THE SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS OF CERAMIC VARIABILITY AT A 19TH CENTURYSUGAR HACIENDA IN WESTERN EL SALVADOR

Lauren Alston BridgesMasters of Arts Thesis Proposal

Historical ArchaeologyIllinois State University

Committee Members:Dr. Kathryn Sampeck, ChairDr. Howard Earnest, Jr.

Dr. Elizabeth ScottDr. James Skibo

CONTENTS

Page

CONTENTS 1PREFACE 3

CHAPTERS 5

I. INTRODUCTION 5

Research Questions 6 The Nature of Proposed Research 6

II. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 9

Social Historical Archaeology 10 Agency 11

Free Will and Authoritarian Consent 12 Consumerism and

Spatial Analysis 13 Landscape Analysis 14

Multiscalar Approach 16

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Summary 18

III. PREVIOUS STUDIES 19

History and Archaeology in El Salvador 19

Summary 26 Historical and Archaeological Research on theHacienda 27

Summary 33

IV. HISTORICAL CONTEXT 35

Historical Context 37

Pre-Columbian Period 37

Colonial Period 38

Nineteenth-Century; Struggle for the Nation 43The Sugar Revolution

46Environmental and Geographical Context

49Summary

53

V. METHODOLOGY 54

Research Questions 55

Participation in Market and Consumer Revolution 55

Construction of Identity and Settlement Pattern 57

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Ceramic Artifacts 59

Redware 59

Imported Europeanware 60

Decoration 60

Handpainted 60

Mocha/Engine Turned 61

Spongeware 62

Transferprint 62

Transferprint Motifs 63

Chinoiserie 63

British and American 64

Classical 64

Romantic 65

Summary 65

VI. DATA ANALYSIS 67

Ceramic Dating 68

Ceramic Wares 79

Ceramic Form 86

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Decoration 98

Matched Sets and Design Motifs 111

Summary 116

VII. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

118

Social Power and Agency 118

Research Questions Addressed 120

WORKS REFERENCED 124 APPENDIX A: Ceramic MNV Table APPENDIX B: Raw DataAPPENDIX C: Map of the Hacienda

PREFACE

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The goal of this thesis project is to capture a snapshot of

life on a sugar hacienda in the nineteenth century. These are my

observations on the years leading up to La Matanza (The Massacre),

a 1932 Salvadoran peasant uprising in western El Salvador that

resulted in the slaughter of thousands of Salvadoran people,

which concentrates on local patterns and local individuals. This

research has the potential to open up a new level of historical

research in western El Salvador. Hopefully, I have begun to

crack open the opportunities.

I want to thank my patient husband, who has put up with

piles of articles and mounds of past due library books. I also

want to give thanks to my family, who has formed such a strong

support network, that I have been able to get married, work, go

to school, and move across the country without a mental

breakdown.

My advisor, Dr. Kathryn Sampeck, played an integral

role in providing scores of comments and guidance that improved

my academic writing and research skills. She has inspired my

research interests throughout graduate school and will continue

to inspire future research. Her pragmatic comments help keep my

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writing grounded. Dr. Howard Earnest, Jr., is a walking

dictionary of information and has been an important part of my

thesis committee.

Dr. Elizabeth Scott provided me with a strong foundation of

core classes and writing skills. Her adherence to excellence

encouraged my own commitment to digging out the truth. I want to

thank Dr. Jim Skibo for helping me think creatively and

philosophically. He has always approached my ideas with an open

mind and has helped me explore all my research interests. Dr.

Fred Smith always kept me accountable for successfully completing

my degree. Thank you for the gentle push.

Finally, thank you to my fellow graduate students,

especially those in my class and my awesome study group. I would

not have made it this far without you guys to motivate me with

Borders coffee, comfort me with random dancing and Maggie Mileys

and challenge me with philosophical life questions.

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Large estates, called haciendas, dominated the Latin American

countryside beginning in the colonial period through the

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twentieth-century and played an important historical role in

shaping social, economic, and political systems (Lyons 2006).

Actually, haciendas still dominate the countryside, though

agrarian reform has affected them in some cases, like converting

them to large, communally-held haciendas. Historical research in

El Salvador has emphasized the political revolutions and bloody

wars rather than the internal dynamics of hacienda communities

and their complex social relationships (Flemion 1972). I examined

the social organization of a nineteenth-century sugar hacienda in

western El Salvador through a systematic analysis of ceramic

variability and a study of spatial distribution. Ingenio is

Spanish for “mill”, while an ingenio azucarero is the name for a

sugar mill or facilities processing of sugarcane in order to

obtain sugar, rum, or alcohol (Barrett 1970). The hacienda

includes the domestic and other structures.

I will examine the settlement pattern and social

organization of the region surrounding a nineteenth-century sugar

hacienda (Appendix C) specifically from 1780 to 1900. These dates

are based on manufacturing dates of imported European ceramics

because little publically available historic documents exist

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regarding this hacienda zone in the United States or via the

internet, including within the National Library of El Salvador

online archives. Historical archaeological research in El

Salvador has the potential to answer some of the many questions

left unanswered by the Salvadoran historiography of the past

three hundred years. Quarrels over land ownership and

privatization have been generalized because scholars did not

account for the “internal dynamics of Indian communities and

their complex political relationships with external forces,” such

as small, privately owned haciendas (Lauria-Santiago 1995:496).

Daily activities are where these issues can be observed, because

people interact closely and consciously or subconsciously leave

traces of those interactions in the material culture and

landscape.

Research Questions

Archaeology has the capacity address how the social

organization of the population in the nineteenth century is

reflected in or even in part created by the ceramics used in

daily subsistence activities and used for household needs, a

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subject not broached in most available documentation. My research

questions, which provided the foundation for my research, are: 1)

to what extent did various individuals on a nineteenth sugar

hacienda in western El Salvador participate in the consumer

revolution; 2) does material culture indicate the potentially

diverse ethnicity of the people who were living and working in

this region; 3) are these people living and working on the

hacienda part of a highly organized and hierarchical settlement

pattern; and 4) what do the settlement patterns and ceramic

distributions reveal about the construction of identity at sugar

production sites in the Early Republican Period of El Salvador?

The Nature of Proposed Research

Orser (2002:5-6) stated that “limited attention has

been directed to the later archaeology in Central America,” and

that the field has mainly focused, “since its inception in the

1970s on the colonial period, particularly the impact of missions

on the native populations” (see also Sampeck 2007). I focused on

the transitional period of Salvadoran independence from the

Spanish empire, beginning in 1780 and continuing through 1900.

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This was a time when political, social, and economic systems were

being renegotiated. The Salvadoran people at this time were, in

the west at least, ethnically mostly Pipil, an indigenous people

who spoke a language that is part of the larger Nahua linguistic

group. These people identified with the Spanish casta indio

(Indian). The Pipil took control of their state beginning with

the 1811 move towards independence led by the land-owning

creoles. These creoles were Spanish mestizo, a mixture of European

and Indian, but ethnically identified with the civilized Spanish

(Anderson 1992). This land-owning class consolidated most ejidos

(communal town lands) into private ownership by a few powerful

families who were mainly absentee owners (Anderson 1992). This

action says something about agency and social power. The large

group of indigenous and other marginalized people formed the

labor force, which made these private haciendas profitable. The

more profitable the hacienda, the more power and prestige the

mestizo hacendados (hacienda owners) controlled, because they

could buy political positions and more profitable land. Powerful

hacendados had the status to influence political policies that

continued to negate the agency of the indigenous populations.

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This is why depicting the independence movement as a

fundamentally Indian project is not quite correct. Frequent and

intense social negotiation occurred daily because criollo (a

Spanish American of pure European stock, usually Spanish),

mestizo, ladino (a person who adopts European customs), and Izalcos

region Pipil social identity involved a complex class hierarchy

that was reinforced or enacted through ideology and material

consumption. In fact, Anderson (1992:25) names eleven social

classes: “latifundistas, colonos, terratenientes, urban proletariat, small

farmers, miniscule proprietors, the important commercial class,

shopkeepers, industrialists, white collar workers, artisans,”

indios, and other indigenous migrant workers (variously referred

to as naborías, indios forasteros, or tamagaces). This complex mix that

constituted the Salvadoran people, impelled by the land-owning

elites’ social power based on the monopoly of natural resources

and agricultural exports, gained a voice and changed the history

of the region.

The events and changes that took place in the

nineteenth century directly impacted El Salvador’s modern

history. Burns (1972:141) stated that, “during the last half of

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the nineteenth-century, new forces appeared which challenged the

hoary social, economic, and political institutions deeply rooted

in the colonial past. Urbanization, industrialization and

modernization formed a trinity menacing” to both Colonial

traditions of power and Indian tradition. Much of the social,

economic, and political power controlled by landowning families

was transferred to the cities, but the “fourteen families”

retained their iron grip on the countryside (Anderson 1992).

These changes to long-standing institutions were based on the new

laws aimed at creating productive individuals in society. Large

institutions, like the Spanish government, placed its power in

local institutions like haciendas and plantations, causing a

renegotiation of local hierarchy. This renegotiation of social,

political, and economic institutions played a direct role in the

development of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in El

Salvador (Anderson 1992; Bannon and Dunne 1963; Burns 1972).

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CHAPTER 2

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Historical archaeologists have disagreed on how to

study the impact of colonialism on all cultures involved and on

the development of the modern world. Contemporary researchers can

agree that looking at specific issues like ethnicity, race and

socioeconomic status in local contexts can help break through

colonial stereotypes and vague generalities of historical records

(Orser 1996, 2004). When studying colonialism in El Salvador,

Ripton (2006:101) observed that “the formation of the state, the

emergence of an oligarchy, the role of the military, and the

poverty of the peasants are shaped by commercial agricultural

production for the global market.” Haciendas and plantations,

where commercial agriculture was being produced in the Americas,

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were a cultural landscape where socio-economic status was

created, challenged and reinforced (Orser 1988, 1996, 2004).

In this section, I will address issues—social archaeology,

free will and authoritarian constraint, agency, consumerism and

spatial analysis, landscape analysis, and multiscalar approach—

that seemingly do not complement each other. The hacienda relies

on profitable production and “production exists on at least three

levels, economic, political, and ideological…things, power, and

thoughts and ideas are produced in each, respectively, but none

can exist independently” (Orser 1988:35). I aim to unify these

issues to create a uniform approach to look at a nineteenth

century hacienda, from the ground up, as a cultural landscape

that relies on structures of profitable production where

ideologies are created and reinforced through material culture to

ensure profitability (Delle 1998, 1999).

Social Historical Archaeology

McGuire and Navarrete (2005) perceived the development

of social archaeology in Latin America as a scientific response

to the tradition of hegemonic culture history. The tradition of

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culture history has persisted in Latin American studies,

including in El Salvador. Hegemonic culture history is a means to

preserve elite power by co-opting cooperation from the oppressed

(Giddens 1984; Lefebvre 1991). Social archaeologists chose to

interpret history by looking at local variability while the

culture-historical archaeological model looks for broad trends

and commonalities (Renfrew 1984). A recent trend in Latin

American history was to integrate the social history of Latin

America with politics and state formation, starting at the local

level (Lauria-Santiago 1995). Lauria-Santiago (1995:153) argues

that “such studies then place local actors, often con nombre y

apellido, in the larger context of national histories and re-write

“national history” in terms that are more consistent with the

divergent and contradictory experiences of different subjects,”

which illustrates his concern for variability and foregrounds

individual action. Lauria-Santiago clearly belongs to Lockhart’s

school of “new philology,” which provided the foundation for

social history. Lauria-Santiago verbalized much of what I want to

accomplish by researching and analyzing the local archaeology of

nineteenth-century western El Salvador. I used the material

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culture and history of one sugar hacienda to produce a localized

interpretation of the larger trends occurring during the

nineteenth century. The desired effect will be the recognition of

local actors who have shaped their local landscape through their

individual choices (Oyuela-Caycedo et al 1997).

Agency

Another theoretical trend I utilized is recognizing

agency as part of the analysis of social interaction (Barrett

2001; Giddens 1984). Agency is the actions and choices of

individuals and their consequences in the material world. My

assumption is that culture, and therefore the archaeological

record, is made by individuals acting as part of a social class

or network (Beaudry 1996). Archaeology recovers material culture,

and material culture is part of culture. In the context of

colonial Latin America, a focus on agency allows labor to be seen

from the bottom up. Silliman (2006:147) observed that the labor

studied by historical archaeologists is that of the “colonized,

enforced, controlled, exploited, indebted, hierarchical,

unequally distributed, often rigidly structured, and

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simultaneously global and local” (Abu-Lughod 1990; Ortner 1995).

Historical archaeologists are able to see those people who have

been left out of history; the voiceless masses that exist in the

undocumented lower classes. Through this inequality between

laborers and the hacendados and among the laborers themselves,

social divisions or groups can be seen in the material culture.

Laborers can be studied “in how they negotiate the rules,

resources, constraints, and opportunities of labor relations that

surround them” (Silliman, 2006:153). This focus on the

differences and/or gaps between different social groups and how

they reflect access to resources is a way to look at the social

agency of those living and working at the hacienda.

Free Will and Authoritarian Constraint

Delle (2008:102) observed that “one of the central thematic

tensions of modernity as an historical process is the

contradiction between the concepts of free will and authoritarian

constraint.” One of the main theoretical conflicts in this

research endeavor is how to distinguish between agency, “free

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will,” social forces, and “authoritarian constraint” (Delle

2008). One aid in identifying agency is the aspect of social

power, which is visible through the organization of space and in

the ceramics (Pauls 2006; Meyers 2005). In this study, ceramics

were the most abundant artifact and appear to have distinctive

spatial patterning indicative of the negotiation of social power,

which is described in Chapter 7. Orser (1996, 2002, 2004) argued

that social power is one factor that determines how the agent

negotiates the rules and resources in his or her context and

implies that the individual is acting as part of a social group.

One dilemma of agency studies is to determine if free

will or authoritarian constraint affect material consumption.

Orser (2002) believed that agency is a hard concept to define

because it is structured by social roles. Social roles, such as

gender, ethnicity and race as well as a number of technological

issues, affect and restrict an individual’s choices (Skibo and

Schiffer 2008). A single, fairly small geographic zone centered

around the ingenio azucarero, provides a baseline of continuity,

allowing a way to see how people in generally similar conditions

behave differently. Differences, then, are expected to have

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arisen from variation in the behavior of individuals within

social networks (Orser 2002).

This behavioral disparity was demonstrated in multiple

restricted ceramic collections that show variability in ware,

forms, decoration, and location throughout the hacienda property.

Spatial organization is another strategy for interpreting the

archaeological traces of social power (Delle 1999, 2008; Orser

2004; Baugher et al. 1987). Charles Orser (1988, 1996) related

behavioral distinctions of socioeconomic strata to social power

and spatial analysis through studies of plantation societies. The

material culture people use and discard reveals physical activity

that indicates social dynamics (Delle 1998). Baugher and Venables

(1987:7) observed that “a growing body of research in American

historical archaeology has been concerned with relating

archaeological patterns to behavioral distinctions among

socioeconomic strata.” Applying the same concepts to Central

American historical archaeology, a spatial study of the hacienda

as an area of social production emphasized what the occupants do

and how that action is valued and compensated accordingly, as

seen in the distribution of the ceramics in the assemblage. A

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major contributor to the study of spatial analysis is Mark Leone

and his archaeological research in Annapolis, Maryland. Leone

(1988, 1995, 2005) argued that local elites manipulated their

landscapes to demonstrate their control over nature and social

relationships. James Delle (1999) continued to contribute to this

trend through his study of organized space in Jamaican

plantations and spatial conflict in Ireland. Material culture,

including ceramics and landscapes, played an important role in

the negotiation of social relations (Leone 1988, 1995, 2005).

Consumerism and Spatial Analysis

A growing body of historical archaeological research carried

out in the last twenty years relates to consumer choice and

consumerism (Cochran and Beaudry 2006; Delle 1999; Douglas and

Isherwood 1979; Hoskins 1998; Miller 1987; Orser 2004). Ceramics

represent people’s activities and preferences based on the ware,

decoration and vessel forms they chose and used. The ceramics the

people in and around the hacienda left behind may indicate how

the vessel was valued. Baugher and Venables (1987:50) brought up

an important point that “the buying power of a colonist, not the

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individual’s proximity to a colonial city, determined what (and

how much) the individual purchased.” Thus, the value of ceramics

is determined through social networks. Relative values may appear

in the relative frequencies of imported wares, local wares, and

decoration in the variability of vessel form. Examining ceramic

variability is also a way to explore how people relate to the

others around them and how they relate to the architecture which

surrounds them (Sweely 1998). I used detailed spatial and ceramic

data to construct an organizational framework of social behavior.

Studying the spatial organization of an archaeological assemblage

helps relate the archaeological data to cultural behaviors of

living people (Spencer-Wood 1987).

Landscape Analysis

I based my approach to this research on Allan D.

Meyer’s (2005) research on a Porfirian sugar hacienda, Tabí, in

Yucatán, Mexico. Meyers’ primary focus “was to rediscover the

settlement pattern through surface surveys” to study social

inequality at Tabí (Meyers 2005:121). Land has always been sought

after and fought over by people throughout history, but the

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winners usually write the history. Historical archaeologists are

taking on the concept of landscape analysis as a focus of study

with as many different viewpoints as there are archaeologists

(Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Johnson 2007; Nassaney 2001; Orser 2006;

Politis 2003)

The theoretical orientation utilized in this paper is

largely based on that of Purser (1989), Nassaney (2001), and

Herman (1997) which address landscape and the built environment

as it relates to identity through use of material culture. Purser

used roads as her artifacts and the trans-city network of these

connecting roads as her scale. Purser’s (1989:121) key concept

that non-site constructions such as roads “helped reorganize not

only the way the settlement looked but also the way it worked as

a social and economic unit,” are strongly evident in spatial

organization. Nassaney also examined the built environment

through the lens of social archaeology. Nassaney (2001:220)

recognized that, “changes in social relations can be identified

using a variety of methodological tools and interpreted within a

theoretical framework that emphasizes the built environment and

material goods as the products and precedents of social

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negotiation.” His studies throughout Southwest Michigan have

shown that people “built their cultural environments and

organized space in ways that served to assert their identities”

(Nassaney 2001:222). On the hacienda, I looked for how people

differentiated themselves from others through the built

environment similar to the built environment; the ceramics people

choose to use also can reveal their self identity. Herman’s

(1997) study of the Charleston Single House developed the notions

of “embedded” landscapes. Herman (1997:43) noted that “the

embedded landscape approach also provides for the study of the

spaces and interstices within and between buildings, especially

the kinds of spaces where action and interaction occur and

relationships are defined in ways that socially and symbolically

unify and divide people” (Herman 1997:43). On the hacienda, I

searched for European-derived ceramic evidence that revealed how

people shaped their landscape around them through their material

culture. These theoretical models aid in the exploration of

social organization within an embedded landscape on the hacienda.

Multiscalar Approach

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In archaeology, it is essential to interpret a survey area

at many different scales to reconstruct the past. Culture

historians used a macro-scale approach to interpreting data. This

macro-scale approach defined cultural variation to define

relatively large temporal spans and regional spatial patterning.

During the last few decades, archaeologists have begun to operate

on a smaller scale to understand the behavior of individuals. A

multi-scalar approach ensures that the big picture is created on

a solid foundation of all the smaller events and processes from

which it is constructed and likewise the big picture is not lost

in the ‘trees’ of individualism.

This approach is important to me because some archaeological

studies of boundaries are informed by a colonialist perspective

based on the assumption of core-periphery relationships

(Lightfoot and Martinez 1995). By opening up the focus of

research, one is able to observe other examples, which might

suggest that there are active negotiations between all cultures.

To achieve balance, the researcher must first place the local

example within spatial and temporal contexts. Second, looking at

how the local example relates to other local examples, on a

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regional or global scale, can help create an understanding of

constant change and negotiation, rather than passive acquiescence

and sharp boundaries. Archaeology has shown that people adapt to

their changing environments by using material culture that is

available to them. There will be no sharp boundaries of material

culture. It is important to utilize a multiscalar approach for

conceptualizing the landscape of the hacienda as areas of cross-

cutting social networks, where people of all socio-economic

status’ interact and negotiate identity and power.

