Cultural interaction during the Spanish colonial period: The Plaza Church site, Los Angeles

The cultural interaction between indigenous groups and Spanish Colonial settlers was investigated through the lens of an archaeological assemblage from Los Angeles, California. The history of Spanish Colonial settlement in California has most often been written from the perspective of the missionaries and government officials. This study looked at the more rarely documented interaction between the incoming settlers and the Gabrielino in the second pueblo founded (1781) in Spanish Colonial Alta California. The archaeological assemblage used in this analysis was excavated from a site by the Plaza of this early California pueblo. The artifacts were recovered from midden and trashpit deposits. The materials reflect the predominantly domestic nature of this trash deposit, and probably of early pueblo life itself. Three different materials were chosen to address two levels of research questions. Locally-made brown ware and faunal remains contributed more than three-fourths of the identifiable items from the site. Because these two materials, and their patterning, were local creations of colonial life--of the interactions between the settlers, the Gabrielino, the environment, and the external controls of the Spanish government--they provided the best measure of local interaction patterns. Materials, production, distribution, use, and deposition were analyzed as semi-independent spheres where interaction between the two cultures could have occurred. The evidence from the brown wares and fauna formed the basis for describing the interaction in the pueblo. The second level of questions, using the patterning from the fauna and brown wares, as well as majolica distributions, addressed how the reconstructed cultural interaction in the pueblo of Los Angeles compared with other, better known mission and presidio contexts in Alta California. The results of these comparisons suggest that institutional constraints on the colonial communities were often less significant than the local interaction with indigenous cultures, environments, and the community\u27s location in supply and trade networks. Each material studied demonstrated a different pattern of economic, social, and stylistic choices, reaffirming the complex interweaving of variables that created colonial community life