The Archaeology of Ethnogenesis: Race and Sexuality in Colonial San Francisco

1. Ethnogenesis and the Archaeology of Identity

9 ETHNOGENESIS AND THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF IDENTITY 1 “Found any gold yet?” the driver called out from the UPS truck passing by the excavation site. I’ve come to recognize these catch phrases about buried treasure and dinosaur bones for what they are: not evidence of the public’s ignorance about archaeology, but a tentative opening gambit in a conversation between strangers. “Not yet,” I called back, trying to sound welcoming. “But we are finding some interesting things. Want to come take a look?” In the Presidio of San Francisco, an urban park that is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, public participation and interpretation are core components of our archaeological research (fig. 2). Since 1997, I have partnered with the Presidio Archaeology Center to bring university field schools to the Presidio to study the remains of the Spanish-colonial settlement for which the park is named. We excavate along well-traveled streets and jogging paths, in parking lots and the narrow yards surrounding decommissioned military housing (now rented out to civilian tenants). During a typical six-week excavation, our field school commonly receives more than two thousand visitors, some of whom volunteer in our field lab, becoming members of the research team. Our public program rests on two core concepts: an open site and a conversational approach. There are no barriers that keep visitors from entering the research area; they are free to come into our workspace and observe in whatever manner they prefer. Interactions between archaeologists and visitors follow the flow of normal conversations: the visitors’ questions direct the content and tone of the discussion, and the archaeologists share what we are doing that day and what we have found. Rather than giving a prepared speech, we focus instead on each visitor’s interests as well as our own. The content and length of these conversations vary widely. Some people are interested in the park’s history; others ask about the archaeological process. Many have information they’d like to share with us about their own historical research, their genealogy and heritage, or their experiences with archaeology. We—the archaeologists—are often the object of fascination: who are we, how did we get permission to dig here, how much schooling do we have, do we get paid, do we like what we do? For me, the most challenging interactions are those that turn to the topic of historical identity. Such conversations often start with the query, “So, who lived here?” or, more commonly, “Are you excavating Indians?” These straightforward questions have complicated answers. Yes, Native Californians lived here, both before colonization and also in sizeable numbers during the Spanishcolonial and Mexican eras. If the person seems particularly interested in in10 Ethnogenesis and the Archaeology of Identity figure 2. Archaeologist Bea Cox shows park visitors a recently recovered artifact. digenous history, I might mention how the colonial military brought workers here from throughout central California, so that in addition to the Ohlone Indians (the local tribe), there were Coast Miwok, Bay Miwok, Patwin, Yokuts, Salinans, and others at El Presidio de San Francisco. And, I add, there were the colonists themselves. For some people, the term “colonist” is su‹cient, but others will ask, “The Spanish, right?” Spanish by nationality, I answer, but from villages in what today is northern Mexico. Some are perplexed: “So, they were Mexicans?” You might say that—a mixed population , people primarily of Mexican Indian and African ancestry. The term “African” always gets people’s attention. “Were they slaves?” Not here, I respond , fumbling through a description of the large population of free black people in eighteenth-century northern Mexico, some of whom were recruited as colonists to California. And Mexican Indians? If I’m feeling expansive, I’ll trot out the historical anecdote recorded by one foreign (European) visitor to the early settlement, who reported that indigenous Mexican languages were spoken at the Presidio as much as Spanish was. At some point in these conversations, I usually begin to feel uneasy. It is important to dispel California’s myth of Spanish conquistadors and put Mexican Indians, African Mexicans, and Native Californians at the center of California’s Spanish-colonial and Mexican history. Yet only two decades after arriving here in Alta California, the colonists, themselves formerly colonized peoples, ceased to think of themselves in these racial terms. Abandoning the sistema de castas, Spain’s colonial race laws, they embraced...