I am attempting a multiscalar approach, keeping in mind that

this study will be one aspect of a complex picture. Orser

(2004:33) corroborated that “the mutualist connections between

individuals and groups are understandably intertwined,

historically situated, and multifaceted because human life is

complicated.” The multiscalar approach is essential because the

archaeological record was not created in isolation; rather it was

created in connection with many levels of historical context

(Delle 2008; Orser 2004; Sampeck 2007; Spencer-Wood 1996). My

specific study of a nineteenth-century sugar hacienda in El

Salvador examines localized interpretations of larger nineteenth-

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century trends that include the industrial revolution, shifting

power relations within Latin America, and globalization aided by

new technologies such as coal-powered machines and mass-producing

assembly lines. Agency and social power are related to these

issues because they are factors in determining at what scale an

individual participates.

People with little social capital or power theoretically

have less access to foreign goods and less interaction with those

outside the local area. Social capital is, according to Orser,

“the idea that artifacts can be imbued with social meaning” and

this meaning can be used to socially control others (Bourdieu

1986; Orser 1996:235). This implies that those who need to be

controlled would have to be encouraged to access that meaning.

Specifically, the indigenous, mestizo, African and other laborers

on the hacienda would likely have had less access to foreign

goods, like European ceramics, and less direct interaction with

the European traders than the hacienda owners and managers, who

consisted of peninsular or creole ethnicities. Therefore, the

hacienda owners and managers would have been able to purchase the

European ceramics and distribute or sell them to the lower status

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laborers living and working on the hacienda. I approached this

concept spatially, looking at whether the distance from the

casco, owner’s house, impacted the ceramics being used. I kept in

mind an intricate social network was constantly being negotiated

on this hacienda, but there also might have been other networks,

like those mentioned by Orser, between people from neighboring

haciendas (Orser 1996). These networks would influence an

individual’s access to ceramic goods, leaving the social power in

the hands of those who had access to and could afford to purchase

foreign and less common ceramics. In the specific case of El

Salvador, Ripton (2006:106) observed that “access to world

markets has enabled generations of Salvadoran planters,

processors, and exporters to appropriate the most productive

land, often rendering the peasants landless and impoverished.”

This still remains to be proven, but local archaeological

research can help us understand this in terms of the daily lived

experience. This thesis is a step towards testing the theory that

the landowning elites had greater access to ceramics and

therefore had greater social power.

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Summary

This study attempts to understand the internal social

networks and relations between the hacienda occupants. It is also

an initial look at a nineteenth century sugar hacienda in western

El Salvador and how this particular example sheds light on the

events leading up to La Matanza and the following years of civil

war. To begin to understand what was happening on this hacienda,

I must rely on a solid theoretical foundation to interpret the

ceramic distributed throughout the hacienda. Archaeological

evidence reveals that this hacienda was part of the political,

economic, and social networks occurring at a larger scale, and

those larger processes, in turn, probably affected the

socioeconomic status of the people living and working on the

hacienda.

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CHAPTER 3

PREVIOUS STUDIES

History and Archaeology in El Salvador

El Salvador, once regarded as a marginal zone in the

southeast frontier of ancient Maya civilization, is now known to

be a precocious region where many features of civilization

emerged relatively early and was never a frontier of Mesoamerica

but a dynamic contributor to key developments that affected

Mesoamerica as a whole (Demarest 1986). Archaeological research

in El Salvador, like other regions of Mesoamerica, has mostly

focused on prehistoric periods. It is only recently, since the

1980s, that historical archaeology has risen in popularity in

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Central America. A similar narrowness occurred in historical

research in Central America, and specifically in El Salvador,

whose research topics have been monopolized by political

revolutions and bloody wars, rather than considering the internal

dynamics of local communities. Many of the local histories have

been overpowered by the regionally generalized and romanticized

histories of Central American countries. Using a specific example

of a sugar hacienda in western El Salvador, I will address how my

case may vary from overall trends noted for Central America based

on the particular distinctiveness of the Izalco region and its

peoples.

Early archaeological work concentrated on creating a

cultural timeline with ceramic sequencing. These archaeological

excavations were problem oriented and, many times,

multidisciplinary. With the support of the Carnegie Institute,

Stanley Boggs began archaeological work in western El Salvador in

the 1930s. Stanley Boggs continued his work in El Salvador at the

suite of suites of the Chalchuapa complex, including Tazumal and

Casa Blanca. At Tazumal, Boggs popularized his restoration method

of archaeology of reconstructed structures (Demarest 1986). In

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the 1940s, Boggs discovered the “Olmec-style” petroglyphs near

Chalchuapa (Demarest 1986). This discovery indicated an early

Olmec presence in western El Salvador. Boggs is credited with

bringing modern, scientific archaeology to El Salvador as well as

showing that this region was an integral part of Mesoamerica.

William Coe also worked in Western El Salvador, mapping

and compiling data from Mayan survey areas like Chalchuapa

(Sharer and Traxler 2006). Boggs and Coe laid the groundwork for

future archaeologists to explore archaeological survey areas in

Western El Salvador. John Longyear (1944) began extensive

expeditions in 1942 in El Salvador with the support of the U.S.

The only comprehensive archaeological survey of El Salvador was

conducted by Longyear in 1966.

In the 1960s, archaeological research in El Salvador

became increasingly focused on the archaeology identification of

ethnicity. Methodologies and theoretical orientations of projects

during this time drew on processualist models, yet never

committed to developing nomothetic laws (Binford 1971). These

projects instead maintained goals of developing chronological

sequences and detecting historical change and variable ways of

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expressing ethnicity. At this time, the Middle American Research

Institute, Fulbright Foundation, and the Smithsonian, were the

major contributors of Mesoamerican research funding for the study

of El Salvador. Most archaeological research was focused on

prehistoric societies who had some association with Maya peoples.

During the 1960s, Robert Sharer and the University of

Pennsylvania undertook a landmark project at Chalchuapa, the

Chalchuapa Archaeological Project. Sharer’s work established the

cultural sequencing and spatial layout of the ceremonial

structures in the Chalchuapa complex (Sharer and Traxler 2006).

The Chalchuapa sequence is one of the only projects to analyze

ceramics from around the time of Spanish conquest and provides a

baseline for western Salvadoran chronologies. At Chalchuapa,

Sharer was the first to show systematic connections with other

regions of the Maya area and suggest Mayan ethnicity for its

inhabitants through the Classic period. Towards the end of the

sequence Sharer recognized significant changes that indicated the

expression of a non-Maya ethnicity. He also was innovative in

recognizing that different classes of material culture had

different patterns of change and argued that many facets of

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material culture needed to be taken into consideration when

discussing culture change.

At the same time that Chalchuapa was being investigated in

the west, E. Wyllys Andrews V excavated ruins known as Quelepa in

eastern El Salvador in the 1960s. Andrews recorded distinctive

architecture and a ceramic sequence that spanned the Late and

Middle Preclassic and Classic periods (Andrews 1976). He hoped

that these excavations could fill a large gap in the

understanding of prehistoric events in Mesoamerica created by

relatively little evidence of prehistoric standing structures

compared to other regions of Mesoamerica and decimation of the

native populations in this area by Old World diseases, both

factors that made it hard to pin down exactly where people had

settled. Andrews devoted a great deal of attention to defining

material culture sequences to elucidate shifts in social,

political, and economic organization, ethnic expression, and

ritual practice.

Sheets (1983) direction of the Zapotitán Basin project

is an excellent example of a multidisciplinary and

interdisciplinary problem-oriented research project. This project

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integrated archaeology, ethnobotany, volcanology, and geophysics

with architectural and artifact conservation. Regional survey

area and master planning laid the foundation for outreach and

educational efforts. The research project was a success because

of the cooperative efforts of the Salvadoran government,

particularly Concultura within the Ministry of Education, and of

the nongovernmental organization Patronato Pro-Patrimonio

Cultural. The research team reconstructed the ancient survey area

of Joya de Cerén before the volcanic eruption, based on the

theory of household archaeology. Sheets (1983) also made an

attempt to decipher the ethnicity of the residents of the city,

but this endeavor was made more difficult because of the lack of

hieroglyphics and household shrines. Sheets (1983) concentrated

on the production and distribution of obsidian implements. He

found this to be quite sensitive to the settlement hierarchy,

reflecting variation in access to long-distance traded

commodities, craft specialization, and other factors (Sheets

1983).

Arthur Demarest's project in Western El Salvador began

with the goal of dating the in situ "potbelly" sculptures at

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Santa Leticia (Demarest 1986). Santa Leticia was proved to be a

Late Preclassic settlement. This meant that its potbelly and

colossal head sculptures were also Late Preclassic, and could not

be considered ancestral to the Olmec culture. Demarest’s research

at Santa Leticia led him to reevaluate the ceramic typologies in

the type-variety system often applied to Mesoamerican ceramics.

Types in this system usually are generated from sherds that are

assumed to represent whole vessels and it is expected that sherds

from a single vessel will fall into the same type. Demarest

(1986) discovered that whole vessels emerged coherently only at

the "group" level, not at the "type" level. Because of modal

variation in the surface treatment of a vessel, sherds from one

vessel might be sorted into two or more types. This over-

splitting of the traditional type-variety system led to the

perpetual separation of decorated and plain sherds, even if they

came from the same vessel. In order to avoid some of the pitfalls

in the type-variety system, Demarest (1986) emphasized whole

vessels throughout his study to create new interpretations of the

ceramics of Western El Salvador I present both sherd counts as

well as minimum number vessel (MNV) counts in my thesis research

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to address this same concern. As a result of Demarest’s work,

previous investigations on the Maya were reevaluated, and some of

the most significant ceramic contrasts turned out to be at the

intra-survey area scale that reflected differences between

domestic and public contexts (Demarest 1986).

Cerrón Grande, in central El Salvador, is the name of

the large artificial lake that was formed when the Río Lempa was

blocked off by the construction of two hydroelectric dams in the

1970s. The Cerrón Grande Archaeological Salvage Project,

organized by the National Museum of El Salvador’s Director,

Stanley Boggs, discovered that “the cultural sequence of the

basin differs substantially from that of the nearby SE Maya

highlands, especially during the Preclassic, even though large-

scale events (e.g., Ilopango eruption, Pipil migrations) had

similar impacts in both regions” (Fowler and Earnest 1985).

William Fowler and Howard Earnest determined that differences in

ceramic and lithic technology correlated with environmental and

subsistence strategy variation between the two regions. On the

basis of the settlement size and amount of monumental

architecture, Cihuatán appears to have been the primary regional

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center of the Cerrón Grande Basin during the Early Postclassic

(Fowler and Earnest 1985). The salvage research delineated a

culture-historical sequence running from the early Middle

Preclassic to the Early Postclassic, by examining the changes in

material culture. Fowler and Earnest (1985) discovered that the

earliest Pipil migrations to south eastern Mesoamerica dated to

the latter half of the Late Classic Period, while the final

"wave" of Mexican movements into El Salvador probably ended circa

1250-1300 A.D. They did not have detailed data from the west, but

they argued that the distinctive Mexican traits of the material

culture of Cihuatán and Santa Maria were evidence for a Pipil

presence in the Paraíso Basin by the ninth and tenth century A.D.

The Toltec-influenced Pipil, who held most of western and central

El Salvador at the time of the Spanish Conquest, exerted economic

and military pressures on the Pipil of the Paraíso Basin and

ultimately attacked other settlements in the west (Fowler and

Earnest 1985). In the Late Postclassic Period in the basin,

archaeologists found cultural continuity, based on the discovery

that the town of Suchitoto appears to have been a Pipil

settlement at the time of the Conquest. Ultimately, the central

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region of El Salvador suffered a sharp decline in population

during the Late Postclassic Period, right before Spanish Conquest

(Fowler and Earnest). Sampeck (2007) found a period was marked by

population increase in western El Salvador.

I follow in the footsteps of the archaeologists of the

1960s, in that I concentrate on identity as it is seen in the

local ceramics and ceramic distribution on the hacienda, but I

recognize that there is no simple correlation of particular

ceramic types to particular ethnic groups. Aldo Lauria-Santiago

(1995:153) has researched extensively in the Salvadoran archives,

and noted that “other recent trends in the study of Latin America

provide good reasons to start at the local level. Social

inequality, industry, and indigenous power in local context are

current themes of archaeological research.” Ethnicity, race, and

cultural hegemony can be understood only by looking carefully at

individual actors in their own setting.

A trend in historical archaeology is studying areas

that have a long history of being profitable colonies that

supported colonial expansion. In western El Salvador there is

archaeological evidence of the Spanish conquest and ensuing

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consequences of clashing cultures. Dr. Kathryn Sampeck (2007)

studied early colonialism up to the eighteenth century in western

El Salvador, focusing on the theme of indigenous power. She

utilized a multi-scalar approach in her research, which

concentrated on political, economic and cultural landscapes.

Basically, she wanted to know how people identified themselves

and then shaped the landscape around them to negotiate their

cultural identities within the framework of colonial industries.

Wage labor was present in western El Salvador soon

after the Spanish conquest. Wage labor means that indigenous

people were not slaves, but paid employees who chose to work on

the haciendas. Sampeck (2007) and William Fowler (2006) both note

the early presence of wage labor and tribute in Western El

Salvador, during Spanish colonialism. Fowler’s work at Caluco

revealed that in spite of the dramatic decline in the native

populations around the time of the Spanish invasion, Spanish

officials held tribute amounts constant in the Caluco and Izalco

regions of El Salvador (Daniel and Wilson 1993; Verhagen 1997).

This tribute was paid in cacao, the first cash crop in Spanish

America, to the encomenderos. In the late sixteenth century, the

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cacao orchards around Caluco and Izalco were divided into

hundreds of small holdings, owned almost exclusively by Indians

(Verhagen 1997).

Verhagen (1997) is another archaeologist interested in

searching for reliable and useful approaches to predictive

modeling of archaeological survey area distributions. Her data is

much like my own, only it is from an urban setting whereas mine

is from a rural context. Verhagen (1997) found that spatial

landscapes and other material culture can provide a conduit for

studying social inequality and indigenous power in the Indian

pueblo of Caluco. She found that the Indian population utilized

material culture in conjunction with space to delineate and

represent indigenous power. These indigenous patterns were

amplified through Spanish contact and adapted to incorporate

Spanish symbols of power with indigenous symbols of power.

Fowler and Jeb Card (2008) have worked on sixteenth century

El Salvador and specifically on Ciudad Vieja. Ciudad Vieja is

located in the Cuscatlán province of central El Salvador.

Archaeologists have worked to map the city using landscape

archaeology and remote sensing (Fowler et al. 2007; Hamilton

41 | P a g e

2008). Ciudad Vieja was the first Spanish capital city and had a

resident indigenous population that was much greater in number

than its Spanish population. The town was quickly deserted in

1545, and its occupation spans the crucial years of the Spanish

Conquest period in Central America. Archaeological research at

the city survey area emphasized a spatial study of the town as a

cultural landscape. The archaeologists also focused on the mutual

interaction of the different cultural groups that shared the

landscape (Fowler et al. 2007). The well preserved ruins of

Ciudad Vieja serve as a rare opportunity for archaeological study

of the dynamics of early Spanish-Indian culture contact and

relations.

Regarding my current research, in El Salvador, “during the

mid-1980s, researchers looking for documentary materials on the

history of El Salvador had limited options” (Lauria-Santiago

1995:154). It was only during peaceful times, beginning in 1993,

that researchers were able to gain access to historical documents

in government repositories. Some publications have been produced

in-country, largely under the auspices of the Salvadoran

government or the non-governmental institution Patronato Pro-

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Patrimonio Cultural, and some of these publications are in the

collections at Illinois State University (such as Fowler 1995).

The Salvadoran government did allow me unprecedented access to

archaeological materials because of their loan to Sampeck of a

portion of the ceramic collection from the Izalcos survey, for

which I am extremely grateful.

Summary

Most archaeological research in El Salvador has been focused

on the country’s prehistory and disabused the stereotype of this

region as a cultural frontier. My focus is instead on the

transitional period of Salvadoran independence from the Spanish

Empire during the nineteenth century. With the new found

independence, the Salvadoran people, spurred on by the land-

owning elites, gained a voice and shaped the history of the

region. The paradox in my thesis research is: do common people

only gain a voice because elites let them? I believe that this is

a case where both sides are using one another to reach their

respective hegemonic/counter hegemonic goals. The elite wanted to

maintain their power within the political and economic networks

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in El Salvador, using the indios as a mass of bodies to back them

up. The common people, indios, were using the elite to overthrow

the Spanish power so that they could gain more rights and

eventually overthrow elite power.

Historical and Archaeological Research on the Hacienda

The hacienda has been explored archaeologically and

historically in Ecuador, California, Guatemala, Mexico, Brazil,

Jamaica, and Peru (Alexander 2003; Barrett 1970; Chevalier 1963;

Delle 2008; Dunn 1972; Jensen 1955; Keith 1977; Lauria-Santiago

1999; Lindo-Fuentes 1990; Lyons 2006; Meyers 2005; Monaghan et

al. 2003; Wolf and Mintz 1957). Researchers “have been attracted

to this topic, because the era of hacienda expansion in Latin

America was a critical period of economic and social transition”

(Alexander 1997:331). Investigations of the hacienda have helped

illuminate the histories of Central American countries at a time

when the modern world was forming and social, political and

economic systems were changing to accommodate a globalized world.

Historical research far outweighs archaeological research, and

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this project is one of the first archaeological studies of the

nineteenth-century hacienda in El Salvador.

Piedad Pinache Rivero (1999) conducted historical

research on a nineteenth-century hacienda on the Yucatán

peninsula. Rivero (1999:1) analyzed “the henequen hacienda of

Yucatan during the years 1870 to 1915, by examining the nature of

social relations and the mindset which those relations

presupposed.” Rivero’s model of social relations on the hacienda

placed the elite family as the paternal head of the community.

This elite family sustained debt peonage by forwarding pay to

laborers for starting and raising a family. The debt peonage

insured the laborers’ continued service on the hacienda. Another

consequence of this system was the stratification of laborers

into managerial or supervisory positions (Rivero 1999). Rivero’s

work looks at how the hacienda on the Yucatán peninsula was

socially organized and maintained. Debt peonage was a

longstanding tradition in western El Salvador that definitely

shaped the social networks on haciendas (Sampeck 2007). Rivero

looks at the hacienda as a family unit with the elite family as

the paternal head, but I do not want to utilize that approach.

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My analysis instead emphasizes economic and that the hacienda was

organized and run according to what would make the business

endeavor the most profitable.

Social organization during the colonial period was

dictated by centuries of tradition that reinforced a social

hierarchy based on social castes. The Spanish, when they invaded

El Salvador, inserted themselves into the networks already

established by the Pipil. Spanish ethnicity and identity became

the top social stratum. The lowest level was assigned to the

indigenous commoners. As the Spanish stayed and settled in

western El Salvador, they began to intermarry, and to produce

creolized individuals (Deagan 1983). Throughout the Spanish

colonization there is a shift to distinctions based on class

rather than caste, as the casta system falls out of use by the

end of the eighteenth century and the relations become distinctly

racialized (Ewen 1991; Fisher and Loren 2003; Loren 2008).

Many writers, historians, and economists romanticize and

expound on the hacienda, but there has been little extensive

archaeological research on haciendas. I chose to model my

research on Meyer’s (2005) research on the Tabí hacienda in

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Yucatán, Mexico (Meyers 2005). Meyers attempts to reconstruct

what life was like for laborers on the plantation in the waning

years of Mexico's plantation system in the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries. Meyers (2005) conducted sherd counts and

compared the number of coarse earthenware, refined earthenware,

lead-glazed earthenware, majolica and stoneware sherds found at

the laborer’s houses on the Yucatán. Meyers uses the distribution

of imported ceramics and vernacular architecture to illuminate

some strategies of social control used by the hacienda elites to

exploit the native workers. He suggests that “resident laborers,

organized hierarchically, had unequal access to material

resources and social space on the hacienda” (Meyers 2005:112).

