Though religion is a crucial aspect of identity for most of the world's population and has played a major role in most historical conflicts and conquests throughout history, archaeological research and theory has not adequately considered religion's role in remaking social worlds. A material-cultural perspective on this topic could augment or challenge understandings of religious change, just as historical archaeology has challenged standard narratives of history. To that end, this dissertation project focuses on religious identity and agency within the unequal power structures of the early colonial period in central Mexico. The research focuses on two early Franciscan sites in Tula de Allende, Hidalgo (Mexico): a chapel constructed in 1530 A.D. (at which researchers recently excavated the remains of forty-five individuals) and a cathedral constructed in 1550 A.D. Though built within two decades of one another, the chapel and the cathedral exhibit strikingly different architectural styles, modes of access, relationship to the urban landscape, and may reveal very different artifact assemblages. Under the direction of Dr. Enrique Rodriguez-AlegrÃa, Shannon Dugan Iverson will employ a detailed geodatabase; fine-grained architectural, bioarchaeological, and artifactual analysis; and archival research in order to observe the ways that religious identities were renegotiated over time.
Spanish conquistadors justified the conquest of the New World because it entailed the conversion of "pagans" to Christianity. In 1524, twelve Franciscan friars arrived in Central Mexico in the first wave of an ambitious conversion program that would eventually spread throughout New Spain. Secondary historical and linguistic models of Indigenous responses to this program have tended to vary along a spectrum ranging from "accommodation" to "conflict," terms that refer to the intentions, actions, and misunderstandings of both the mendicant and Indigenous communities. The goals of this project are to expand upon and challenge these models by using material culture and landscape studies as additional sources of knowledge about the negotiation of religious identity, to expand the notion of "religious" material culture, and to apply an innovative theoretical framework that considers religion as an aspect of identity.
Tula has been the site of nearly continuous religious and political importance in central Mexico since the Toltec period (circa 950-1150AD), and likely had important religious connotations for the Aztecs before the Spanish conquest (1428-1521 AD). Despite this rich history, no study focusing exclusively on the colonial period has been published to date. The research will therefore extend the history of a city that is considered by archaeologists, historians, and tourists alike to be one of the most important sites in Mexico's past and present. Iverson is committed to fostering collaboration with international and local researchers by sharing her results in publications in English and Spanish and by making her databases publicly accessible. Further, she will publicize the research by giving lectures and tours to students, congregants, and communities in Tula. These efforts will complicate notions of conversion practices for researchers and the general public alike. This award will also further Ms. Iverson's academic and intellectual development.
This NSF-funded dissertation project investigated changing methods of religious conversion during the early colonial era in Tula, Hidalgo (central Mexico). This is a crucial topic because: 1) it was used by the Spanish empire to justify conversion; 2) it is one of the most enduring and widespread consequences of the Spanish colonial project (83% of Mexicans today are Catholic); 3) Spanish priests were often the principal (and sometimes only) agents of social change, with agendas designed to alter indigenous life in specific ways; and 4) it is a topic that is sorely understudied by historical archaeologists, despite having such an enormous impact on early colonial life and identity. Historians, linguists, and historical anthropologists have proposed several models of the nature of this conversion process, which usually fall on a spectrum between the ideal types of accommodation and conflict, according to Jorge Klor de Alva. Accommodation strategies might have included: forming analogies with Indigenous practices, translating Christian texts into native languages, or constructing open chapels (which are considered to be a form of compromise between Indigenous and Spanish forms of worship). Conflict strategies might have included: the destruction of Indigenous religious statues and temples; the violent punishment of purported idolaters, or the covert practice of Indigenous religions. In practice, of course, these strategies were often practiced simultaneously. It is also important to recognize that, as William Hanks observed, Spanish religious conversion implied a restructuring of most aspects of everyday life (including landscapes, architecture, foodways, ritual, personal grooming, and ways of speaking) that together constituted Spanish religious ideals about the proper way to live, speak, and behave as a religious subject. Traces of conversion methods, and their effects on everyday life, thus have material traces that are accessible in the archaeological record. We studied these questions at Tula by examining two very early Franciscan sites: an "open chapel" built in 1530, and a Cathedral built in 1550. Though they were built within two decades of each other, the two buildings are strikingly dissimilar in ways that echo strategies of accommodation and conflict, respectively, in architectural form. The Open Chapel at the Archaeological Zone of Tula mimicked pre-Columbian patterns of religious worship at open-air plazas. The fortress-like Cathedral, on the other hand, restricted access to religious spaces. Our team was interested to find out if these patterns would be present in other artifact categories. We conducted a small mapping project and two months of excavation at each site, as well as three months of materials analysis conducted by a highly qualified international team: our evidence included human remains, coins, shell beads, figurines, lithics (stone tools), faunal (animal) remains, macrobotanical (seed) remains, and ceramics (ancient pottery). Though we are still processing the resulting data, it is clear that not all categories of evidence adhere to the patterns observed in the architecture. For example, human burials seem to indicate a category of strict Spanish control from the earliest years after the conquest. In contrast, feasting (an important part of Indigenous communal ritual) appears to have been an early category of accomodation. The ongoing analysis of the materials, in combination with a more detailed study of the landscapes and architecture of the two sites, will allow us to understand the nuanced ways that everyday life and ritual was shaped by early conversion practices. The artifact collections (housed in Hidalgo), along with the data archives and intellectual products generated by the project, will contribute an important material dimension to the history of religious conversion in central Mexico and Latin America more generally. The project will also help to extend the history of a city that archaeologists, historians, and tourists alike consider to be one of Mexico’s most important pre-Columbian sites. The research has already had a concrete impact on the communities of which it is a part. This project was the first in Tula’s long history of excavation to hire local women as excavators. It also encouraged and created international partnerships by hiring Mexican and American specialists to complete the materials analyses. Awareness of the project has been disseminated to the local and national communities through several tours with local school groups (coordinated by social anthropologist Marco Antonio Peréz Núñez), a poster created for the Diocese of Tula, two conferences at the Archaeological Zone of Tula, and local and national print, television, and radio interviews. The academic results will be further circulated in a dissertation, a technical report, and articles in English and Spanish. We extend our deepest gratitude to the city and community of Tula, the Archaeological Zone of Tula, Mexico’s National Institute of Archaeology and History (INAH), INAH-Hidalgo, the University of Texas at Austin, Mexico’s National Archive (AGN), our many local and international collaborators, the National Science Foundation, and the Peyton Wright Memorial Foundation.
