research into historical contexts of language and identity, and the present-oriented ethnographic focus of LL grounded in current sociolinguistic, applied linguistic, anthropological, and educational research. Building upon research into monuments and memorialization, this paper develops “memorization” to conceptualize the multilayered historicity, intertextuality and materiality that commit to public memory linguistic, political, and educational discourses — with their constitutive ideologies, practices, and policies — designed to “make the past present for the future” in public space. This paper offers an interdisciplinary perspective on the memorization of the colonial Spanish missions in California and the 2015 canonization of their founder, Junípero Serra. Several methodological opportunities and challenges for LL are discussed for critically connecting present and past landscapes of multilingualism, and their future ethical implications.

Placing Refuge and the Archaeology of Indigenous Hinterlands in Colonial California

Indigenous negotiations of European colonialism in North America are more complex than models of domination and resistance reveal. Indigenous people—acting according to their own historically and culturally specific ways of knowing and being in the world—developed strategies for remaking their identities, material choices, and social configurations to survive one or multiple phases of colonization. Archaeologists are making strides in documenting the contingencies and consequences of these strategies, yet their focus is often skewed toward sites of contact and colonialism (e.g., missions and forts). This article examines places of refuge for native people navigating colonial programs in the San Francisco Bay area of California. I use a resistance-memory-refuge framework to reevaluate resistance to Spanish missions, including the possible reoccupation of landscapes by fugitive orfurloughed Indians. Commemorative trips to shellmounds and other refuges support the concept of an indigenous hinterland, or landscapes that, in time, provided contexts for continuity and adjustment among Indian communities making social, material, and economic choices in the wake ofmissionization. By viewing colonialism from the outside in, this reoriented approach can potentially enhance connections between archaeological and Native American communities.