The indigenous population Meyers examined was the Yucatec Maya,

whereas my study concerns indigenous populations that include the

Pipil, other Nahua, Maya, and migrant laborers of central Mexico

who came into El Salvador beginning at the end of the sixteenth

century looking for work (Andrews V 1976; Escalante Arce 1992;

Fowler 1989; Graham 1993; Kelley 1988; Lange 1996; Lange and

Stone 1984; MacLeod and Wasserstrom 1983; Robinson 1987;

Stanislawski 1996). Another noted difference is the presence of

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extensive architectural remains of the casco, which are less well

preserved in my research area. Finally, Meyers emphasized debt

peonage at Tabí, based on historical documentation, but I do not

have enough local documentary information to discuss debt peonage

in rural zones of the municipio (municipal district) of Izalco at

length. Meyers’ Tabí hacienda research project, which took place

between 2003 and 2007, produced many artifacts and a framework

for looking at ceramic distribution and social inequality at a

nineteenth-century Mesoamerican hacienda.

Rani Alexander (1997) focused her studies the hacienda

phenomenon. Alexander (1997:332) contended that haciendas and

plantations “constitute an archaeologically visible form of

"investment specialization" in which elites create or purchase

entire communities as productive instruments in the countryside,

thus altering the structure of urban-rural relations and

fostering integration between cores and hinterlands.” Alexander

(1997) observed that the archaeology of haciendas has been

underutilized because there is so much variation in the value and

size of haciendas. Her work highlights the need for more specific

local examples such as the one presented in this study.

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My research examines the hacienda using a specific local

example that can be used to compare with data from others. This

comparative research has the capacity to reveal trends and

patterns on a micro and macro scale. What I provide with this

study, that none of these other studies does, is provide a fine-

grained analysis concentrating on imported European ceramics and

individual taste. Other analyses of material culture (Meyers

included) lump all of the imported white wares into one category.

Historically, “interpretations of the Yucatán Peninsula haciendas

generally are similar to those advanced for the institution in

other areas of Latin America. The expansion of haciendas in The

Yucatán Peninsula between 1750 and 1847 is viewed as an

historical marker of economic transition from a tribute-based

economy to a broader-spectrum, market-based economy” (Alexander

1997:333). The hacienda is seen as an emerging social institution

that dramatically alters production relations and replaces the

indigenous village as the primary productive and social

institution. Alexander (1997) linked the historical and

archaeological record of Yaxcabá haciendas to elite and

entrepreneurial organization and behavior in the nineteenth

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century. Alexander (1997) conducted an extensive archaeological

survey of fifteen hacienda settlements in order to compare

historical data to archaeological settlement patterns. She

recorded information for each settlement that included location

and description of structures (including architectural stylistic

characteristics) and features at the survey area, ecological

context, water sources, and specialized production areas. The

haciendas included a main house and reservoir, water troughs, a

few corrals and/or stables. The larger haciendas had a network of

walls that hugged the streets and house lots for the labor

population. Smaller haciendas lacked most of the characteristics

of larger hacienda complexes (Alexander 1997). Alexander

(1997:341) concluded that “archaeological variation in

architectural form often is attributed to differences in

function, socioeconomic status, and/or duration of occupation.”

She tied in changes in architectural form to labor and tax

relationships on the hacienda rather than just purely functional

categories. I will use Alexander’s premise—that differences in

architectural forms indicate differences in function, status, and

occupation—on the analysis of my specific hacienda example and

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apply it to all ceramics. Thus, variation in the distribution of

ceramic wares, decorations, and forms indicate variation in

function, status, and occupation and by extension, labor and tax

relationships. Determining these variables may help me

reconstruct the social and political networks relating to the

ingenio during the nineteenth century.

Historically, during the nineteenth century, institutional

and demographic changes affected native and migrant laborers.

Stanley Engerman (1983) did not look specifically at the

hacienda, but he did research contract labor and sugar throughout

the world in the nineteenth century. This is pertinent to my

research because Engerman (1983) sets the stage by examining who

the laborers were in the nineteenth century and why they were

working on haciendas. In addition, Engerman (1983) examines the

specific example of sugar in the nineteenth century and why sugar

was a growing industry. Cane sugar was produced on plantations

and haciendas using local and international low-income contract

laborers (Mintz 1985). Engerman (1983:635) also looks at “late

nineteenth- century transitions in the nature of sugar

production…and questions…their implications for the study of the

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relations between institutional and technological changes.” These

migrant laborers had to be supervised and organized according to

what was being produced and the available technology. The land-

owning families imposed various coercive restrictions on laborers

based on low incomes and availability of credit. This is

basically repeating the pattern established in the sixteenth

century with cacao production, though the key difference with the

hacienda is that the land is privately owned (Stanislawski 1996).

Engerman (1983:639-640) states that “the contract was for the

most part entered into voluntarily, albeit by poverty-stricken

people who were willing to accept harsh working conditions at low

incomes.” At this same time in western El Salvador, there was a

labor shortage, which encouraged migrant workers to move to fill

the jobs because wages increased to attract these migrant

workers.

Early in the century, the British West Indies was the

major source of the world's sugar. The world consumption of sugar

rose precipitously during this century to the extent that it

became a common part of the diet of all Europeans, especially

lower classes (Mintz 1985). Cuba began to rise as a dominant

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sugar producer in the Caribbean as the British West Indies

declined during the late nineteenth century. This signifies a

shift in sugar production power to the Americas and the Caribbean

(Mintz 1985).

The increase in production required an increase in

laborers. Sugar plantations had to be set up in a manner so that

the cut cane could get to the mill without spoiling or reduced

sugar content. The production survey area had to be close to the

mill, and the laborers had to be close to the cane fields and

mill. This lay-out created a close-knit, but hierarchical

community led by the landowning elite and supervised by

managerial laborers (Mintz 1985). Engerman (1983:659) concludes

that “plantation owners sought the technology, and labor

organization and control, which maximized their profits”. To

maximize profits, indigenous labor had to be meticulously

controlled through a hierarchical social stratification. The

sugar industry created a need for political control by the creole

elites to make the hacienda industry profitable, but the

profitable industry exacerbated the gap between the have and

have-nots monetarily, socially, and politically. These actions

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resulted in the institutionalized disenfranchisement of the

laborers.

Summary

I will continue to develop my idea of the social relations

of the hacienda in the specific case of the Izalcos region,

taking into account the legacies from the colonial era. The

hacienda system brought about fundamental changes in the

organization and relations of production. The separation of the

colonial producer from the Salvadoran means of production, and

commodity based production rather than subsistence based

production changed the basis and therefore the form of Salvadoran

social organization (Benton 1996; Leone 1988, 1995; McGuire 2002;

Orser 1996, 2002). The Izalcos area was unique in that they did

not focus on subsistence production before contact. What does

change is the increasing shift to private land ownership and

class based social stratification. Within Latin American

haciendas, status was based on occupation and labor hierarchy.

This also affected the family because the nuclear family rather

than the extended family of community became the main unit of

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household social organization (Benton 1996; Leone 1995; McGuire

2002; Orser 1996, 2002). The settlement patterns and material

remains at the hacienda reflect the changing realities of social

organization of the hacienda system. These causal factors are

getting at the issues of why La Matanza occurred and why these

same issues remained unresolved into the twentieth century

(McGuire 2002).

The archaeology of the hacienda is important because the

discipline has the ability to reconstruct what life was like for

laborers and others on the hacienda. While the early period of

hacienda history (1750-1860) is well studied by historians,

surprisingly little is known about the layout and organization of

these distinctive settlements from the late period (1861-1911),

when increasingly unequal conditions on haciendas provided the

tinder for the revolutions of the twentieth century. The material

culture that was recorded and analyzed at this hacienda

highlights the inequalities caused by the hacienda system of

production. The research of this hacienda region has the

potential to shed light on the social, political and economic

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material expressions of Salvadoran identity throughout the

nineteenth century.

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CHAPTER 4

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

This chapter explains the importance of research focused on

nineteenth-century El Salvador by exploring the history of the

preceding and subsequent centuries. I will provide a historical

and geographic contextual framework that will be useful for

interpreting the archaeological data. Historical archaeology is

often used to tell the story of disenfranchised people who are

often “invisible” in the historical documents. Historical

documents (journals, property maps, and legal documents) often

provide accounts describing the location and layout of sites.

Historical documents can offer insight into who was writing and

recording history and their perspective. Written history does not

always record reality; rather it records the perceptions of

reality. Artifacts do not inherently contain the same kinds of

bias as historical documents because they are an unintentional

record of the past (Skibo 1992). Only through using both57 | P a g e

historical documents and archaeological evidence can a more

complete picture of the past be gained. Understanding the social,

economic, and political history of El Salvador can shed light on

the “invisible” histories that occur between critical historical

events, like Salvadoran Independence and La Matanza, which

dramatically changed the country.

In 1932 La Matanza was the most defining event for

sociopolitical life in modern Salvadoran history. It began in

western El Salvador, on January 22nd, when groups of angry

workers stormed town centers with machetes and farm tools. A mix

of several different ethnicities, largely Pipil, referred to

generally as indios, were protesting government policies, and

ended up killing thirty-five ladinos. A few short days later, in

retaliation to the massacre, the Salvadoran government killed

around 30,000 indigenous peoples (Tilley 2005). Tilley (2005:138)

observed that most histories of modern El Salvador make minor

mention of Indian identity in the 1932 revolt, but until recent

work by Aldo Lauria-Santiago and Patricia Alvarenga, race usually

manifested merely as one additional factor aggravating “peasant”

(class, sectoral) grievances over land and wages. After 1932 any

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meaningful indigenous presence was erased in the documents. After

this event, remaining indigenous peoples began to hide their

traditions and assimilate into the dominant ladino society.

Indigenous people were discouraged from their traditional customs

and culture for fear of being associated with rebellious and

dangerous grassroots organizations. Tilley’s basic argument was

that Indians did and do exist, but recognizing them as such is

what changed after 1932 (Tilley 2005). Ladinos continued their

campaign of racial terror to scare the indios into abandoning

their ancestral traditions, but this action seemed to have the

opposite effect of empowering ethnically Pipil communities that

banded together to seek protection from the government (Lauria-

Santiago 1999). This event is seen as a powerful precursor to the

civil war of the 1970s to 1993.

Profitable land and political power have historically been

controlled by the creole elite, while indigenous people chose to

become migrant labor working for these powerful landowners.

Sampeck (2007) argued that becoming a migrant worker was a

choice, an important strategy especially for those of the Izalcos

because of the colonial legacy of extraordinary, heritable

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tribute demands (Sampeck 2007). White (2009:xvi) observed that

this tradition of “concentrated elite privilege on a scale

unknown throughout the rest of Latin America” can be traced back

to the “power of the so-called 14 families [that] stretches back

to the nineteenth century at least.” Today, Indians still

experience social exclusion in the economic realm, in terms of

land ownership and access to credit (Tilley 2005; White 2009).

Meanwhile, the planter elite families, or fourteen families, who

originally helped overthrow Spanish imperial power, received

special privileges. To this day, the Salvadoran Constitution

makes no specific provisions for the rights of indigenous people,

or for their ability to participate in decisions affecting their

lands, culture, traditions or the allocation of natural

resources. Historical trends and events, such as Salvadoran

Independence and La Matanza, have continued to influence the

development of modern El Salvador. To understand these nineteenth

century historical trend of indigenous disenfranchisement through

the commoditization of agricultural exports, the social,

economic, and political contexts of this century must be further

explored.

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Historical Context

Pre-Columbian Period

Just before the Spanish Conquest, the area known as Central

America was organized by various indigenous peoples into several

states and principalities. The majority of indigenous

inhabitants, in the area known today as El Salvador, were Nahua

speaking peoples, the Pipil. The Pipil make up the largest

indigenous group, historically and currently, in El Salvador. The

Pipil founded the polities of Izalco and Cuscatlán, which are

historically known for their strong indigenous traditions

(Lockhart 1992; White 2009). Before contact, the Pipil territory

spread over most of central and western El Salvador, and was

organized into governing zones. The Nahua altepetl, was an

ethnically distinct political entity that consisted of nearly

independent constituent parts that were bound together partly on

the basis of rotating ritual, political and social duties. In the

case of the Spanish conquest of western El Salvador, the Spanish

remained preoccupied to a large extent with their internal

rivalries. The local altepetl remained viable as a functioning

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autonomous unit. This state system formed the basis for Spanish

political and economic structures, including the encomienda

(Sampeck 2007). The Pipil of Izalco had control of unusually

large tracts of communal land, which was later seen as a threat

to the Spanish concept of private ownership (Sampeck 2007). The

Pipil established complex interregional trade networks within and

outside their territory. The trade was organized under a

hierarchical model, where the local heads of political units

controlled tribute payments and access to various trade networks

that provided the elite with privileged access to goods and

control of distribution (Sampeck 2007). This organization allowed

the Spanish to insert themselves into the trade networks, and

used the Nahua model for currency, but did not interfere with the

fundamental aspects of the altepetl, leaving some power in the

hands of the Nahua Pipil.

Colonial Period

The colonial period lasted from about 1524 to 1821, and had

an intense and lasting impact on El Salvador. The Spanish arrived

in El Salvador in the early sixteenth century (Stanislawski

1996). In western El Salvador, the initial Spanish settlement of

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Espiritu Santo was seen as “too close” to the Pipil, so the

Spanish town of La Santissima Trinidad de Sonsonate was founded

in 1550 to counteract the problem (Card 2008). The early Spanish

settlers sought individual wealth and many found it in the

encomienda system and cacao export (MacLeod 1973). MacLeod (1973)

analyzed the histories of the indigenous people as a response to

the Spanish conquest, trade markets, politico-economic competition

and exploitation, and ideological power struggles within the Spanish

and ladino social classes. Accordingly, MacLeod focused on

processes of integration, adaptation, resistance and manipulation

of power. The Spaniards realized the country had little precious

metal and turned their attention to the only profitable resource,

land. The Spanish began laying claim to indigenous people’s

labor, coercing the Indians to work as laborers for the Spanish

encomenderos on their encomiendas. And with their land in the form

of privately owned hacienda, the majority of the Salvadoran

native population was reduced in size and complexity because of

disease and abuse, which caused them to emerge as a laboring

peasantry under Spanish control (MacLeod 1973). Western El

Salvador proved unique, in that there was actually a population

63 | P a g e

increase during the sixteenth century, while the Nahua altepetl

held strong as an indigenous political entity (Burkholder and

Johnson 1998). In the cacao tribute in the Izalcos, the Pipil

worked their own land and paid enormous amounts of tribute, while

the encomenderos occupied themselves with commodities like

cattle, indigo, and eventually sugar.

There was economic and agricultural diversification in El

Salvador because the country had an amazing environmental range

in a closely packed space, along with some of the most fertile

soils in the New World (Burkholder and Johnson 1998). In the late

sixteenth-century, the Spanish realized cacao could be a

lucrative export to be produced by the native people. Even though

laws made exploitation of Indians unlawful, the repartimiento

system and haciendas were used to continue indigenous exploitation

for Spanish profit. The repartimiento system was a forced labor

system imposed on the indigenous population that paid low to no

wages for a certain number of weeks or months of labor per year.

The hacienda was a pivotal institution that offers itself to a

processual explanation of how colonial peripheries undergo

64 | P a g e

integration with the expanding global economy (Alexander 1997;

Wolf and Mintz 1957).

As production on haciendas increased, “the methods used to

press Indians into its service persisted into the late

seventeenth century through head and other personal taxes that

required Indians to dedicate a portion of their land and labor to

cash crops, often indigo” (Ripton 2006: 103). This means that

ejido tracts (communal lands) were encroached on and other wise

appropriated by planters through disingenuous economic and legal

schemes (Ripton 2006). By the seventeenth century, Lindo-Fuentes

documented that in Central America indigo hacendados took control

of as much as a third of Indian village land and a substantial

portion of Indian labor to produce indigo at a fixed price in

perpetuity. The tribute tax Indians had to pay to the landowning

elite was the main factor that caused Indian communities to

become indebted to indigo planters who eventually commandeered

their land. MacLeod (1973) noted that and some of the Indian

communities were disintegrating under the economic pressures and

political circumstances of indigo production, while other Indians

apparently resisted incorporation into the new commercial regime.65 | P a g e

Isolated communities dotted the countryside in an attempt to

maintain their isolation defying the Spanish authorities by

fleeing to remote locations (MacLeod 1973; Sampeck 2007).

Also during the seventeenth century, there was a rise in the

demand for sugar (Mintz 1975). Previously, the American sugar

industry “evolved between 1500 and 1800 as planters adopted

innovations in land use and in the mills” (Galloway 1985:334).

These innovations encompassed changes in agricultural practices

to support a monocrop, use of natural resources, and

modifications in milling and processing technologies. Many of the

colonial planter elite began adding sugar to their cash crops.

Galloway noted two fundamental aspects about sugar planters as a

class: “(1) planters had access to information about innovations,

and (2) planters adopted innovations only when it made good

economic sense to do so” (Galloway 1985:335). His point is that

the planter class was rational and only adopted innovations by

choice as the result of a conscious decision.

The Hapsburgs ruled when in a somewhat relaxed manner

regarding the district of Sonsonate, and the indigenous people

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openly questioned colonial authority. Many academics view the

Hapsburg rule as a weakening of Spanish power in El Salvador

during the seventeenth-century (Burns 1972). Hapsburg rule

suffered a decentralization of authority, despite royal efforts

to maintain close control through its agents. This

decentralization occurred because of the rivalries between

conquistadores. These rivalries led to violence and civil war

among the Spaniards in the early years of colonial rule, which

hindered the unification of Central America under Spanish rule.

As a result, ayuntamientos (municipal/local councils) were the

most important governing units in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. Under this system, many indigenous people still lived

on and farmed their ancestral land, but were increasingly

indebted to the merchants who controlled trade. The Indians began

to question Spanish authority, because the governing peninsulares

(a Spanish-born Spaniard or mainland Spaniard residing in the New

World) were also controlled by bribes from the manipulative

merchants.

The eighteenth century is marked by the Bourbon reforms.

Understanding these reforms is essential in examining the social,67 | P a g e

economic, and political structure both preceding and following

Central American independence (Wortman 1975). At this time,

“Hapsburg decentralization was supplanted by a rigid structure

that increased centralized authority in Crown hands” (White

2009:46). This Bourbon reforms represented an effort to regain

the Spanish sovereignty that earlier monarchs enjoyed, because an

exceedingly strong merchant class controlled commerce, including

prices, trade regulations, and tax collection in the beginning of

the eighteenth century (Wortman 1975). They were a set of

economic and political legislations that were intended to

stimulate manufacturing and technology in order to modernize

Spain and make the administration of commercial production more

efficient under Spanish control. The prices on all food,

minerals, cattle and indigo were controlled under the ordenanzas

of the Ayuntamiento de Guatemala. Most trade outside of Central

America was permitted to only pass through the capital city. Once

the goods were in the capital city, levies were paid and the

merchants took control of marketing produce (Wortman 1975). The

merchants controlled the price of the goods because they would

finance the producers and production of the profitable goods

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through contracts. The power was in the hands of the creole

elite and Guatemalan merchants and not in the hands of the ruling

Spaniards. Even though there is centralization on the one hand,

there is decentralization on the other. Because of the reforms,

the repartimiento system was dismantled and the expansion of

Spanish owned cattle estates occurred in response to indigenous

population growth but lack of access to land. Simultaneously, the

European industrial revolution began to impact production in El

Salvador. Demand for indigo increased due to the increased

textile production in Europe and Central America dominated the

production and exportation of indigo because of its high quality.

This increase in indigo production and a decrease in cacao

production in the eighteenth century attracted increasing numbers

of immigrant laborers and immigrants were not subject to the

tribute demands as the local Pipiles were. A Spanish royal

official at that time reported that "all classes of strangers

from diverse places arrived at the hacienda at harvest time,

constructing their makeshift huts of discarded wood and leaving

once the harvest was done" (Ripton 2006:106). This increase in

immigrant laborers resulted in the reification of castas (castes69 | P a g e

based on Spanish perceptions of race and ethnicity) and social

hierarchy. In addition to the immigrant families, peninsulares

were coming to El Salvador from Spain, which was causing tensions

with the Salvadoran elite creole (a person of European descent born

in Latin America) population. The result was a social hierarchy

in the eighteenth century, roughly highest to lowest: peninsular,

creole, ladino, mestizo, indios, mulatos.

