Mejia: Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Colonial Associated Community Interaction

This doctoral project studies cultural continuity in the light of colonization processes from a perspective based on the Postclassic to Colonial transition in the Gulf Coast of Mexico. It argues that provincial colonization was a process of important change but also of indigenous identity reaffirmation, notwithstanding the impact that forced labor, land use, and epidemics signified in the quality of life of those communities. The project will emphasize an interdisciplinary perspective to show how, particularly at the household level, change often underlines cultural continuity, while participating in current discussions on how group cohesion during colonization and epidemics interact with issues of race and inequality. An overall goal is thus to rethink grand narratives regarding conquest and colonialism, and to challenge how archaeology usually investigates social and chronological change through diagnostic materials. Funds are requested to conduct auger tests and excavations at two sites of the Eastern Lower Papaloapan Basin: Mazapa and La Sierra. The sites are located around 3 to 5 km southwest of the sixteenth century Tepeaca sugar mill.