In this Book
- Ceramic Production in Early Hispanic California: Craft, Economy, and Trade on the Frontier of New Spain
- Book
- 2014
- Published by: University Press of Florida
In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, much of what is now the southwestern United States was known as Alta California, a remote part of New Spain. The presidios, missions, and pueblos of the region have yielded a rich trove of ceramics materials, though they have been sparsely analyzed in the literature. Ceramic Production in Early Hispanic California fills that lacuna and reinterprets the position of Alta California in the Spanish Colonial Empire.
Using both petrography and neutron activation analysis to examine over 1,600 ceramic samples, the contributors to this volume explore the region’s ceramic production, imports, trade, and consumption. From artistic innovation to technological diffusion, a different aspect of the intricacies of everyday life and culture in the region is revealed in each essay. This book illuminates much about Spanish imperial expansion in a far corner of the colonial world. Through this research, California history has been rewritten.
Table of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- pp. ix-xiv
- List of Tables
- pp. xv-xviii
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xxix-xxxiv
- Conventions Used in This Book
- pp. xxxv-xxxvi
- Part I. A Study of Pottery
- 1. A Global Perspective
- pp. 3-11
- Part II. Tradition and Transformation of Alta California
- Part III. The Creation of Ceramics
- Part IV. Assessing Variation in Ceramic Composition
- Part V. Pottery as an Active Component of Colonial Economics
- References
- pp. 325-368
- About the Authors and Contributors
- pp. 369-374