Nineteenth-Century; Struggle for the Nation

The elites were managing their estates, participating in

government and investing in international trade during the

turbulent nineteenth century, “with Latin American Independence,

which was largely complete by 1823, dozens of new republics shook

off the chains of colonial economic restrictions and monopoly”

(Miller 2007:105). In the case of El Salvador, in 1810 the

Salvadoran elites began to band together to gain their

independence from Spain, which culminated in the Acta de

Independencia signed in 1821. Inspired by the American and French

revolutions, intellectuals and merchants grew tired of Spanish

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rule in the American colonies. These groups were interested in

expanding their export markets to Britain and the United States,

thus adopting a different hegemonic power. The first decades of

the nineteenth century produced independence inspired uprisings

by poor mestizos and Indians to protest their impoverishment and

marginalization (Burns 1972). By this point in history, indigo

was the principal export crop before the cultivation of coffee

was introduced in the late nineteenth century. In 1833, where

Anastasio Aquino led an Indian rebellion of indigo sowers and

cutters demanding the distribution of land to the poor and the

just application of the penal laws, which were the only laws

applied to the poor. This rebellion was quickly and poignantly

crushed by the government. Thousands of rural peasants were

displaced as new laws incorporated poor rural farmers lands into

large "modern" coffee plantations where peasants were forced to

work for very low wages. The new liberal reforms consequently

created a coffee oligarchy made up of fourteen families. The

economy is still currently controlled by a wealthy landowning

caste.

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In the mid-nineteenth century, advances in production

techniques and technologies occurred at a rapid rate. Indigo was

replaced by chemical dyes, which caused the landowning elite to

replace indigo demand with a new coffee crop. At the end of the

nineteenth century, because coffee grows best at higher

elevations, coffee was grown primarily in the western and central

highlands, which happened to be the most densely populated region

of the country (Ripton 2006). The lands that had once been farmed

by poor mestizos and indios were suddenly quite valuable. The

elite-controlled the legislature and pressured the president to

pass vagrancy laws, which removed people from their land (White

2009). Once the poor were removed from their land, the elite

hacienda owners would take over this land for production of

coffee that would pay to keep the policy-makers in their pocket.

This legislation resulted in a large class of landless

Salvadorans. Their former lands were absorbed into the fincas

(coffee plantations).

The efforts of the Indians and landless peasants were

capitalized on by the intellectuals, merchants, and planter

elites. This act of independence is one of the key aspects of my

72 | P a g e

research. These creole elites, in a struggle to achieve political

legitimacy and social stability, supported a move toward national

Salvadoran advancement and material prosperity. In the nineteenth

century the notion of progress included shaking off the shackles

of tradition (Skidmore and Smith 2005). This ideology legitimized

elite power and undermined expressions of tradition and

indigenous ethnicity. The elites took advantage of the historic

social, political, and economic circumstances, like the weakening

of the Spanish, Chinese, Ottoman, and Holy Roman Empires and the

rise of the British, German, and United States empires. During

this time of transition and renegotiation, the Creole planter

elites hoped that “without metropolitan barriers to trade,

production, and immigration, they might follow the economic leaps

being made by the industrializing north” (Miller 2007:105). After

the revolution, Indians and peasants remained impoverished and

largely without land or legal rights. The criollo left the

Indians and landless peasants with a broken Populist promise of

ending the abuses committed by landowners. Although the new

country’s constitution was amended many times, several elements

remained constant. The wealthy landowners were granted majority

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power in the national legislature. The president, selected from

the landowning elite, was also granted significant power.

El Salvador became an independent republic heavily reliant

on the agricultural elite and merchant class who were

successfully participating in these world markets. The industrial

north (the United States and Canada) capitalized on Latin

America’s exportation of raw materials, including cotton, tin,

rubber, and copper, for their mass-produced goods. Latin America,

including El Salvador, also supplied agricultural products, like

sugar, coffee, beef, and bananas to feed the rapidly expanding

industrial workforce in North and South America (Brown 1945;

Fowler 1987; Miller 2007; Mintz 1985). In western El Salvador’s

early independence, the land was controlled and managed in a

localized manner by the hacienda elite, including the fourteen

families. This group most likely controlled access to river fords

and railroads which created all but feudal lords.

This dependence on agricultural elites was found in many

parts of Latin America and made makes the hacienda the fulcrum

for the development of the state (Alexander 2003; Barrett 1970;

Sordo 2000; Stanislawski 1996; Vanden 2006). The lands used for

74 | P a g e

the hacienda became privately owned by and passed down through

the planter families. Aldo Lauria-Santiago (1999:469) stated that

“without doubt, the privatization of communal lands is one of the

most important transformations that have affected the history of

El Salvador.” This privatization reached its peak during the

nineteenth century, which makes this time period an especially

tumultuous era in the history of El Salvador. Simultaneously,

Izalco was home to the largest Indian settlement in the region.

Some of these indigenía chose to abandon the long tradition of

peasant farming and commercial production for wage labor

positions at the larger haciendas. This was not a new trend; it

had been going on since the sixteenth century because of laws

forbidding indigenous slavery (Sampeck 2007). The large number of

landless rural workers that migrated throughout the countryside

looking for work on the large private haciendas is a main

repercussion of El Salvador’s agricultural modernization. Ripton

(2006:117) corroborated that “the increase in population, which

virtually tripled between 1878 and 1930 (Cardoso and Perez, 1983:

189), and the land dispossessions radically changed life in the

countryside, making available a veritable army of unemployed and

75 | P a g e

under employed workers.” The trend of lower class migrant workers

settling and working on and around the hacienda properties

indicates an increasing social inequality within and between the

creole, ladino and Indian populations that continues through the

twentieth century (Anderson 1992).. The landowners then

controlled where and how long the laborers lived and worked on

the hacienda through wages and wage advances, which caused many

laborers to become deeply indebted to the landowners.

The Sugar Revolution

Higman noted that “of the many revolutions identified by

historians, only one takes its name from a particular commodity.

This is the sugar revolution, a concatenation of events…with far-

reaching ramifications for the Atlantic world” (Higman 2000:213).

During the sixteenth century, sugar was heavily supported by the

international slave trade that brought millions of Africans to

the Americas, because sugarcane needed a great amount of manpower

to plant, harvest, and process the cane crop. The history of the

world was forever shaped by sugar cane plantations started as

cash crops by European powers. Noting sugar cane's potential as

76 | P a g e

income for the new settlements in the Americas, Spanish

colonizers obtained seeds from Christopher Columbus' fields in

the Dominican Republic and planted them throughout their

burgeoning colonies. By the mid sixteenth-century the Portuguese

had brought some sugar to Brazil (historically the highest

producer of sugarcane and sugar) and, soon after, sugarcane made

its way to British, Dutch and French colonies.

In the sixteenth century, the first colonial sugar mills in

the Americas were similar to those found in other European

colonies in the Mediterranean and in the Atlantic. Several

different designs were utilized depending on local and colonial

technologies. The first designs were borrowed from the mills that

were used to extract oil from olives and nuts (Galloway 1985). In

the Americas, some sugar mills needed to have the cane chopped

into small pieces before it was crushed, while other mills had

the cane stalks fed directly into the mill that crushed the cane

(Robert R. Nathan Associates, Inc. 1971). Regardless of the mill

design, the harvesting and processing of sugarcane is labor

intensive and time consuming. Small mills were usually turned by

man power versus the larger mills that were turned by animal or

77 | P a g e

water power. In general, many of the mills were inefficient

because after the cane was crushed once, the remainder of the

cane was transferred to another press where laborers worked to

extract all the liquid from the pulp (Robert R. Nathan

Associates, Inc. 1971).

In the beginning of the seventeenth century, the mill was

redesigned to increase its effectiveness at crushing the juice

out of the cut cane. This design consisted of three vertically

mounted columned rollers that crushed the cane that was inserted

in the middle. The “three-cylinder mill spread to all the sugar-

growing regions of America and remained the standard design of

mill until the nineteenth century” (Galloway 1985:339). Galloway

noted that this particular three-cylinder design was versatile

enough that it could be constructed in varying sizes and adapted

to many kinds of power (man, water, animal, wind) in different

environments. This particular mill design required no more than

four laborers; two on each side of the cylinders to pass the cane

back and forth through the cylinders, one laborer to monitor the

power source and the other to carry the cut cane from the

stockpile to the mill. The juice that was crushed out of the cane

78 | P a g e

stalks was captured by various styles of a reservoir. The juice

from the reservoir was boiled and the impurities separated out a

number of times, depending on the level of processing desired.

The resultant liquid was poured into sugar molds to dry and get

ready for transport as sugar cones.

Historians have suggested that there are a few central

elements to the sugar revolution. The first element was a rapid

shift from diversified agriculture to sugar monocrops (Higman

2000). The second element was a shift in the location of

production from small farms to large plantations and haciendas

that used mostly slave or indentured labor (Albert 1976). Because

of the shift to large plantations that required a high amount of

manpower, there was a change from sparse to dense settlement

patterns around the lands where sugarcane was planted and

processed (Brown 1945). Consequentially, historians agree that

the sugar revolution resulted in broad effects including that

“sugar generated a massive boost to the Atlantic slave trade,

provided the engine for a variety of triangular trades, altered

European nutrition and consumption, increased European interest

79 | P a g e

in tropical colonies, and, more contentiously, contributed

vitally to the industrial revolution” (Higman 2000:213).

Sugar haciendas divided their land up for sugarcane,

provision crops, pasture, and forest. Provision crops were needed

for their labor force, pasture for their livestock and work

animals, and forest for fuel. On large haciendas, where land was

plentiful, these land uses did not compete with one another.

Realistically, by the nineteenth century, many haciendas were

medium to small and were struggling to make a profit. To manage

their plantations, planters had to continuously reassess the way

their land was divided up among the needs of the hacienda.

Comparatively, Galloway stated that “the ideal layout of a sugar

plantation in the French Caribbean [was]…sixteen cane fields

[that] leave little space for the mill, great house, slave

quarters, and provision grounds” (Galloway 1985:346). Sugar

continued to be in steady production from the sixteenth through

the nineteenth centuries, although production techniques changed

throughout this time.

The introduction of the 'sugar complex' became a central

concern in the economic history of the seventeenth century

80 | P a g e

because it played a dominant role in the commercial revolution

(Higman 2000; Mintz 1985). Mintz (1985) believed that the sugar

plantation was probably the closest thing to industry that was

typical of the seventeenth century in Central America. Historians

agree that “in the larger history of the Atlantic economy, the

sugar revolution marks a genuine historical discontinuity, the

significance of which remains to be fully explored and

interpreted” (Higman 2000:232).

Environmental and Geographical Context

The Republic of El Salvador is the smallest and most densely

populated state on mainland Latin America (White 2009:1). Its

total area is slightly smaller than Massachusetts in the United

States. El Salvador’s small area and dense population have

resulted in environmental degradation as well as a high poverty

rate, although some would argue that this is a result of

structural violence rather than a necessary condition. Even

though it is compact, El Salvador contains diverse ecosystems

that lead to different crops and patterns of land use (Lauria-

Santiago 1995). El Salvador borders the Pacific Ocean and is

81 | P a g e

located in the middle of Central America, between Guatemala,

Honduras and Nicaragua. This makes El Salvador the only Central

American state without a coastline on Caribbean Sea. Rather, it

is the Pacific Ocean that links El Salvador to the global trans-

Pacific shipping networks (Dunne 1972). Although El Salvador is

small in size, it is intricately tied into the history of

colonialism and the creation of the modern world (Brown 1945;

Mintz 1985; White 2009). El Salvador could be considered a

microcosm for the issues surrounding Latin and Central America

because it exemplifies common issues such as El Salvador’s

history of marginalizing indigenous traditions as a result of

colonization and its history of violence and war that many Latin

American and Central American counties share.

Shawn Miller (2007:139) observed, “over the course of the

nineteenth century a variety of newly endowed technologies—steam

engines, railways, steamships—powered their way into the region.”

In the nineteenth century, fossil fuel-based new technologies

proved essential to the success of Latin America’s export driven

markets. Two unanticipated outcomes of these technologies were

the damage to the natural environment as well as the spatial and

82 | P a g e

social restructuring of the native and non-native populations

(Böckler 1975; Grissa 1976; Hannah and Spence 1996; Mintz 1985;

Nathan et al. 1971; Skidmore and Smith 2005; Worcester 1963).

The idea that increases in technologies that increased market

production in El Salvador affected the agency of native

populations was tested during the thesis research.

The climate of the area is tropical, consisting of invierno

(winter), which is a wet season, and verano (summer), a dry

season. The terrain of El Salvador consists of mostly mountains

(in the north) with a narrow tropical coastal belt and central

upland area consisting of valleys and plateaus. The Salvadoran

landscape also reflects a long history of volcanism and the

successive deposits of volcanic material have been altered by

only erosion and the subsistence practices of a nation of

agriculturalists (Zier 1980). The Salvadoran terrain creates a

temperate zone throughout the countryside.

El Salvador is broken up into fourteen small governing

districts (Figure 1). The cultural features I am analyzing are

located in Sonsonate. This district includes the railroad,

constructed in the nineteenth century, which runs between San

83 | P a g e

Salvador and the Pacific Coast, specifically to the port of

Acajutla, the port of the Izalcos.

Figure 1. Vegetation and Land Use 25 Feb 2011 <http://tfw.cachefly.net/snm/images/nm/motw/americas/el_salvador_land_1980.jpg>

This port has historically been involved in the export of a

wide variety of commodities, including cacao, balsam, coffee and

sugar (Fowler 1987, 1989; Sampeck 2007). The Río Ceniza and the

Río Grande bisects Sonsonate, but the rivers are so entrenched

that they were not used for shipping (Figure 2). Western El

Salvador’s geography (bordered by the Pacific Ocean, with one of

the few viable ports) contributed to Sonsonate’s history of being

a “major producer of agriculture, manufacturing, pottery, cotton,

cloth, sugar, cigars, alcohol, starch, baskets, and mats” in the

84 | P a g e

nineteenth and twentieth centuries (White 2009:9). The most

important contributing factor to the region as a ‘gateway’ is its

physiographic setting (Figure 2). The railroad was placed there

because of the physiographic setting. This setting made it a

prime overland travel route and the port was one of the best on

the Pacific.

Figure 2. El Salvador 25 Feb 2011 <http://www.nationsonline.org/maps/el_salvador_map>

Izalco is one of the largest municipalities of western El

Salvador, located in the valley floor (Lauria-Santiago 1999). Due

to the terrain and climate, the Izalco region of El Salvador was

conducive to the production of sugar cane, because this crops

needed heat and moisture, but could tolerate poor soils (Figure

85 | P a g e

3) (Albert 1976; Fowler 1987; Sandiford 2000; Schwartz 2004;

Smith 1978).

Figure 3. Departments of El Salvador 25 Feb 2011 <http://www.salvaide.ca/salvadoranculture.html>

Summary

Early in El Salvador’s independence, the landowning elite

mostly depended on the production of a single export crop,

indigo. This led the landed elite to be attracted to certain

lands that were conducive to indigo production, which included

drier upland regions. After the profitable lands were taken for

haciendas that produced profitable export crops, the poor

mestizos and indios were left to live on the lands surrounding

the hacienda, because that was their source of income. The

86 | P a g e

seventeenth century saw a rise in global demand for sugar on the

lands that were not used for the production of cacao or indigo.

Because sugar could be grown in poorer soils, new land could be

utilized.

These events led to a large migrant labor population who

were attracted to settle on and around the profitable haciendas.

This again reinforced the power and authority the landowning

elites exercised.

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CHAPTER 5

METHODOLOGY

The main focus of this research centers in what the

implications are of the ceramic variability found on a

nineteenth-century sugar estate. To answer this question, I must

take into account that the collected ceramics are the result of a

surface collection. The ceramics I analyzed for this paper were

not the result of a typical surface collection. A typical surface

collection results from systematic and/or intensive survey

techniques within often relatively large grid units (Redman and

Watson 1970). Sampeck’s surface collections were highly sensitive

to variability in surface frequencies and architectural

association. This comprehensive methodology, involved collecting

micro samples when warranted. Also, the soils are quite thin in

mostly highly plowed areas, so excavation would not yield

qualitatively different samples. This surface collection

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methodology generally belongs with plowzone archaeology, which is

a significant part of work in historical archaeology (Navazo and

Díez 2008). Surface collections in this specific situation

produce a much broader scale of analysis than would be possible

with excavation.

I wanted to form a general idea of the sociopolitical and

economic climate in El Salvador during the nineteenth century. I

analyzed the 687 imported European ware and 885 lead-glazed

European-style redware sherds from 18 contexts, but excluded the

local earthenwares because of time constraints. The European

wares were imported into the country and accordingly these

ceramics were probably higher priced than local wares. This

inflated price and the constraints of international trade

networks would presumably have limited access to these ceramics.

The lead-glazed redware found on the hacienda was abundant,

suggesting that it may have been locally produced and seems to

have been easily accessible, as all people living in the area

show evidence of access to these goods. The methods I used in

analyzing the ceramics act as checks and balances for each other.

I looked at the individual sherds as well as minimum number of89 | P a g e

vessels to form a composite picture of the distribution of the

European ceramics. I used ceramic sherd counts to compare ware

percentages because a MNV count was not conducted for the

redwares. I had a finite amount of time and resources and decided

to concentrate my analysis on the imported European wares because

of the abundance of documentation on the dates, forms and

decorations specific to these ceramics. My research may be

incomplete according to those archaeologists who believe that

“MNV ceramic counts (rather than individual sherd counts) best

illustrate how items were used once they entered the

archaeological record” (Voss and Allen 2010:5:1-9), but my data

show little the difference between MNV and sherd counts. By

utilizing various analytical methods, I highlight the

similarities or differences in the data.

Research Questions

To what extent did various individuals on a nineteenth sugar hacienda in western El

Salvador participate in the consumer revolution?

My ceramic sample is based on all of the survey areas

that contained historic imported European wares. This was an

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intentional bias in sampling for chronological control because I

am trying to focus in on the 19th century occupation. I am

looking at how access changes spatially and the degree of

diversity for different areas.

I recorded data on the European ceramic sherds that

includes count, portion (rim, base or body), ware (pearlware,

whiteware, ironstone, porcelain, bone china), weight and a short

description of the decoration (any additional relevant

information). For the redware, I counted the sherds, portion

(rim, base or body), weight, and a description of the decoration

(lead glazed, unglazed or other distinctive markings).

I conducted the ceramic analysis while considering

whole vessels with a minimum vessel count for the European wares

(Meyers 2005). I grouped the sherds together that were most

likely from the same vessel based on ware, form, and decoration.

Using a MNV helps create a picture of the number of ceramics

being utilized by the occupants of the hacienda (Appendix C), and

which vessel forms were being used. I used a minimum vessel count

to either corroborate or negate the findings of the relative

frequencies of the ceramic sherds (Meyers 2005). The assessment

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of MNV allowed for intra-survey area comparison of the European

ware. The minimum number vessel count revealed a pattern of

inequality in the ceramics between the isolated survey areas. I

utilized this technique because sherd counts can be misleading;

certain ceramics are prone to shattering based on ware type, use,

and many other factors (Miller 1980, 1991). I documented the

variability in the ceramic ware types (European ware and

redware), vessel form types (European ware), and decoration

(European ware and redware) (Meyers 2005; Miller 1980, 1991; Rice

1987).

I documented European vessel forms such as cups,

saucers, dishes, plates, bowls, and platters. The vessel form and

size indicated what the ceramics were used for. The vessels that

are large could have been used in sugar processing. Smaller

vessels could have been used around the hacienda domestically.

Large sugar cones, drip pots, ollas, platos, jarras and botes are the

forms used in the sugar refining process or to store sugar

(Lister and Lister 1987). Smaller bowls, platos, tazas would have

been used for utilitarian food preparation and consumption.

Platters and greater numbers of platos, bowls, and tazas would have

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been used for serving food domestically. According to my

analysis, all the survey areas contain some European wares. The

redware is a local version of European redwares, but I did not

have time to conduct a minimum vessel count or analyze the forms.

