Santa Magdalena de Cao Viejo: Cultural Encounters in Early Colonial Peru

在美国国家科学基金会（National Science Foundation）的支持下，杰弗里·奎尔特（Jeffrey Quilter）博士和一个由同事组成的国际团队将在秘鲁北部海岸的早期殖民时期（约1560年至1820年）教堂和城镇Santa Magdalena de Cao Viejo的废墟上进行一项考古和文献研究的试点项目。该项目结合了美国和秘鲁在实地考古、先进制图技术、文献分析和其他专业方面的专家，以检验由外国政权西班牙强加给土著人民所导致的社会、经济、政治和其他过程的理论。欧洲人和印第安人的相遇是世界历史上的伟大史诗之一。虽然发生的事件被许多人谴责为悲剧，但无可争辩的是，它们震撼了世界，深刻地影响了随后的整个历史。令人惊讶的是，我们对相遇是如何发生的了解非常贫乏和不发达，主要是基于西班牙作家和其他一些人的解释，他们在记录事件时都有特定的议程。这些文献资料虽然有价值，但只讲述了一个不完整的故事，很少揭示西班牙人和当地人的日常生活，因为他们经历了皈依、统治、抵抗和反抗的痛苦过程。然而，秘鲁沙漠优良的保存品质已经在初步工作中提供了日常生活中“被遗忘的小事”的证据，因此这个考古项目将能够为这些过程提供独特的视角。要调查的研究问题的性质涉及西班牙语和本地的程度，具体设置符合政策制定者的更大的指令。作为一个例子，初步的工作表明，城镇和教堂建筑群的布局不符合西班牙的规定，而是根据当地的情况进行了调整——教堂直接位于一座被遗弃但仍受到当地人尊敬的前西班牙寺庙的前面。该项目将探索这一点和其他证据，证明西班牙人和当地人为了找到共同生活的方式，在多大程度上妥协了遥远当局的政策。镇上的土著居民是否有重兵把守，定居点是否有设防，还是条件更灵活、更开放？在某种程度上，西班牙牧师是否允许本土宗教的实践，或者是否严格执行基督教的实践？当地经济在多大程度上与西班牙帝国更大的经济体系联系在一起，在多大程度上保留了当地的农业和饮食习惯？这些和其他问题将在研究中得到解决。这项研究更广泛的影响在于，它将提供有关不同文化如何相互作用的重要信息。这将有助于确定文献来源与考古数据的关系有多准确。在当今世界，文化和价值观的冲突变得越来越重要，对历史上最伟大的文化冲突之一的研究可能会为我们自己的时代提供很多思考。

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Jeffrey Quilter and an international team of colleagues will conduct a pilot project of archaeological and documentary research on the north coast of Peru at the ruins of an early Colonial Period (ca. 1560 - 1820) church and town, Santa Magdalena de Cao Viejo. The project combines U.S. and Peruvian specialists in field archaeology, advanced mapping techniques, documentary analysis, and other specialties to examine theories on social, economic, political, and other processes resulting from the imposition of a foreign regime, the Spanish, on native peoples.The encounter of Europeans and Native Americans is one of the great epics of world history. While the events that took place are condemned as tragic by many it is indisputable that they were world-shaking, effecting the entire subsequent history in profound ways. Surprisingly, our knowledge of how encounter actually occurred is poor and underdeveloped, based mostly on the interpretations of Spanish writers and a few others who all had specific agendas in recording events. Such documentary sources, while valuable, only tell an incomplete story and reveal little of the day-to-day lives of Spanish and native, alike, as they worked through the painful processes of conversion, domination, resistance, and defiance. The excellent preservation qualities of the Peruvian desert, however, have yielded up evidence of the "small things forgotten" of every day life in preliminary work and thus this archaeological project will be able to offer a unique view of such processes.The nature of the research questions to be investigated concern the degree to which Spanish and native in a local, specific setting conformed to the larger dictates of policy makers. As but one example, preliminary work suggests that the lay-out of the town and church complex did not conform to Spanish regulations but was adjusted to local conditions - the church was placed directly in front of a prehispanic temple that had been abandoned but was still venerated by local people. The project will explore this and other evidence of the degree to which Spaniard and native compromised the policies of distant authorities in order to find ways to live together. Were the native people in the town under heavy guard and was the settlement fortified or were conditions more flexible and open? Did Spanish priests allow the practice of native religions, to some degree, or was a strict enforcement of Christian practice maintained? To what degree was the local economy tied in to the larger economic system of the Spanish Empire and to what degree were native practices in agriculture and food-ways maintained? These and other questions will be addressed in the research.The broader impacts of the study are that it will contribute significant information on how radically different cultures interacted. It will help to determine how accurate a picture the documentary sources are in relation to archaeological data. In our contemporary world in which the clash of cultures and values has become increasingly important this study of one of the great cultural confrontations of history may offer much to consider for our own times.