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Conventions Used in This Book The power of words is not to be taken lightly. When English-speaking people publish in English concerning the Spanish colonial empire there will be issues with spelling, usage, and conventions of meaning. These issues were brought into bold relief by the addition of the contributed chapters that supplement the reporting of our analytically based project . Choices about using English or Spanish words, use of accents, and so forth had to be made, and we frequently chose to substitute the English word in place of the Spanish. For example, the Spanish word teja, meaning here a curved roof tile, and ladrillo, or Spanish-style brick used to pave floors, line irrigation canals, and build arches, are often simply called “tile” or “brick.” We had to choose among the terms used to refer to tin opacified leadglazed earthenware. Usage has changed through the years, at times reflecting an author’s understanding of the word’s origin or history. Initially, “majolica” was the preferred term (e.g., Goggin 1968). This posed a problem because there was a long-lived pottery tradition known as “English majolica” that was made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries . Others (e.g., Lister and Lister 1982) turned to the word “maiolica,” which is used frequently to refer the tin-glazed Italian ceramics. After much wrangling, we have chosen to use mayólica in this book because it emphasizes the Spanish derivation of the art form (see Gavin 2003, 2) and because of its frequent use in Mexico by specialists in historical archaeology (e.g., Fournier-García 1990; Fournier-García, Blackman, and Bishop 2007; Fournier-García et al. 2009). ...

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