The range of European wares varies dramatically between survey

area groups, but all show evidence of participating in the

consumer revolution. Some of the ceramics include whiteware,

pearlware, ironstone, bone china, and porcelain, with annular,

transferprint, and hand-painted decoration. This array suggests a

time frame from 1780s to 1900 (Card 2008; Rice 1987; Miller 1980,

1991). The forms of these European wares include cups, plates,

saucers, dishes, bowls, pitcher and hollow wares.

What do the settlement pattern and ceramic distribution reveal about the construction

of identity and agency at sugar production sites in the Early Republican Period of El

Salvador?

I focused on the analysis of the ceramic materials and

spatial distribution of the materials from multiple survey areas

surrounding the archaeologically detected sugar production zone,

which consists of survey areas Ariete Casco, Ariete North,

Quequeisquillo Norte Center, Quequeisquillo Norte West, Miramar

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Southwest, Miramar South, Miramar North, Obreros Middle, Obreros

South, Obreros North, Cangrejera Northwest, Cangrejera West,

Cangrejera Main, Santa Marta North, Santa Marta South, Ariete

North, San Antonio North, San Antonio South, Los Caminos. These

survey areas were surface-collected within a broad flat between

the Quequeisquillo and Ceniza Rivers, which lies immediately east

of Sonsonate and north of Nahulingo in El Salvador. All of these

materials were collected during Dr. Kathryn Sampeck’s CRM field

work and subsequent intensive surveys of the region. Many of

these collection areas are multi-component. All the collection

zones are a mixture of isolated finds, discrete zones, and a

broader distribution of materials. I combined ceramic counts from

some of the field collections based on architectural association

and spatial grouping (Appendix B).

The survey area of the hacienda region was delimited by

structural remains, artifact distribution, and topography. It is

important to know the size of the hacienda and its outlying

settlements because it can aid in a better understanding of how

this nineteenth-century hacienda operated; what was being

produced; and the socioeconomic status of its occupants (Appendix

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C). By examining the amount, form, and ware of ceramics from

different locations within and around the hacienda, I explored

how various ceramics reflected and were used in the negotiation

of social relations. People occupying different levels of social

status and social identity used different amounts, forms, and

wares of ceramics.

Domestic vessels, including European wares and lead-

glazed redwares, were used to serve and store food in or near the

home and would not have to withstand high temperatures. The

presence of the local wares suggests that the Creole elite were

using local technologies in nineteenth-century production, which

implies indigenous labor. As noted above, the redware was

probably made locally and could have been accessed more easily by

the hacienda laborers. The European wares had to have been

imported, which raised costs. The higher cost would limit who

would have had access to this ware. I propose that the Creole

elite used the most European wares domestically and a high

concentration of this ceramic ware will indicate where the big

house was located. A scattering of European wares and redware

indicated where owners, overseers, managers and hacienda laborers

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and other residents resided. Variation in the percentages of

wares indicated inequality among the laborers.

I conducted an intra-site comparison between the

ceramic assemblages within each survey area (Card 2008; Meyers

2005; Shepard 1956; Rodriguez-Alegría et al. 2003). The point of

comparing these assemblages is to determine if trends in the

ceramic percentages at the micro level relate to the whole area

of the hacienda. After the sherd count, minimum vessel count, and

the classification of vessel forms and decoration of the European

ware, I compared the variability of the ceramic groups. I

accomplished this by creating percentages of the ceramics based

on a sherd count and MNV; I grouped the vessels into functional

groups based on the ware, forms and decoration; and I counted the

minimum number of vessels and created percentages for a

comparison. This comparison illustrates how some workers had

greater access to, or preferred, certain ceramics (Meyers 2005).

Ceramic Artifacts

Redware

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There were 885 total redware sherds utilized in this

analysis. Redware is typically a utilitarian earthenware with a

red paste due to the type of iron-bearing clay used and the low

temperature required for vitrification. Hardness can vary, but

redware generally has one of the softest types of paste of the

earthenwares. In general, redware can be any red on a color

continuum from orange to garnet. It is often decorated with

liquid clay or slip. The redwares of European tradition that I

recorded had a much smaller range of paste and surface colors,

and were always glazed with a clear lead glaze. Little has been

done to date European tradition redware in Central America, which

is why I rely so heavily on European whitewares to date the

hacienda areas. Additionally, some of the redware ceramics have a

burnished surface that is mottled with a patina of manganese

oxide. The painted motifs found on the redware from the sugar

hacienda are simple geometric designs of black, yellow, and green

lines. All of the ceramics I am considering are European or

European-style (lead glazed) as opposed to the locally produced

earthenwares, which include both copywares and traditional forms

and treatments (Card 2008; Sampeck 2007) (Appendix B).

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Imported European Wares

I began my data recording refined white earthenwares with

sherd and MNV counts, concentrating on decoration, which is the

most identifiable aspect of these ceramics. There were a total of

687 refined white earthenware sherds and 377 refined white

earthenware vessels identified. I found that the wide array of

earthenware decoration represented in the European ceramics

include: undecorated, transferprint, flown, handpainted, annular,

edgeware, sponge marked, and molded. Identifying and dating

printed earthenware sherds has always been problematic for

archaeologists because majority of eighteenth- and nineteenth-

century printed pottery was unmarked. Miller (1991) and Samford

(1997) have noted that motifs and colors generally had a fifteen

to twenty-year range of peak production, allowing likely

manufacturing dates to be assigned to unmarked or fragmented

printed earthenware. I excluded provinces with decal decoration

to limit collections to more securely nineteenth-century

contexts.

Decoration

Handpainted

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The 214 handpainted decorated ceramic sherds found on the

hacienda were available before transfer printing began and gained

widespread popularity in the 1800s (Miller 1991). Handpainted

European ceramics represented in the hacienda assemblage present

examples of Adams (41), annular (107), and sponge painted

ceramics (26) (Appendix B). Also present was edgeware (3),

molded/gilded (19), and mocha engine-turned ceramics (18). The

dominant vessel forms for painted European wares are cups and

saucers (Appendix B). For the first half of the nineteenth

century, painted wares were predominantly teawares (Miller 1980).

These painted wares were the cheapest and most popular decorated

teawares from the 1790s through the nineteenth century (Miller

1991). Plates with painted decoration are scarce prior to the

1840s. Dipped decoration was dominant for hollowware vessel forms

(Baugher and Venables 1987). Polychrome floral patterns made

without cobalt were produced from about 1795 to 1815 (Miller

1991).

The volatility of prices and problems with the supply of

cobalt, due to the Napoleonic War, relate to the introduction and

increased production of the handpainted polychrome wares.

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Polychrome painted wares from this period mostly do not have any

blue in the floral patterns. These wares used colors like green,

yellow, and brown. Later, cobalt blue patterns with large brush

strokes were popular between 1815 and 1830 (Miller 1991). After

the 1830s, the chrome colors were introduced and increased in

popularity. Sprig or Adams painted wares began showing up in the

United States around 1835 and remained common throughout the

nineteenth century. As prices for handpainted ceramics fell,

there was a simplification of the painted patterns that required

less brush stokes, which cut production costs therefore creating

a more widely accessible product (Miller 1991).

Mocha/Engine Turned

I analyzed 18 sherds of dipped wares, which were the

cheapest hollowware with color decoration available to consumers

from the 1770s through the nineteenth century, but because these

wares almost never have maker’s marks, they are difficult to date

accurately (Miller 1991). Mocha wares were produced in large

quantity during the last quarter of the eighteenth century

through the nineteenth century in England and the United States.

Dipped refined earthenware surface decorations were created using

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clays that had different colors when fired or that were dyed by

the addition of mineral oxides suspended in a liquid solution

known as slip. Slip could be used as a dip for the entire surface

of the vessel or to create bands, drips or trail designs (Miller

1991).

Spongeware

Spongeware decoration is a common decoration on whitewares

and is heavily associated with teawares until 1835 (Miller

1991).  There were 26 sherds of spongeware analyzed in this

assemblage. Early sponge decoration was commonly used to

represent foliage. Sponged wares had color applied by dipping a

sponge into the glaze color and then applying the sponge to the

ware to be decorated, either by dabbing with the natural sponge

or with a sponge cut into a pattern.  Each decorative technique

does exhibit some temporal variation. Sponge decorated wares were

exported in large quantities to China, Africa, South and North

America in the mid-19th century, and were being produced in the

United States after about 1850 (Liebknecht 2001; Majeweski and

O’Brien 1987).  In the 1840s the cut sponge pattern was

introduced, which resulted in increased sponge decoration of

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table and tea wares, toilet wares, bowls and other vessel forms.

Spatter or spatterware is a form of sponged decoration that was

common from the 1820s to the 1860s, but most popular in the 1830s

(Laidacker 1954).  Different colors are applied over one another

can create a smudged effect in open sponge decoration.  Open

sponge decoration was used as a technique by British and North

American potteries from 1860 to 1935 (Ketchum 1983).  This type

of decoration is more typically found on utility wares, on large

bowls and pitchers made out of ironstone, although it is also

seen on whiteware tablewares (Miller 1991).

Transferprint

According to South (1977) and Miller (1991), the

148 sherds of transfer printed whiteware sherds were popular from

1830 to the present. Printing was used as a decorative technique

on a full range of vessel forms, from table wares and tea wares

to toilet wares (Coysh and Henrywood 1989). Printed decoration

was confined to only one side of flat vessels, such as plates,

dishes and saucers, and hollow vessels with constricted necks,

like jugs and teapots. Hollow vessels, such as bowls and tea

cups, are printed on the vessel exterior and often contain

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varying amounts of decoration inside the vessel, particularly

along the interior rim and base (Coysh and Henrywood 1989). The

most prevalent decoration on the hacienda Europeanware ceramics

was transferprint (Appendix B). Transferprint is a result of mass

production techniques where an image is most often applied to

hard surfaced pottery, like whiteware or porcelain (Miller 1991).

Because of the high number of steps to successfully produce

transfer printed ceramics, these ceramics were the most costly

and time consuming to produce thus limiting the consumers able to

purchase them (Miller 1991).

Transferprint Motifs

Many motifs were found on the transfer-printed

wares at this sugar hacienda including Chinese scenes, American

and British scenes, geometric patterns, exotic scenes, pastoral

scenes, classical views, romantic scenes, medieval views, and

floral patterns and vignettes (Coysh and Henrywood 1987). The

introduction of printed underglaze designs on whiteware made

production of the complex landscapes and geometric borders, like

those found on Chinese porcelain, more cost-efficient for

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potteries to produce and more affordable for the consumer (Miller

1991).

Chinoiserie

Nine sherds of Chinoiserie sherds represent the earliest

transfer-printed designs were exact copies of Chinese porcelain

motifs. The most enduring Chinese-style pattern was "Blue

Willow,” which began in production around 1790 (Hughes and Hughes

1960). This Chinese motif includes pagodas, boats called junks,

weeping willow and orange trees, and figures in Chinese garb, and

dominated the printed wares from the 1780s to 1814 (Coysh and

Henrywood 1987). After 1850 the willow pattern was used for tea

and table wares, while after 1870, potteries produced Japanese

styles that gained popularity in brown designs on ivory

backgrounds (Miller 1991; Samford 1997; South 1977).

British and American

From 1815 to about 1940, potteries produced a number of

British and American transferprint designs that included cities,

colleges, and country homes with prominently displayed buildings

or landscape features (Miller 1991; Samford 1997). I located a

total of 53 sherds with these patterns. These patterns were

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copies from published prints and travel accounts. British and

American views ceased production with the passage of the

Copyright Act of 1842, which made it illegal for potters to copy

published prints. Pastoral scenes were produced largely between

1819 and 1836, and feature rural-based scenes focusing on farm

animals or people working their land (Coysh and Henrywood 1987).

Classical

Nine sherds with classical motifs on printed wares,

which were popular between 1827 and 1847, were analyzed.

Classical motifs featured columned temples, ruins, urns, draped

figures, and acanthus leaves. The preference for classical motifs

began to wane by the 1840s, and replaced in popularity by

Medieval or Gothic Revival themes (Hughes and Hughes 1960; Miller

1991). Medieval or Gothic Revival patterns were most commonly

produced between 1841 and 1852. They are characterized by

depictions of churches and castles, with details including

arches, turrets, towers, and bastions.

Romantic

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I analyzed 57 total sherds with Romantic themes.

Romantic themes emphasized emotion and intuition over reason and

tradition and were a response to increasing industrialization.

Romantic themed ceramics contained rustic scenes with in stylized

buildings in the background, a water source such as a river or

lake, and human figures or animals strategically placed to

provide a sense of scale (Coysh and Henrywood 1987). Romantic

views were at their peak circa 1831 to 1851, although they

remained popular throughout the nineteenth century. Floral motifs

as center designs and borders were popular throughout the

nineteenth century with peak production between 1833 and 1849

(Miller 1991). Floral vignette border designs featured small

oblong or oval cartouches surrounding a variety of floral,

object, or scenic motifs and were most commonly produced between

1832 and 1848.

Summary

My methodology consisted of organizing and considering

the ceramic sherds and vessels in terms of survey areas divided

into regions and zones. These regions and zones represent the

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occupation areas of specific and individual groups of people

living and working on the hacienda. I compared redware and

imported wares across the hacienda, but I focused the majority of

my analysis on the European imported whitewares. This focus

ensured that I was studying ceramics from the nineteenth century.

The vessel forms provided insight into dining style, which was

influenced by ethnicity, class and occupation on the hacienda.

The analysis of vessel form also enabled a minimum vessel count

to corroborate the findings from the sherd analysis. The

decoration on the ceramics was paramount in determining a minimum

vessel count and the individual tastes of the survey areas. I

utilized ceramics to answer my research questions because

ceramics were mass produced and accessible to most people by the

nineteenth century. Due to the increased accessibility of ceramic

vessels, individuals had the opportunity to express their

identity and taste through their ceramic choices. Ceramic can

reveal the social/class inequality within the hacienda because

invisible factors, like dining style, ethnicity, and wage earning

capacity were constantly influencing consumer choices.

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CHAPTER 6

DATA ANALYSIS

Many historical archaeologists are interested in how ceramic

wares can be used to interpret economic status (Baugher and

Venables 1987; Miller 1980 and 1991; Orser 2005). My research

takes the economics in to account, but also considers the fluid

social dynamics of the nineteenth century and the redefinition of

material ways to enact and express identity as mass produced

goods permeated the global economy. Factory produced fine ware

ceramics were one of the most popular commodities traded across

countries and cultures, showing up in urban as well as rural

archaeological assemblages (Miller 1987). Other historical

archaeology studies (Baugher and Venables 1987; Card 2008; Lister

and Lister 1987; Meyers 2005; Orser 2005; Silliman 2006) have

shown how identity can be revealed through consumer choice.

The people living and working on this Salvadoran sugar

hacienda of my study were actively negotiating identity

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throughout the nineteenth century by consuming ceramic

commodities made accessible by the burgeoning global economy. By

this period in history, everyone had access to imported European

wares, but some had more access than others. Furthermore, even

for those that seemed to have access, the range of choices made

in a relatively small area is striking.

Ceramic Dating

Historical archaeologists use ceramic dates to establish a

chronology and a strong foundation for further interpretation.

Stanley South (1977) created a mathematical formula to calculate

an accurate date of archaeological deposits by using known date

ranges of manufacture for ceramics. Mean ceramic dating

calculates the mean date of all the ceramics with a known

manufacturing age in a sample. The MCD is calculated by using the

mathematical formula, MCD= Σ(d1f1) / Σf1, where the median

manufacturing date for each ceramic type is added to the median

manufacture date multiplied by the frequency of each ceramic

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type. Then that sum total is divided by the sum total of

frequencies of the individual ceramic types.

Some of the limitations to using this quantitative

methodology include the inability to use the formula when median

manufacture date cannot be determined; confusing the meaning of

MCD as mean date of discard instead of mean date of production;

utilizing ceramics with an expansive production date range that

need to be carefully analyzed to determine degree of variation

within the same context; and incorporating antique or heirloom

items dating significantly older than the rest of the assemblage

that can skew the MCD (South 1977).

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Table 1. Mean Ceramic Dates by Region (bold)

and Zone

IMPORTED EUROPEAN WARE TSC

MNV

San Antonio 1881.2 1888.3San Antonio North 1876.2 1886San Antonio South 1895 1895

Los Caminos 1889.6 1886.5

Los Obreros 1876.4 1882.2Obreros South 1881.5 1891.1Obreros Middle 1871.8 1875.8Obreros North 1890.6 1898

Ariete 1874.7 1878.8Ariete Casco 1855 1852.5Ariete North 1879.8 1884.7

Quequeisquillo Norte 1872.3 1877.5Quequeisquillo NorteCenter 1866.1 1870.5Quequeisquillo NorteWest 1878.4 1884.5

Santa Marta 1864.3 1868Santa Marta North 1857.1 1855Santa Marta South 1881.6 1892.5

Miramar 1852.5 1852.6Miramar North 1850 1870

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Overall, the mean ceramic dates confirm that the hacienda

was in use throughout the nineteenth century, especially during

the second and third quarters of the nineteenth century (Table

1). The earliest dated area is Cangrejera Northwest (Table 1).

This is based on one sherd of English soft paste undecorated

porcelain which very possibly was an heirloom piece, a remnant of

a fading tradition. Other data also underscore that this zone

presents an unusual case when compared to the other zones of the

hacienda. So, some changes are chronological, others are

contemporaneous variability. Looking at the settlement shifts per

the MCD dates I will note that the regional level of MCDs masks

the micro-moves at the zone level going on in some of the

regions, like Santa Marta and Cangrejera. As a whole the regional

data appears uniform, but when broken down into the zone level

the individual areas reveal differing tastes and consumer

choices.

There are three chronological divisions that appear to

designate contemporaneous settlements. The earliest chronological

grouping on the hacienda includes all the zones in Cangrejera,

the southern part of Miramar, Santa Marta North and the hacienda

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center, Ariete Casco. These areas were contemporaneously occupied

in the mid-nineteenth century. Within this chronological

grouping, there appears to be an inverse relationship between

Cangrejera and Santa Marta (Table 1). Ariete Casco zone stands

out in this chronological grouping as having a high percentage of

imported Europeanwares and a low percentage of redwares, while

the rest of the regions (Cangrejera, Miramar, and Santa Marta)

have high percentages of redwares and only one of their zones

seeming to collect a high percentage of imported Europeanwares

(Figure 4).

It appears that there is mirroring within and between these

regions by one zone holding the majority of the whitewares in

areas that had limited quantities. Mirroring or imitation is a

behavior in which one individual copies the behavior of another

individual, usually through social interaction (McCracken 1988).

This behavior may include mimicking gestures, language, diet,

style, attitude or objects (Baugher and Venables 1987; McCracken

1988). It seems that those zones with higher percentages of

imported wares in Cangrejera, Miramar and Santa Marta may have

been mirroring the behaviors of those in power at Ariete Casco.

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Figure 4. Chronological Group 1 Ware Percentages based on Sherd Count

Figure 5 shows us that types of dining are fairly consistent

throughout the hacienda with high percentages of cups, bowls, and

hollowwares/pitchers. Cangrejera Northwest does not follow this

trend because there were no vessels identified in that zone.

There is some slight variation , such as in Miramar Southwest,

Miramar South and Ariete Casco.

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Figure 5. Chronological Group 1 Vessel Percentages based on MVC

The ware-level analysis indicates socioeconomic

differentiation on the regional and subregional levels.

Similarly, the decorative analysis presents an idea of the cost

of different patterns that provides an idea of relative wealth

distribution across the hacienda (Figure 6). I noted earlier that

the redware is lead-glazed red earthenware probably of local

manufacture (or Guatemalan manufacture) but are found in

traditionally European forms, such as lebrillos, pitchers and

cazuelas. This ware and decorative variation could correspond to

the presence of debt peonage, wage laborers, overseers and

hacendados who all lived and worked on the hacienda.

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Figure 6. Chronological Group 1 Decoration Percentages based on MVC

The MCDs show a temporal gap between the first and the

second group. This second group is a pretty tight cluster in the

early-mid 1870s. The second group includes Miramar North,

Quequeisquillo Norte Center and Obreros Middle. Obreros Middle

seems to be right in the middle of the very contrasting

Quequeisquillo Norte Center and Miramar North. Miramar North has

a relatively high percentage of redwares at 60.7% when compared

to the other areas in this chronological period (Appendix B).

