An archaeological study of neophyte cultural adaptation and modification at Mission Santa Cruz, California

The California Department of Parks and Recreation excavated Native American living quarters at Mission Santa Cruz from 1978 to 1990. As the only standing neophyte residence left from the Mission period in California, the Santa Cruz Mission Adobe offers a unique framework to consider the dynamics of the social interaction and interrelationships between the native and Hispanic people. Recovered artifacts give evidence of the Indian population, showing the partial retention of native culture, but also the blending of Hispanic and native technologies and ideas. The Hispanic view of the mission experience, and to a lesser degree that of the Native Americans, can be interpreted through primary documents. Using archaeological data, primary documents, and secondary sources, alterations in the neophytes\u27 lives as a result of missionization, changes in the physical landscape, native diet, and alterations in material culture are described. By considering both documentary and archaeological sources, an attempt is made to synthesize and understand the cultural processes that the neophytes at Mission Santa Cruz underwent. Acculturation or assimilation are the terms most often used to describe the experience of Native Americans within the mission system of California. The Franciscan priests who established the mission certainly expected the dismantling of native culture and its replacement with a Christian society based on Hispanic values and beliefs. However, neither acculturation or assimilation seems to adequately describe what occurred. Instead what took place could best be described as cultural adaptation, the modification of native culture in order to survive, as neophytes adjusted to the cultural environment of the mission. Native culture was altered by the adoption of certain Hispanic technologies and ideas, but it was not absolutely transformed or destroyed. Neophytes may have used native material culture as a mechanism for maintaining a cultural identity separate from the Hispanic colonizers. Archaeological and documentary investigations also provide evidence for a separate native economic system in operation at Mission Santa Cruz. What emerged at Mission Santa Cruz was the culture of a people who reacted and adapted as best they could to the new set of surroundings and circumstances in which they found themselves