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7. Mission Cemeteries, Mission Peoples: A Synthesis of Intracemetery Bioarchaeology in Spanish Colonial Florida
- University Press of Florida
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7 Mission Cemeteries, Mission Peoples A Synthesis of Intracemetery Bioarchaeology in Spanish Colonial Florida This book is defined by its research approach and emphasis on region. All chapters use intracemetery spatial analyses to reconstruct patterns of interindividual variation in Spanish mission churches dating to the (late) sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Paleodietary, paleohealth, and dental phenotypic data are combined to add a new level of inference about native population biology that complements the existing and extensive literature on the bioarchaeology of the region. Chapters present detailed and particularistic research; in some cases, the focus of analysis is as small as a single interment event (chapter 3). The purpose of this final chapter is to synthesize the variety of inferences presented throughout the book and “scale up” once again by drawing parallel threads from the different chapters into a coherent framework that complements the archaeology, history, and comparative bioarchaeology of the region. In short, this chapter answers the question: what have we learned? As stated in the introduction , I began this project with three goals in mind: 1) to resolve basic issues of mission identity in the hope that future scholars could approach the bioarchaeology of La Florida with a fresh perspective; 2) to perform intracemetery analyses of phenotypic variation to determine how mission cemeteries formed, what the rules of grave placement may have been, and what variations in these rules suggest about broader social changes in the mission communities; and 3) using both inferences above, inform a multiscalar perspective on health and diet that complements the existing bioarchaeological literature from Spanish Florida. To accomplish these goals I focused on the mission as a unit of investigation and summarized all existing literature about each site, including a complete burial enumeration. A Synthesis of Intracemetery Bioarchaeology in Spanish Colonial Florida · 243 The varied and complex nature of the analyses is summarized in a number of thematic sections below. Identifying Missions, Individuals, and Functional Samples This book had several pragmatic outcomes relating to basic biological identification of mission sites, specific mission burials, and the delineation of subsamples that provide more context for comparative analyses. Such basic information is absolutely crucial for determining the level of nuance archaeological research can offer. The purpose was not to associate a specific name from the historical record with a particular archaeological site (this could never really be done with biological data alone), but rather to establish the socio-ethno-linguistic affinity of mission samples whose status was somewhat uncertain due to the vagaries and lacunae of the historical documents. I return to these details below. The second focus targeted individual burials. The goal was to use biodistance approaches to infer the biological affinity of atypical burials, here defined in terms of body position and placement and grave inclusions. Although the detail is a relatively minor part of the overall scope of work, I can say that the presumed Spanish priest at mission Patale (Jones, Storey, and Widmer 1991; chapter 2) was not Spanish, nor were any of the other burials from that mission or any other mission, as best as could be determined using dental metric data. On the other hand, the four atypical burials at the Santa María south cemetery (chapter 6) were, in every diagnostic way, different from the individuals buried in a normative fashion (parallel to the walls) in that church. I feel confident linking these four individuals to the Guale from the nearby Santa Catalina doctrina. They also may have been Yamassee, or at least the flexed burials may have been, an intriguing proposition given the long association between the Yamassee name and the Santa María south cemetery. We have scant evidence to biologically differentiate the Guale and Yamassee. The latter were pagan but were likely biologically similar to the Guale, with whom they shared cultural and linguistic similarities (Worth 2004b). In contrast, research presented in chapter 5 suggests that the majority of burials from the Santa María church were ethnic Timucua. In fact, clarifying the complex occupational history of Amelia Island consumed the latter chapters of the book, and from this a compelling narrative of migration, replacement, and mortuary patterning emerged. [3.237.44.242] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:18 GMT) 244 · Mission Cemeteries, Mission Peoples Indeed, the analyses presented in chapters 5 and 6 outline just how complex the sampling situation is on Amelia Island. Most bioarchaeologists recognize three samples for the purposes of comparative analysis: 1) Santa Catalina de Guale de Santa María, confirmed archaeologically...