Obreros Middle holds the second highest percentage of redware

sherds and Quequeisquillo Norte Center holds the third highest

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percentage, but I do not think the ware percentages indicate

mirroring (Figure 7).

Figure 7. Chronological Group 2 Ware Percentages based on Sherd Count

There appears to be close mirroring between Quequeisquillo

Norte Center and Obreros Middle seen in the vessel form

percentages and decoration percentages (Figures 8 and 9). Miramar

North has less vessel form and decorative variation when compared

to the other two areas. Generally, Miramar North seems to contain

less expensive wares (undecorated, handpainted and annular),

except for the number of molded sherds which is the highest in

the entire assemblage at 18.2% (Appendix B). Quequeisquillo Norte

Center and Obreros Middle have a variety of vessel forms like

bowls, plates, dishes, platters and pitchers. These two areas

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also have a variety of decorations including transferprint, flown

and sponge. It seems that Quequeisquillo Norte Center and Obreros

Middle were in a close relationship with one another, while

Miramar North is following a separate trend much like the other

areas with high percentages of redware. There is mirroring

between Quequeisquillo Norte Center and Miramar South and Ariete

North in vessel form and decorations.

Figure 8. Chronological Group 2 Vessel Percentages based on MVC

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Figure 9. Chronological Group 2 Decoration Percentages based on MVC

The third chronological grouping spans the mid-1880s to the

late-1890s. All of these areas have MCDs within a year or two of

each other and include Quequeisquillo Norte West, Ariete North,

San Antonio North, Los Caminos, Obreros South, Santa Marta South,

San Antonio South and Obreros North. Contrary to the two prior

chronological periods, all the regions and zones in this temporal

period have a high percentage of imported Europeanware and a low

percentage of redware (Figure 10). This shift suggests that

locally produced redwares decreased in popularity as imported

Europeanware increased in popularity. This change in ceramic

preference might be caused by the decreasing prices of imported

wares due to mass production. Santa Marta South is the only area

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that has 100% imported Europeanware (Figure 10). The entire

settlement at Santa Marta was not contemporaneous and the

chronological gap is pretty big between Santa Marta North and

Santa Marta South. This temporal and taste difference is apparent

in the comparison of the zones within Santa Marta. Santa Marta

North has a low percentage of imported Europeanware and a high

percentage of redware, while Santa Marta South has only imported

Europeanware and no percentage of redware (Figure 10). The zone

of San Antonio South has the lowest percentage of Europeanware

and the highest percentage of redware. This pattern shows that

redware does not indicate high status, diverging from Donna

Seifert’s study that determined redwares as an indicator of high

status (Seifert 1977). According to Figure 10 San Antonio South

has over 80% white ware, which is significantly greater that

Quequeisquillo Norte Center. These statistics indicate a higher

class/caste is not indicated by redware.

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Figure 10. Chronological Group 3 Ware Percentages based on Sherd Count

It seems that the ware percentages gloss over the intersite

variation apparent in the vessel form and decoration comparison.

The areas seem to be following a few different trends. First, in

the chronological group of the late nineteenth century, Obreros

North and South, Quequeisquillo Norte West and Ariete North

present high percentages of cups, bowls and hollowwares. Dining

style does not seem as consistent as chronological group 1. There

are high percentages of cups, bowls, plates and

hollowares/pitchers. San Antonio South, Los Caminos and Santa

Marta South seem to set their own trends with high percentages of

a few vessel forms with low to relatively no percentages of the

other vessel forms. San Antonio South has high percentages of

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bowls, plates and hollowwares. Los Caminos has a very high

percentage of plates composing 50% of the region’s entire

assemblage (Figure 11). Santa Marta South has very high

percentages of bowl/cup (50%) and plate (50%) vessel forms

(Figure 11).

Figure 11. Chronological Group 3 Vessel Percentages based on MVC

The hints of the regional trends become tangible when

considering decoration. Ariete North and Quequeisquillo Norte

West follow a tight trend with high percentages of undecorated

and transferprint, while including a range of other decoration

including flown, handpainted, annular, sponge and molded (Figure

12). Obreros South stands alone with a high percentage of

undecorated and transferprint decoration (Figure 12). Los

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Caminos, Obreros North and San Antonio South follow a trend of

high percentages of transferprint and annular decoration with Los

Caminos showing a little more decorative variation including

flown and handpainted decoration (Figure 12). Considering the

ware, vessel forms and decoration comparisons a few overall

trends emerged. Quequeisquillo Norte West and Ariete North are

mirroring each other, possibly indicating the presence of

hacienda owners or overseers living in these areas. This behavior

is not emulation, rather the showing of solidarity of people of

similar caste because these trends are concurrent (Bell 2002).

The rest of the regions and zones appear to be consuming higher

percentages of imported European imported wares than ever before,

probably due to the increased production and accessibility and

decreased cost of these wares later in the nineteenth century

(Baugher and Venables 1987). Many of the areas contain high

percentages of transferprinted decoration, which also may

indicate mirroring the high status trends of consumption seen

earlier in the century. The time lag between the similar ceramic

trends indicates emulation (Bell 2002). The wide variation in

vessel forms may indicate more unique styles of dining, which

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diverges from the more uniform style of dining seen in the

earlier chronological periods.

Figure 12. Chronological Group 3 Decoration Percentages based on MVC

Ceramic Wares

There is distinct ceramic variability in the regional and

zonal ceramic ware percentages regarding the distribution of

imported European wares and redwares. By this period in history,

everyone had access to imported whitewares, but some had more

access than others. The chronological change, illustrated above,

completely inverted ceramic use from the first chronological

grouping to the third chronological grouping. This variability

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could represent fine scales of class and/or consumer choice. The

changing patterns in the chronological groups indicate the

changing world trends of ceramic preference in conjunction with

to the variable pricing of the ceramic commodities. The higher

status ceramics start out expensively priced but as time

progresses, these ceramics become less expensive due to increased

production. There are some obvious temporal trends influencing

consumer choice on the hacienda, but there are also some more

minute trends within each region and sub-region within these time

periods. Examining the landscape of ceramic decoration within the

imported Europeanwares will be important to get a more accurate

sense of agency. By examining the temporal changes within

individual regions, I hope to address the questions of whether

people had access to pretty much the same goods and choices were

made on the basis of price, or if people had access to a range of

goods and the variability represents personal preferences.

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Table 2. Ceramic Type by Region

Imported European Ware TSC % Redware

TSC % Total %

Quequeisquillo Norte 327 93.40%

236.60%

350100%

Santa Marta 40 29.40%

9670.60%

136100%

Miramar 43 54.40%

3645.60% 79 100%

Table 3. Ceramic Type by Zone

Imported European Ware TSC % Redware

TSC % Total %

Quequeisquillo Norte Center 111 76%

3524%

146100%

Quequeisquillo Norte West 240 96%

104%

250100%

Santa Marta South 3

100.00%

00% 3 100%

Santa Marta North 19 20.20% 75 79.80% 94 100%Miramar North 11 39.30% 17 60.70% 28 100%Miramar South 24 64.90% 13 35.10% 37 100%Miramar Southwest 11 50%

1150% 22 100%

Cangrejera West 47 11.50% 361 88.50%

408100%

127 | P a g e

The regions that demonstrate unusual percentages of ware

types when broken down into zones include Santa Marta and

Cangrejera. These two regions have more redware than imported

Europeanware (Table 2). In fact, these two regions have the

highest percentages of redware compared to imported Europeanware

when compared to the entire hacienda assemblage. Seifert argues

that lead-glazed redwares are a marker of high status (Seifert

1977). Traditionally, archaeologists assume that locally produced

wares were markers of lower status, while imported Europeanwares

(from Spain) were associated as a higher status item (Costin and

Earle 1989). When observed at the sub-regional level, Cangrejera

West and Cangrejera Main hold the highest numbers of redware,

while Cangrejera Northwest has no redware. Similarly, Santa Marta

North holds the next highest number of redware sherds while Santa

Marta South holds none. This area may have been one used for

peninsular, criollo or possibly mestizo overseers or managers.

Meyers notes that “Donna Seifert (1977:105, 116) argues that the

use of lead-glazed wares in Mexico was largely restricted to the

middle and upper classes” (Meyers 2005:39:112-137). Therefore the

ethnicity of the laboring class on the hacienda most likely

128 | P a g e

consisted of versions of those classified as indio, negro or

mestizo who were using the redwares.

As a whole, Santa Marta’s regional assemblage is made up of

mostly redware (Figure 13). When broken down into zones, Santa

Marta South surprisingly contains 100% Europeanware while Santa

Marta North consists of 79.8% Redware and 20.2% Europeanware,

which is closer to the Santa Marta regional ceramic distribution

(Appendix B). Cangrejera has a similar pattern regarding regional

ceramic distribution. Much like Santa Marta, Cangrejera Northwest

has one hundred percent Europeanware ceramics, while Cangrejera

West and Cangrejera Main both have high percentages of redware

ceramics. The zones Cangrejera West and Cangrejera Main might be

attempting to emulate the ceramic percentages of consumption in

the region of Cangrejera (Figure 13). It appears that the people

living in Santa Marta South and Cangrejera Northwest were holding

the majority of the whitewares in areas that do not have many

whitewares.

129 | P a g e

Figure 13. Santa Marta and Cangrejera Ware

The other six regions (Quequeisquillo Norte, Miramar, San

Antonio, Los Obreros, Los Caminos and Ariete) all have more

Imported Europeanware than redware. Regions most similar to each

other based on inter-site ceramic ware percentages include

Quesqueisquillo Norte and Ariete; San Antonio and Los Caminos;

and Miramar and Los Obreros (Appendix B). These regional

similarities could indicate analogous social and economic

conditions that influenced the consumer choices of the people who

inhabited these areas. On the other hand, the regions that are

the most dissimilar to one another include Ariete and Cangrejera

in addition to Quequeisquillo Norte and Santa Marta. These

noteworthy differences in ceramic ware percentages may well point

to dissimilar social or economic status in relation to one

another.

130 | P a g e

For this next part, a series of figures will help explain

the intricacies of the ceramic variability within regions. The

regions with the highest percentages of Imported Europeanware

include Quequeisquillo Norte, San Antonio, Los Caminos and Ariete

(Table 2). When these four regions are broken down into zones,

Table 3 illustrates that the Europeanware percentages in

Quequeisquillo Norte Center, Quequeisquillo Norte West, San

Antonio North, San Antonio South, Los Caminos, Ariete North and

Ariete Casco are higher than the redware ceramic percentages in

these areas. The zones that continue this trend of high imported

Europeanware percentages versus redware ceramic percentages

include, Santa Marta South, Miramar South, Cangrejera Northwest,

Obreros South, Obreros Middle and Obreros North (Table 3).

Considering the chronology of the hacienda, it appears that Santa

Marta is mimicking Cangrejera on the sub-regional level.

The regions of Miramar and Los Obreros represent some of the

regions that have the highest percentages of redware in the

hacienda ceramic assemblage (Table 2). In the Miramar region,

there are fairly equal percentages of imported Europeanware and

redware ceramics. The three zones Miramar North, Miramar South

131 | P a g e

and Miramar Southwest support this trend with slight variations

in the exact percentages of imported Europeanware and redware.

Miramar hit its height of occupation about ten to fifteen years

before Los Obreros. Los Obreros region and the region’s zones,

Obreros South, Obreros Middle and Obreros North, all have higher

percentages of Europeanware than redware. Obreros Middle has a

closer percentage of Europeanware to redware. Miramar South and

Obreros South both have the highest percentages of imported

Europeanware leading to a similar interpretation of the issue of

mirroring, as was the case in Cangrejera and Santa Marta. Based

on the chronological distribution of the subregions, Obreros

seems to be mirroring Miramar about ten years later. This leads

to the inverse relationship exemplified in Figure 14.

Figure 14. Miramar and Obreros Ware

132 | P a g e

The San Antonio and Los Caminos regions reveal very high

percentages of Imported Europeanware versus redware ceramics.

These two regions are contemporaneous, occupied in the 1880s. San

Antonio North zone contains the most imported Europeanware

ceramics composing 91.7% of the entire zone’s assemblage (Figure

15).

Figure 15. San Antonio and Los Caminos Ware

Quequeisquillo Norte and Ariete pretty much mirror each

other in ware percentages (Figure 16). These regions and zones

have the highest percentages of imported Europeanwares compared

to the redwares. Quequeisquillo Norte West and Ariete Casco have

the some of the highest Imported Europeanware percentages at 96%

and 94.9%. Quequeisquillo Norte and Ariete regions were occupied

during the same temporal period (Figure 16). Ariete Casco dates

133 | P a g e

earlier than the rest of the regions and zones, dating to the

1850s versus 1870s and 1880s of the other regions. The deeper I

dig into the zones, underneath the façade of the region, there

appears to be more and more variation regarding ware, form and

decoration in Quequeisquillo Norte and Ariete.

Figure 16. Quequeisquillo Norte and Ariete Ware

Based on the analysis of the ceramic ware, it seems that the

regional level of analysis is masking the subregional variation,

which is quite striking in all the regions. The ware-level

analysis indicates economic differentiation on the regional and

subregional levels. This could be evidence for the fine degree of

economic strata appearing in the ceramic assemblage throughout

the hacienda. This ware variation could correspond to the

presence of debt peonage, wage laborers, and overseers, etc. who

134 | P a g e

all worked and lived on the hacienda during the nineteenth

century. There is also a chronological change in wares. The

numbers and percentages of redware steadily decreased in each of

the three chronological time periods. Complementarily, the

numbers and percentages of imported Europeanware steadily

increased as the century progressed. This change in ware

preference may be due to the continual flooding of the market

with European wares or could be attributed to people’s continual

desire to obtain higher status items to create the image of being

a higher status caste. These chronological changes do not present

themselves uniformly across contemporary zones. In fact, trends

in one zone can be exactly the opposite of trends in a

contemporaneous zone, as seen in Obreros South and Miramar North

in the second chronological grouping (Figure 14). Lastly, the

ware analysis reveals levels of mirroring. This means that people

could have been consuming select ceramics in an effort to relate

to the other inhabitants of the hacienda or they could have been

consuming select ceramics to emulate the behavior of those

perceived as powerful or as holding a high caste.

135 | P a g e

Ceramic Form

Form and function analyses are based on the study of the

shapes of pots and other ceramic vessels. This study takes into

account the vessel use as refined hollow tablewares or other

vessels. For the most part, the regions and sub-regions have

consistent patterning within the region, except in the cases of

Santa Marta and Ariete. This patterning did not happen with

wares, but the kinds of dining seem to have been mostly

consistent because the areas have pretty much the same vessel

forms indicating the inhabitants were preparing, serving and

consuming food in similar ways. It seems as though only one

region, Los Obreros, and perhaps one zone within the region,

Obreros Middle, is participating in the genteel action of taking

tea (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001). One impediment to this

interpretation is that based on the ceramic sherds, it is hard to

be certain where the teapots/pitchers, etc. occur. The category

Hollowware/Pitcher (Table 4 and 5) might indicate the presence of

vessels used in the tea service. One ceramic sherd possibly

indicates the presence of a teapot in Obreros Middle. Tea was

introduced to England from China sometime in the middle of the

136 | P a g e

17th century.  At the time of its introduction, tea was believed

to be therapeutic as well as delicious. Tea drinking quickly

caught on and became a culture unto itself. By the nineteenth

century, tea was a commodity consumed by the masses (Mintz 1985).

At Obreros Middle tea could have been consumed casually or used

as a status indicator. This brings up an interesting issue

because Obreros Middle does not have the highest percentage of

whitewares, but of what they do have, they bother to have a

teapot.

In the mid- and late-nineteenth century, gentility was the

preeminent model of propriety (Praetzellis and Praetzellis 2001).

As a result of the industrial revolution and an efficient supply

network, gentility or higher status became embodied and

symbolized in a specific set of objects, including teawares. The

possession of these objects illustrated the owner’s aspirations

of social acceptance of peers or family. The adoption of colorful

teawares was desirable, no matter how impoverished a household,

to “make an impression in social interactions” (Marshall and Maas

1997:287). In Obreros Middle, as well as those zones who show

the possibility of teawares, these individuals could have been

137 | P a g e

trying to make an impression or a social statement that would

associate them with a higher socio-economic caste, like ladino.

Using teawares may have been an important way to be ladino.

138 | P a g e

139 | P a g eTabl

e 4. C

eramic

For

m by R

egio

n, MNV

Regi

onTabl

ewar

esOther

Vessels

Cup

Bow

l/Cu

p Bo

wl

Sau

cer

Holl

oware/Pitc

her Pl

ate

Platte

r Dis

h

Chamber P

ot Teapo

t

Queq

ueisqu

illo

Nor

te

61.1%

0%

36.6%

0%

15

%

23.7%

4.3

%

3.8

%

0.50%

0%

Sant

a Ma

rta

8.

3%

8.

3%

37.5%

4.2%

0%

37

.5%

4.2%

0%

0%

0%

Mira

mar

7.7%

3.

8%

30.9%

0%

15.

4%

34.6

%

3.8% 3

.8%

0%

0%

Cang

reje

ra

7.4%

1.9

%

38.9%

3.7%

11.

1%

24.1

%

0%

1

2.9%

0%

0%

San

Anto

nio

0%

0%

20%

0%

40%

40%

0%

0

%

0%

0%

Los

Obrero

s

18.8%

0%

31.3%

0%

12

.5%

29.2

%

4.2

%

2.

1%0%

2.1%

Los

Cami

nos

10%

10%

30%

0%

0%

50

%

0%

0%

0%

0%

Arie

te

14.3

%

0%

28.6%

0%

7.

1%

21.4

%

21.

4%

7.

1%0%

0%

140 | P a g e

Table

4. Cer

amic

Form

by R

egio

n, M

NV

Regi

onTa

blew

ares

Othe

r Ve

ssels

Cup

Bow

l/Cup

Bo

wl

Sau

cer

Holl

oware/

Pitc

her

Pl

ate

Pl

atter

Dis

h

Chamb

er P

ot T

eapo

t

Queq

ueisqu

illo

Norte

61

.1%

0%

36

.6%

0%

15

%

23.7%

4

.3%

3

.8%

0.

50%

0

%Sant

a Mart

a

8.

3%

8.3%

37.5%

4.2%

0

%

37.5

% 4

.2%

0%

0%

0

%Mira

mar

7.7%

3.8%

30.9%

0%

1

5.4%

34.6

%

3.8%

3.8%

0%

0

%Cang

rejera

7.4%

1

.9%

38.9%

3.7%

1

1.1%

24.1

%

0%

12.

9%0%

0

%San

Antoni

o

0%

0

%

20

%

0

% 4

0%

40%

0%

0%

0%

0%

Los

Obrero

s

1

8.8%

0

%

31

.3%

0%

12

.5%

29

.2%

4

.2%

2.

1%0%

2.

1%Los

Camino

s

10%

1

0%

30%

0%

0

%

50%

0%

0%

0%

0%

Arie

te

14.3

%

0%

28.6%

0%

7.1%

21.4

%

21.

4%

7.1%

0%

0%

Table

5. C

eram

ic For

m by

Zone,

MNV

Regi

onTabl

ewares

Other

Vess

els

Cup

Bowl/C

up Bo

wl

Saucer

Holloware

/Pitcher

Plate

Platt

er Dish

Chambe

rPot

Teapot

Queque

isqu

illo

Norte Cen

ter

12.1% 0%

37.9%

0%

14%

25.8%

4.5%

4.5%

2%

0%Queque

isqu

illo

Norte Wes

t17

.3% 0

%

36.2%

0%

15%

23.6%

4.8% 3

.1%

0%

0%Santa

Mart

a So

uth

0% 5

0%

0%

0%

0%

50

% 0%

0

%

0%

0%Santa

Mart

a No

rth

6.7%

6

.7%

40% 6.7%

6.7

%

33.3%

0% 0

%

0%

0%Mirama

r No

rth

0% 0

%

0%

0%

75%

25

% 0%

0

%

0%

0%Mirama

r So

uth

14.3% 7

.1%

28 6 %

0%

28.

