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

在国家科学基金会的支持下，Jeffrey Quilter博士和一个国际同事团队将在秘鲁北海岸一个早期殖民时期(约1560-1820)教堂和小镇Santa Magdalena de CaO Viejo的废墟上进行考古和文献研究的试点项目。该项目结合了美国和秘鲁在田野考古、先进的测绘技术、文献分析和其他专业方面的专家，研究了西班牙人强加给土著人民的外国政权造成的社会、经济、政治和其他过程的理论。欧洲人和美洲土著人的相遇是世界历史上最伟大的史诗之一。虽然发生的事件被许多人谴责为悲剧，但无可争辩的是，它们震惊了世界，对整个随后的历史产生了深远的影响。令人惊讶的是，我们对相遇是如何发生的了解很少，而且不发达，主要是基于西班牙作家和其他几个在记录事件方面都有特定议程的人的解释。这些纪录片资料虽然有价值，但只讲述了一个不完整的故事，几乎没有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，秘鲁沙漠的出色保存质量已经在初步工作中提供了日常生活中被遗忘的“小东西”的证据，因此这个考古项目将能够为这种过程提供一个独特的视角。要调查的研究问题的性质涉及到西班牙人和当地特定环境中的当地人在多大程度上符合政策制定者的更大要求。仅举一个例子，初步工作表明，小镇和教堂建筑群的布局不符合西班牙的规定，但根据当地情况进行了调整--教堂就放在一座已被废弃但仍受到当地人崇拜的神庙前面。该项目将探索这一点和其他证据，证明西班牙人和土著为了找到共同生活的方法，在多大程度上妥协了遥远当局的政策。镇上的原住民是否有重兵把守，定居点是否设防，或者条件是否更加灵活和开放？西班牙的牧师在某种程度上允许当地宗教的实践，还是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，在多大程度上保持了当地的农业和饮食方式？这些问题和其他问题将在研究中得到解决。这项研究的更广泛影响是，它将为根本不同的文化如何相互作用提供重要信息。这将有助于确定与考古数据相关的纪录片来源的图片有多准确。在当今世界，文化和价值观的冲突变得越来越重要，对历史上的一种重大文化冲突的研究可能会为我们这个时代提供许多值得思考的东西。

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.