6%

21.4%

0% 0

%

0%

0%Mirama

r So

uthw

est

0% 0

%

33.3 %

0%

0%

33.3%

22.3%11

.1%

0%

0%Cangre

jera

Wes

t9.5%

0

%

42.9%

4.8%

9.5

%

19

% 0%

1

4.3%

0%

0%Cangre

jera

Nor

thwest

0% 0

%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%Cangre

jera

Mai

n6.1%

3

%

36.3%

3%

12.

1%

27

.4%

0%

12.1%

0

% 0%

San An

toni

o No

rth

0% 0

%

0%

0%

60%

40

% 0%

0

%

0%

0%San An

toni

o So

uth

0% 0

%

40%

0%

20%

40

% 0%

0

%

0%

0%Obrero

s So

uth

40%

0

%

60%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

Obrero

s Mi

ddle

9.1%

0

%

27.3%

0%

12.

1%

42.4% 6

.1% 0

%

0%

3%Obrero

s No

rth

40%

0

%

20%

0%

30%

0%

0%

10%

0%

0%

Los Ca

mino

s10

% 10

%

30%

0%

0%

50

% 0%

0

%

0%

0%Ariete

Nor

th15

.4% 0

%

23%

7.

7%

15.

4%

0%

30.8%

7.7%

0%

0%

Ari

ete

Casc

o

25%

0%

25%

0%

0

%

25%

0%

25%

0%

0%

Regional charts and charts of the zones to allow analysis of

the regional and zonal variation in form. The most popular vessel

forms are the bowl and plate vessel forms, while the next most

popular forms appear to be cup and hollowware/pitcher (Table 4

and 5). All the regions have quite a few plates, a few larger

pieces, while only Quequeisquillo Norte has a lot of cups which

complements the ware data. I will begin my analysis with the

regions that contain the most tablewares and work my way down to

those with the least amount of tablewares.

Los Caminos region consists of table wares including cups,

bowls and plates. This region presents a straightforward picture

of the dining occurring in this area during the third

chronological group on the hacienda (Figure 17). This seems to be

a semi-formal type of dining with cups and plates for

individuals. There is no evidence of teawares at this site,

indicating indifference towards the practice of taking tea or the

inability to obtain the wares necessary for the tea ceremony.

Another explanation could be that the social drinking of

beverages may have been with native recipes and vessels, such as

141 | P a g e

Tabl

e 5.

Cer

amic F

orm

by Z

one,

MNV

Region

Tablew

ares

Othe

r

Vessel

s

C

up

Bo

wl/Cup

Bo

wl

Sau

cer

Hollo

ware

/Pitch

er

Plate

Pla

tter

Dis

h Ch

ambe

rPot

Teap

otQu

equeis

quil

lo Nor

te C

enter

12

.1%

0%

37.9%

0%

14%

2

5.8%

4.5

% 4.

5%

2%

0%Qu

equeis

quil

lo Nor

te W

est

17.3

%

0%

36.2%

0%

15%

23

.6%

4.8%

3.1

%

0%

0%Sa

nta Ma

rta

South

0%

50%

0%

0%

0%

50

%

0%

0%

0%

0%Sa

nta Ma

rta

North

6.7%

6.7

%

40% 6.

7%

6.7%

33

.3%

0%

0%

0%

0%Mi

ramar

Nort

h0%

0%

0%

0%

75%

25

%

0%

0%

0%

0%Mi

ramar

Sout

h14

.3%

7.1

%

28 6 %

0%

28.6%

21

.4%

0%

0%

0%

0%Mi

ramar

Sout

hwest

0%

0%

33.3

%

0%

0%

3

3.3%

22.

3%11.1

%

0%

0%Ca

ngreje

ra W

est

9.5%

0%

42.

9% 4.

8%

9.5%

19

%

0%

14.

3%

0%

0%Ca

ngreje

ra N

orthwe

st0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%0%

Cang

reje

ra M

ain

6.1%

3%

36.

3% 3%

12.1%

27

.4% 0

%

12.

1%

0%

0%Sa

n Anto

nio

North

0%

0%

0%

0%

60%

40

%

0%

0%

0%

0%Sa

n Anto

nio

South

0%

0%

40%

0%

20%

40

%

0%

0%

0%

0%Ob

reros

Sout

h40

%

0%

60%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%

0%Ob

reros

Midd

le9.

1%

0%

27.3%

0%

12.1%

42

.4% 6

.1%

0%

0%

3%Ob

reros

Nort

h40

%

0%

20%

0%

30%

0%

0%

10%

0%

0%Lo

s Cami

nos

10%

10%

30%

0%

0%

50

%

0%

0%

0%

0%Ar

iete N

orth

15.4

%

0%

23%

7.

7%

15.4%

0

%

30.

8% 7.

7%

0%

0%

Ariet

e Ca

sco

25%

0%

25%

0%

0%

25%

0%

25

%

0%

0%

cacao or other herbally infused drinks in traditional vessels. At

this point, I do not have the locally made earthenware info to

answer this question definitively. I can only provide the

possible explanations for the absence of traditional whiteware

teawares.

Figure 17. Los Caminos Vessel Form

The Ariete region has, by far, the highest percentage of

platter vessel forms which is surprising, as this is the area

without many whitewares to begin with. Ariete Casco has the

highest percentage of dish vessel forms in this area (Figure 18).

Ariete North does not follow the trend set by Ariete Casco in the

mid nineteenth century of high utilitarian tablewares and almost

no serving wares. By the 1880s, it seems that there is more of an

142 | P a g e

emphasis on the vessel forms associated with tea service in this

area.

Figure 18. Ariete Vessel Form

Santa Marta North and Santa Marta South have diverging

patterns. Santa Marta North has vessel forms of plates, saucers

and hollowware/pitchers, while Santa Marta South has a strong

emphasis of cups and plates (Figure 19). These are very different

dining/serving traditions. Santa Marta South’s style of dining

represented is most evokative of the “American style” where there

are many plates and cups for the individuals but keeping the

style semi-formal (Lucas 1994). In contrast, Santa Marta North

has a greater emphasis on tea service wares leading to the

interpretation of formal dining. Santa Marta South is most like

Quequeisquillo Norte region indicating mirroring behavior

143 | P a g e

revealing practices that suggest a desire for those living in

Santa Marta to become associated with those living in the

Quequeisquillo region.

Figure 19. Santa Marta Vessel Form

Quequeisquillo Norte has high percentages of table wares

like cups, bowls, plates and hollowwares/pitchers (Figure 20).

The two sub-regions mirror each other’s vessel form patterning

almost exactly, indicating the same dining styles and perhaps

similar social status and a relationship to one another

considering these sites are contemporaneous. There is one ceramic

ironstone sherd possibly indicating the presence of a chamber pot

in Quequeisquillo Norte Center. The chamber pot is a bowl-shaped

container, often with a handle, kept in the bedroom under a bed

or in a cabinet of a nightstand and generally used as a urinal at144 | P a g e

night (Shakel 2000). In Victorian times, some chamber pots would

be built into a cabinet with a closable cover. Chamber pots

remained commonly used in Europe and North American until the

nineteenth century, when the introduction of inside water closets

started to displace them (Shakel 2000). In Central America, they

could have been in use throughout the nineteenth century, just as

they were in the United States. It took a long time for chamber

pots to give way to indoor plumbing in both rural and urban zones

in North America. Central America was in line with practices in

the U.S.

Figure 20. Quequeisquillo Norte Vessel Form

Los Obreros shows a wide variety of vessel forms ranging

from cups, bowls and plates to dishes, saucers, platters, and a

teapot (Figure 21). There seemed to be intricate meals being

145 | P a g e

consumed within this region, but at the level of the zone,

Obreros North and Middle have the range of vessel forms, while

the south has only bowls. Bowl dining consisted of preparing,

serving and consuming soups and stews where the components of the

meal are all combined and served as one entity, usually in one

course. Conversely, plate dining separated the components of the

meal, i.e. vegetables, meats, breads. Plate dining was conducive

to multiple courses as was found in the more intricate and formal

dining trends. The presence of only bowls in one zone indicates

the intricate formal dining was not occurring uniformly

throughout the region. Considering Obreros Middle was occupied

before Obreros North and South, it appears that Obreros North was

copying the trends of Obreros Middle. There could have been a

contemporaneous hierarchical relationship between Obreros North

(higher status indicators) and Obreros South (lower status

indicators).

146 | P a g e

Figure 21. Los Obreros Vessel Form

Cangrejera has a striking number of bowls and

hollowware/pitchers compared to the other regions (Figure 22).

There seemed to be a lot of stews and liquids being consumed in

this region, much like in Obreros and Obreros South. Cangrejera

Northwest is the only zone that does not adhere to the regional

trends. There were no identifiable vessel forms located in this

area, possibly skewing the overall picture of this region.

147 | P a g e

Figure 22. Cangrejera Vessel Form

Miramar region has a range of table ware and serving forms

(Figure 23). Miramar South and Miramar Southwest mirror this

trend, but Miramar North presents an unusual case where all the

forms consist of platters and plates. Miramar North has a high

percentage of plates. The kinds of vessel forms are similar

between Miramar North and Miramar Southwest including the same

percentages of platters and an emphasis on plates. The zones

within Miramar are contemporaneous. Considering the similarities

between Miramar North and Southwest, these regions probably had a

relationship with one another based on the consistent types of

dining styles and ceramics. Thus providing more evidence that if

similar trends occur contemporaneaously it is mirroring, but when

148 | P a g e

similar trends occur with a time lag the implication is emulation

or donation.

Figure 23. Miramar Vessel Form

San Antonio has the highest percentage of hollowware/pitcher

vessel forms on the regional scale. Similarly, San Antonio North

zone holds the highest percentage of hollowware/pitcher vessel

forms. The sub-regional trends mirror the regional trends of

tablewares including bowls and plates but there is a distinct

lack of cups, dishes and saucers (Figure 24).

149 | P a g e

Figure 24. San Antonio Vessel Form

There was an underlying concern for social control embedded

in late nineteenth century table service that embodies the

centuries emphasis on social order (Lucas 1994). There seems to

be distinct patterning regarding vessel forms amongst the regions

of this hacienda. This patterning leads to the interpretation

that some regions like Cangrejera, Los Obreros and Miramar were

utilizing many vessel forms (tablewares, serving and tea vessel

forms) to have formal dinners with many components, while the

other regions consisting mostly of cups, bowls and plates had

semi-formal meals. The transfer of social information through

encoded messages applied to consumer goods occurs on many levels,

and meanings are placed on material items in the form of “object

codes” that can help define an individual’s place within society

150 | P a g e

(Lucas 1994; McCracken 1988). Most of the regions had some

evidence of tea drinking based on cup, saucer or teapot sherds.

Two regions, Los Caminos and San Antonio, had no indication of

any tea drinking which sets it apart from the rest of the areas

on thia hacienda. This could be an important indicator of

individuals who identify as negro or an equivalent caste, lobo,

that prepares, serves and consumes food in a communal dining

style consisting of stews and soups.

Decoration

Decorative analysis is probably the most common form of

analysis regarding ceramic artifacts (Baugher and Venables 1987;

Hughes and Hughes 1960; Miller 1987; Miller 1980, 1991). An

analysis of decorative style can be sensitive to culturally

explicit and implicit information encoded in the ceramics. Many

archaeologists have developed classification models utilizing

ceramic decoration used to trace social change through time

(Costin and Earle 1989; Fry 2003; Gifford 1960; Lucas 1994;

Meyers 2005; Miller 1987; Samford 1997).

151 | P a g e

Historically, the desire for decorative ceramic wares in

specialized forms motivated consumers to replace older vessels

with more stylish refined ceramic wares during the latter half of

the eighteenth century (Martin 1989). It is clear from this

hacienda data that people living and working on the hacienda were

engaged in the international market with the same consumer zeal

sweeping the rest of the world. The acquisition of decorative

ceramics by the debt peons, wage laborers, overseers, etc. was a

signal of an individual’s ability to participate in the growing

market economy of the nineteenth century. However, the motives

that drove each individual most likely differed. Wealthy land-

owners or overseers may have demonstrated their political, social

and economic power through the ceramics they purchased and

whether they could purchase them in sets. Laborers may have been

indicating their relationship to their superiors on the hacienda,

their capability of earning small sums of cash and their mobility

outside of the hacienda through the acquisition of select

decorative pieces.

152 | P a g e

153 | P a g e

Tabl

e 6.

Cer

amic Decor

atio

n by

Reg

ion, T

SC

Regi

ons

Unde

corate

d

T

ransfe

rprint

Flow

n

H

andpainted

Annula

r E

dgew

are

S

pong

e

Mold

ed

Queq

ueis

quillo

Nor

te

39.7%

28.6

%2.7

%8.4%

15

.8%

0.3

% 3.3

% 0.

6%

Sa

nta

Mart

a 65

%

15

%0%

2.5%

10%

0%

5%

2.5%

Mi

rama

r

54.

5%

0%

0%9.

1%

29.5

%

0%

0%

6.9%

Ca

ngre

jera

6

6.3%

2.9%

0%2%

21.2

%

0%

2.9%

3.8%

Sa

n An

toni

o 43.

7%

31

.3%

6.3%

0%

18.7%

0%

0%

0%

Lo

s Ob

rero

s 42.

3%

26

.7%

1.4%

8.5%

18

.3%

0%

2.

8%0%

Lo

s Ca

mino

s

14%

51

%7%

14%

14%

0%

0%

0%

Ar

iete

3

8.9%

27.8

%3%

2.8%

22.1%

2.8%

0%

2.8%

154 | P a g e

Table

6. C

eramic

Dec

oratio

n by

Regio

n, T

SC

Regi

ons

Undeco

rated

Trans

ferp

rint

Flown

Han

dpai

nted

Annula

r

E

dgewar

e

Spo

nge

Mold

ed

Queq

ueisqu

illo

Norte

3

9.7%

28.6%2

.7%

8.4%

15

.8%

0.3

%

3.3

% 0.6%

Sa

nta Ma

rta

65%

15%

0%2.

5%

10%

0%

5%

2.5%

Mi

ramar

5

4.5%

0%0%

9.1%

29

.5%

0%

0%

6.9%

Ca

ngreje

ra 6

6.3%

2.9%

0%2%

21

.2%

0%

2.9%

3.8%

Sa

n Anto

nio

4

3.7%

31.3

%6.

3%0%

18

.7%

0%

0%

0%

Lo

s Obre

ros

4

2.3%

26.7

%1.

4%8.5%

18.3

%

0%

2.

8%0%

Lo

s Cami

nos

14

%

51%

7%14

%

14

%

0%

0%

0%

Ar

iete

3

8.9%

27.8

%3%

2.8%

22.1%

2.

8%

0%

2.8%

Tabl

e 7.

Ceram

ic D

ecorat

ion

by Zone,

TSC

Region

Undeco

rate

d

Transfer

print

Flown

Handpa

inte

d

Annular

Ed

gewa

re

Sponge

Mo

lded

Queque

isquil

lo N

orte

Cente

r45

.9%

19.8

%2.8%

1

0.8%

18%

0%1.8%

0.9

%Qu

eque

isquil

lo N

orte

West

40%

30.4%

3.4%

6

.7%

14.2

%0.

4%4.1%

0.8

%Sa

nta

Marta

Sout

h33

.3%

33.3%

0% 0

%33.3

%0%

0%

0%

Santa

Marta

Nort

h57

.8%

21%

0% 5

.3%

5.3%

0%5.

3% 5

.3%

Mirama

r Nort

h54

.5%

0%0%

1

8.2%

9.1%

0%0%

1

8.2% Mi

rama

r Sout

h54

.2%

0%0%

8

.3%

33.3

%0%

0% 4

.2%

Mirama

r Sout

hwes

t45

.5%

0%0%

0

%54.5

%0%

0%

0%

Cangre

jera W

est

73.2%

2.4%

0% 0

%19.6

%0%

2.4%

2.4

%Ca

ngre

jera N

orth

west

100%

0%0%

0

%0%

0%0%

0

%Ca

ngre

jera M

ain

61.7%

3.3%

0% 5

%21.6

%0%

3.4%

5%

San An

tonio

Nort

h63

.6%

18.2%

0% 0

%18.2

%0%

0%

0%

San An

tonio

Sout

h0%

60%

20%

0

%20%

0%0%

0%

Obrero

s Sout

h44

.4%

55.5%

0% 0

%0%

0%0%

0%

Obrero

s Midd

le49

.1%

16.3%

1.8%

7

.3%

21.9

%0%

3.6%

0%

Obrero

s Nort

h20

%53

.3%

0% 2

0%6.7%

0%0%

0

%Lo

s Ca

minos

14%

51%

7% 1

4%14%

0%0%

0%

Ariete

North

38.7%

32.3%

3% 3

.2%

12.9

%3.

2%0%

6.5

%Ar

iete

Casco

33.3%

0%0%

0

%66.7

%0%

0%

0%

The MVC provided an overall review of the ceramic

decorations and vessel forms used to express identity across the

hacienda (Table 8). Overall, annular decoration is the most

popular choice across vessel forms from cups to dishes. The

popularity of annular decoration could be that it was relatively

inexpensive when compared to the more expensive decorations like

transferprint and flown (Miller 1991). Based on the charts below

(Figures 24-32), I argue that each region has its own “style”

that is distinctive. This distinctive style may point to agency.

The ceramic decoration that seems to be the most prevalent in

this assemblage includes undecorated, annular, transferprint

green, transferprint red, handpainted Adams, transferprint blue

and transferprint purple. On the other hand, the decoration least

represented in this assemblage include sponge/spatter, blue

edgeware, transferprint Staffordshire, handpainted other,

transferprint black and mulberry flown. All the ceramic

decorations date from the eighteenth century through the first

quarter of the twentieth century, the time period spanning the

industrial and consumer revolutions (Miller 1980 and 1991). This

155 | P a g e

Table

7. Cer

amic

Decor

atio

n by

Zon

e, T

SC

Regi

on

Undeco

rate

d

Tran

sfer

print

Flo

wn

Hand

pain

ted

Ann

ular

Ed

gewa

re Sp

onge

Mold

edQu

equeis

quil

lo Nor

te C

enter

45.9

%19

.8%

2.8%

1

0.8%

18%

0%1.

8%

0.9%

Queq

ueis

quil

lo Nor

te W

est

40%

30.4

%3.

4%

6.7

%14

.2%

0.4%

4.1%

0

.8%

Sant

a Ma

rta

South

33.3

%33.3

%0%

0

%33

.3%

0%0%

0

%Sa

nta Ma

rta

North

57.8

%21%

0%

5.3

%5.

3%0%

5.3%

5

.3%

Mira

mar

Nort

h54.5

%0%

0%

18.

2%9.

1%0%

0%

18.

2% Mira

mar

Sout

h54.2

%0%

0%

8.3

%33

.3%

0%0%

4

.2%

Mira

mar

Sout

hwest

45.5

%0%

0%

0%

54.5

%0%

0%

0%

Cang

reje

ra W

est

73.2

%2.4%

0%

0%

19.6

%0%

2.4%

2

.4%

Cang

reje

ra N

orthwe

st100%

0%0%

0

%0%

0%0%

0

%Ca

ngreje

ra M

ain

61.7

%3.3%

0%

5%

21.6

%0%

3.4%

5

%Sa

n Anto

nio

North

63.6

%18.2

%0%

0

%18

.2%

0%0%

0

%Sa

n Anto

nio

South

0%60%

20%

0

%20

%0%

0%

0%

Obre

ros

Sout

h44.4

%55.5

%0%

0

%0%

0%0%

0

%Ob

reros

Midd

le49.1

%16.3

%1.

8%

7.3

%21

.9%

0%3.

6%

0%

Obre

ros

Nort

h20%

53.3

%0%

2

0%6.

7%0%

0%

0%

Los

Cami

nos

14%

51%

7%

14%

14%

0%0%

0

%Ar

iete N

orth

38.7

%32.3

%3%

3

.2%

12.9

%3.

2%0%

6

.5%

Arie

te C

asco

33.3

%0%

0%

0%

66.7

%0%

0%

0%

was a time when individual agency was being negotiated and

expressed through the newly accessible commodities, like

ceramics.

In the Ariete region, you see relatively higher numbers of

undecorated and annular decoration (Figure 25). Ariete Casco,

occupied in the 1850s, reveals high numbers of undecorated

ceramics compared to the rest of the assemblage and only one

decoration, annular, comprises the rest of the assemblage. In

contrast, Ariete North dated to the third chronological group,

zone has a much wider range of decorated types. Ariete North zone

seems to have the bulk of the decorated ceramic variation in this

region including purple, blue and green transferprint,

handpainted and annular decorations. Some of the more unique

decorative styles found in the assemblage include edgeware,

molded and flown, all of which are found in Ariete North. One

explanation of the discrepancy between the two zones could be the

increased availability of the decorated wares by the end of the

nineteenth century. Another explanation is choice, which explains

why other areas have a wide variety of patterns, motifs, etc.

156 | P a g e

Figure 25. Ariete Decoration

The distributions of Cangrejera are highly similar, but once

again, annular decoration is higher in one zone, Cangrejera West

(Figure 26). The zones mirror the regional trend for the most

part, except for Cangrejera Northwest which is composed entirely

of undecorated sherds. All of the Cangrejera Zones were

contemporaneous, which highlights the discrepency between

Cangrejera Main, Cangrejera West and Cangrejera Northwest. This

kind of patterning suggests the ceramic choices were from the top

and handed down to the people living in Cangrejera Main and

Cangrejera West.

157 | P a g e

Figure 26. Cangrejerea Decoration

Unlike many of the other regions, Los Caminos has a

relatively low frequency of undecorated ceramics and a wide

variety of decorated types, a pattern similar to Ariete North

(Figure 27). This region has the most variability within one

region out of all the regions on the hacienda. Los Caminos

contains a high percentage of transferprint decoration, similar

to most of the other regions in the third chronological group.

Figure 27. Los Caminos Decoration

158 | P a g e

Miramar shows parallel trends in zones in that undecorated

wares are a high percentage of all ceramics, there is no

transferprint, and an there is an emphasis on both annular wares

and handpainted Adams (Figure 28). The high percentage of molded

ceramics also distinguish this region from others and from one

zone to the next. Miramar South and Miramar Southwest were both

dated to the first and earliest chronological group on the

hacienda and show similar trends. Miramar South does diverge from

the pattern with slightly higher percentages of molded ware.

Miramar North was inhabited during the second chronological

grouping and maintains those patterns from the first

chronological group. This could be a form of emulation or

possibly family tradition that connected the people living in

these ares socially and economically.

159 | P a g e

Figure 28. Miramar Ceramic Decoration

Quequeisquillo Norte has a high percentage of undecorated

ceramics, but also has a wide variety of ceramic decorations

(Figure 29). The level of consistency in ceramic decoration

across the zones is surprising considering that the zones were

occupied sequentially beginning with Quequeisquillo Norte Center

and continuing with Quequeisquillo Norte West. Much like Miramar

this could be the result of emulation or family tradition. The

two zones adhere to the same decorative patterns including

transferprints, flown, handpainted, annular, edgeware, sponge and

molded. This region represents all but one of every decoration

present in the ceramics on this hacienda. Quequeisquillo Norte

West is imitating the ceramic decorations found in Quequeisquillo

Norte Center almost exactly.

160 | P a g e

Figure 29. Quequeisquillo Norte Decoration

San Antonio contains a high percentage of undecorated

ceramics, but remains highly varied in ceramic decoration. San

Antonio South has the highest percentages of decorated ceramics

and this trend is continued by San Antonio North with

transferprint, flown and annular decoration (Figure 30). These

sites were occupied contemporaneously and shared similar tastes

in ceramics.

161 | P a g e

Figure 30. San Antonio Decoration

Los Obreros, like Los Caminos, shows a wide degree of

decorative variability throughout the region and subregions.

Obreros South has the least amount of ceramic variation in the

subregional level, while Obreros Middle and Obreros North show

similar patterns in ceramic decoration (Figure 31). Obreros

Middle was occupied in the second chronological group before

Obreros North and Obreros South. Obreros North seems to be

mimicking Obreros Middle, while Obreros South is making a

distinctive statement.

Figure 31. Los Obreros Decoration

Santa Marta has high percentages of undecorated whiteware,

especially in Santa Marta North. Santa Marta North also has the

162 | P a g e

most decorated ceramics in Santa Marta including transferprinted,

handpainted, annular, sponge and molded (Figure 32). Santa Marta

South has ceramics evenly divided between undecorated,

transferprint and annular decoration, all makign up 33.3% of the

entire assemblage (Table 7).

Figure 32. Santa Marta Decoration

When examining all the regions, there are some patterns that

cross-cut regions. All the regions reveal high undecorated

ceramics as well as high annular decorated ceramics. The first

chronological grouping most strongly represents this trend.

During the second chronological grouping, Miramar North continues

the trend of high undecorated ceramics and high annular ceramics,

while Obreros Middle and Quequeisquillo Norte Center diverge from

163 | P a g e

the preexisting patterns with a greater variety of decorated

ceramics. The third chronological grouping contains a wide

variety of decorated ceramics, following the trend begun in the

second chronological group, with high percentages of

transferprint ceramics. Santa Marta South disregards these trends

and conforms to the trends of the first chronological period

(high undecorated and annular ceramics). Some regions that have

very consistent ranges of decoration include Cangrejera, Miramar,

Quequeisquillo Norte and San Antonio. The trends within these

regions are sustained throughout the nineteenth century. The

similarity of these sub-regions throughout the nineteenth century

could be explained by mirroring behavior used by the sub-regions

to associate themselves socially and economically with the

previous inhabitants of the region, most likely family members.

The high annular decorations can be explained by the relatively

inexpensive price for these decorated imported wares, making

these wares more accessible to those on the hacienda; Or the

popularity of annular wares could be based on regional

preferences, as some of the areas also had some of the expensive

wares (Miller 1991). The regions that have diverging patterns

164 | P a g e

include Ariete, Los Obreros and Santa Marta. These regions

display individual “tastes” emerging on the sub-regional level.

One explanation of the differences is that more kinds of

decorated ceramics became accessible to the people in these areas

due to wider distribution and more affordable prices by the end

of the nineteenth century (Miller 1991). Another explanation is

that the people living on the hacienda were able to save wages

and increase their purchasing power. This increased the

purchasing power of the individual allowing them to express

individual “taste” in a wider range of ceramics.

Decoration can tell us how expensive the wares are, but many

archaeologists have also interpreted decoration in terms of

social and moral preferences. Most of my MVCs are well within the

range of the Cult of Domesticity, which Wall and others have

argued is expressed by preferences for paneled Gothic and edged

wares (Wall 1994). My category of molded wares is composed about

50% by paneled gothic wares. Cangrejera Main and Miramar have the

most paneled Gothic and edged wares in the first chronological

time period. Miramar North in the second chronological grouping

holds the highest percentage of gothic and edged wares accounting

165 | P a g e

for 18.2% of the decorated vessels in this area (Appendix B). By

the third chronological period on the hacienda, Ariete North and

Quequeisquillo Norte West are the only remaining areas to have

any molded gothic wares in their assemblages (Appendix B). The

presence of this decoration can be an indicator of nineteenth

century social trends, like the cult of domesticity, influencing

consumer choices on the hacienda. What becomes apparent when

considering the assemblage as a whole is that the chronology

seems to show a falling out of favor with the wares of

domesticity including shell-edged, chinoiserie teaware and floral

gilting. What is notable is the emphasis on colorful

transferprints and annular wares, which contradicts Wall’s thesis

(1994). The percentage of transferprint decoration increases with

each consecutive chronological period. By the third chronological

group, transferprinted wares compose over half of the ceramic

decoration among most of the regions and sub-regions (Figure 12).

With the introduction of the new liberal regime, rise in modern

manufacturing, and an increasingly immigrant laborer population,

traditional models like the cult of domesticity did not fit the

new social framework and were replaced by the turn of the century

166 | P a g e

with the idea of productive individuals participating in society

and the economy not tethered by gender roles. These new policies

drastically diverged from the institutional regime that

established wage laboring systems in Central America in the

sixteenth century. The liberal regime was attempting to liberate

the peasants from tradition, such as communal land holding,

native religion, clothing, etc. to be a productive individual for

the state. The hacienda’s regions and zones were occupied during

and following a time of massive social and political

reorganization. Consequently these areas could have been

inhabited by an influx of people dependent on the hacienda

through systems of debt peonage, wage laborers, and occupying

higher status roles of overseers. I have been discussing the

hacienda as though it remained stable in the face of these

population shifts. The data suggest in actuality, the casco was

established early on and the mosaic of labor and managers shifts

both spatially and in their use of material culture. Whether it

is all one hacienda or not is not historically certain, but there

are enough commonalities to say the people living and working

167 | P a g e

around this hacienda area were participating in a linked social,

economic and political system.

Historically, the desire for decorative ceramic wares in

specialized forms motivated consumers to replace older vessels

with more stylish refined ceramic wares (Martin 1989). It is

clear from this hacienda data that people living and working on

the hacienda were engaged in the international market with the

same consumer zeal sweeping the rest of the world. The

acquisition of decorative ceramics by the debt peons, wage

laborers, overseers, etc. was a signal of an individual’s ability

to participate in the growing liberal market economy of the

nineteenth century. However, the motives that drove each

individual most likely differed. Wealthy land-owners or overseers

may have demonstrated their political, social and economic power

through the ceramics (sets) they purchased. Laborers may have

been indicating their relationship to their superiors on the

hacienda, their capability of earning small sums of cash and

their mobility outside of the hacienda through the acquisition of

select decorative pieces. The ceramic decoration that seems to be

the most prevalent in this assemblage includes undecorated and

168 | P a g e

annular. The popularity of annular decoration could be that it

was relatively cheaper when compared to the decorations like some

transferprints and flown.

Matched Sets and Design Motifs

The design motifs found in this assemblage express ideas

about self. Usually a diversity of types is interpreted as high

status, but I will look at the issue of sets in two charts that

summarize how many of what vessel forms and decorative types are

present in the assemblage. This will show if there are ceramic

sets, which can be an indicator of status and individual “taste”

(Bell 2002).

169 | P a g e

170 | P a g e

Tabl

e 8.

Hac

iend

a Mini

mum

Vessel

Cou

nt*

Regi

onTabl

ewar

esOt

her Vessel

s Cu

pBowl

/Cup

Bowl

Sauc

erHoll

owware

/Pitcher

Plate

Platter

Dish

Chambe

r pot

Teapot

Pear

lwar

e (dec./

unde

c.)

0

0

2 0

10

2

0

00

Porc

elai

n5

010

2

28

0

8

00 Ir

onst

one

0

01

0

06

0

0

10 WW

Und

ecor

ated

10

0

25 0

218

2

1

01

WW S

taff

ordshire

0

0

0 0

01

0

0

00

WW R

ed T

ransfer

3

0

6 0

13

0

0

0

0WW P

urpl

e Transf

er4

0

9 0

44

4

0

00

WW B

rown

Transfe

r2

0

0 0

03

0

0

00

WW B

lue

Transfer

5

0

9 1

611

1

0

00

WW B

lack

Transfe

r1

0

3 0

11

0

0

00

WW G

reen

Transfe

r1

0

3 0

15

2

0

00

WW F

low

Blue

1

04

0

02

1

0

00 WW

Flo

w Mu

lberry

0

0

0 0

10

0

0

00

WW H

andp

ainted A

dams

1

0

13 0

68

1

2

00

WW H

andp

ainted O

ther

4

0

3 0

10

0

0

00

WW A

nnul

ar7

5

19 1

1221

1

6

00

WW M

ocha

1

06

0

50

0

0

00 WW

Blu

e St

raight

Ed

gewa

re0

0

0

00

1

2

0

00

WW S

pong

e 2

1

4 0

47

0

1

00

WW M

olde

d1

01

0

30

1

1

00

*This

tally

is b

ased o

n a

study

of v

esse

l ri

ms a

nd b

ases.

It i

nclu

des

only i

mpor

ted

refine

d ware v

essels t

hat

date t

o the

seco

nd a

nd t

hird

quart

ers

of t

he n

ineteent

h centur

y.

Contex

ts wit

h decal de

coration (

post 1880)

were ex

clud

ed fro

m th

is s

tudy

.

171 | P a g e

Tabl

e 8.

Hac

ienda

Mini

mum Ve

ssel

Cou

nt*

Region

Tablew

ares

Othe

r Ve

ssel

s Cu

pBo

wl/C

upBo

wlSa

ucer

Hollowwa

re/P

itcher

Plat

ePl

atter

Di

shCham

ber

pot

Teapot

Pearlw

are

(dec./

unde

c.)

0

02

0

10

2

0

0

0Po

rcel

ain

5

010

2

28

0

8

0

0 Ironst

one

0

01

0

06

0

0

1

0 WW Und

ecor

ated

10

025

0

218

2

1

0

1WW

Sta

ffor

dshire

0

00

0

01

0

0

0

0WW

Red

Tra

nsfer

3

06

0

13

0

0

0

0

WW Pur

ple

Transf

er4

09

0

44

4

0

0

0WW

Bro

wn T

ransfe

r2

00

0

03

0

0

0

0WW

Blu

e Tr

ansfer

5

09

1

611

1

0

0

0WW

Bla

ck T

ransfe

r1

03

0

11

0

0

0

0WW

Gre

en T

ransfe

r1

03

0

15

2

0

0

0WW

Flo

w Bl

ue1

04

0

02

1

0

0

0 WW Flo

w Mu

lberry

0

00

0

10

0

0

0

0WW

Han

dpai

nted A

dams

1

013

0

68

1

2

0

0WW

Han

dpai

nted O

ther

4

03

0

10

0

0

0

0WW

Ann

ular

7

519

1

1221

1

6

0

0WW

Moc

ha1

06

0

50

0

0

0

0 WW Blu

e St

raight

Ed

geware

0

00

0

01

2

0

0

0WW

Spo

nge

2

14

0

47

0

1

0

0WW

Mol

ded

1

01

0

30

1

1

0

0

*This

tall

y is b

ased

on

a study

of v

esse

l ri

ms a

nd b

ases

. It

inc

ludes

only

imp

orte

d

refine

d ware

vesse

ls t

hat

date

to

the

seco

nd a

nd t

hird

quart

ers

of t

he n

inetee

nth

cent

ury.

Contex

ts with de

cal decora

tion (post

188

0) wer

e ex

cluded

fro

m this

stu

dy.

Table 9. T

rans

ferp

rint

Decor

atio

n, TSC

Tra

nsferpri

nt Motif

T

rans

ferpri

nt

Border

Land

scape

Classical

Me

dieval

N

ature

Ch

inoi

seri

e

Greek

Key

Medici

Geomet

ric Cla

ssical Nature

GreekKey

Medici

Geomet

ric

Queque

isqu

illo N

orte Cente

r 8

0

0

12

0

1

2

0

40

2

3Qu

eque

isqu

illo N

orte West

19 0

4

96

0

4

4

1

172

4

6Sa

nta

Mart

a Sout

h

0

0

0

00

0

0

0

0

00

0

0Sa

nta

Mart

a Nort

h

1

0

0

00

1

0

0

0

10

0

2Sa

n An

toni

o Nort

h

0

0

0

20

0

0

0

0

00

0

1Sa

n An

toni

o Sout

h

2

0

0

01

0

0

0

0

10

0

0Ob

rero

s So

uth

0

0

0

20

0

0

1

0

10

0

1Ob

rero

s Mi

ddle

1

0

0

00

0

0

2

0

30

2

1Ob

rero

s No

rth

2

0

0

21

0

0

0

0

30

0

0Lo

s Ca

mino

s

5

1

0

00

0

0

0

0

30

0

1Ar

iete

Nor

th

8

0

0

10

0

0

0

0

30

0

5Mi

rama

r No

rth

0

0

0

00

0

0

0

0

00

0

0Mi

rama

r So

utn

0

0

0

00

0

0

0

0

00

0

0Mi

rama

r So

uthwes

t

0

0

0

00

0

0

0

0

00

0

0Ca

ngre

jera

Main

0

0

0

00

0

0

0

0

00

0

0Ca

ngre

jera

West

0

0

0

00

0

0

0

0

00

0

0Ca

ngre

jera

North

west

0

0

0

00

0

0

0

0

00

0

0

Matched sets have been used to determine social status in

historical studies (Bell 2002). Appendix A shows the vessel

forms, decoration and design motif for all the zones on the

hacienda. This tables yields interesting results. The zones with

the most complete matched sets include Quequeisquillo Norte

Center, Quequeisquillo Norte Center West, Obreros Middle and

Ariete North. These areas are not necessarily the ones that had

the most whiteware, which may indicate the people choosing

ceramic sets are making a particular choice. All these areas

share some of the older and more scarce ceramic decorations

including porcelain gilded, molded, blue edgeware, and flown. The

Quequeisquillo Regions have abundant transferprint decoration in

many colors on many vessel forms. The zones that had very little

to no matched sets include Santa Marta, San Antonio, Obreros

South and Obreros North, Los Caminos, Miramar and Cangrejera.

These areas had few ceramic decorative motifs across a few select

vessel forms. The particular choices for ceramics sets could have

been motivated by price, taste and the desire to identify with a

172 | P a g e

Tabl

e 9.

Trans

ferp

rint D

ecor

ation, T

SC

Tra

nsfe

rprint

Mot

if

Trans

ferprint

Bord

er

Land

scap

e Cl

assi

cal

Medi

eval

Nat

ure Ch

inoiserie

GreekKe

y

Medi

ci

Geom

etric

C

lassic

al

Nat

ure

Gr

eekK

ey

Medi

ci

Geom

etric

Queq

ueisqu

illo

Norte

Cen

ter

8

0

0

1

20

1

2

04

0

2

3Queq

ueisqu

illo

Norte

Wes

t

19

0

4

9

60

4

4

117

2

4

6Sant

a Mart

a So

uth

0

0

0

0

00

0

0

00

0

0

0Sant

a Mart

a No

rth

1

0

0

0

01

0

0

01

0

0

2San

Antoni

o No

rth

0

0

0

2

00

0

0

00

0

0

1San

Antoni

o So

uth

2

0

0

0

10

0

0

01

0

0

0Obre

ros So

uth

0

0

0

2

00

0

1

01

0

0

1Obre

ros Mi

ddle

1

0

0

0

00

0

2

03

0

2

1Obre

ros No

rth

2

0

0

2

10

0

0

03

0

0

0Los

Camino

s

5

1

0

0

00

0

0

03

0

0

1Arie

te Nor

th

8

0

0

1

00

0

0

03

0

0

5Mira

mar No

rth

0

0

0

0

00

0

0

00

0

0

0Mira

mar So

utn

0

0

0

0

00

0

0

00

0

0

0Mira

mar So

uthw

est

0

0

0

0

00

0

0

00

0

0

0Cang

rejera

Mai

n

0

0

0

0

00

0

0

00

0

0

0Cang

rejera

Wes

t

0

0

0

0

00

0

0

00

0

0

0Cang

rejera

Nor

thwest

0

0

0

0

00

0

0

00

0

0

0

particular social caste resulting in emulation, imitation or

social solidarity. Ariete, Queisquillo, Miramar South and

Cangrejera Northwest all seem to identify as a higher caste,

possibly due to the areas as homes to hacienda owners or

managers. Ariete Casco is setting the trend by being the earliest

example of the ceramics trends in the nineteenth century. San

Antonio and Los Caminos identify with the middle castes emulating

the higher caste ceramic trends. The remaining regions and zones

display strong local identities, either Pipil native or African

or Yucatecan migrant by retaining higher quantities of redware

while still participating in the international market, perhaps

through hand-me-downs from those at the top of the hacienda

system.

One interesting previously unexplored question is that of

design and motif preference across the hacienda. Is there a

preference for more consistency in regards to color and design,

more vessels of blue transferprint in more forms, or are there

more vessels of a particular pattern in different colors? Table 9

shows a clear preference for nature and landscape that cross-cuts

173 | P a g e

the hacienda assemblage. Leone argued that local elites

manipulated their landscapes to demonstrate their control over

nature and social relationships (Leone 1988, 1995, 2005).

This kind of motif selection seems surprisingly consistent

across the hacienda through time as well. The mocha and annular

decorated ceramics were the most prevalent around the hacienda,

appearing in Quequeisquillo Norte West, Quequeisquillo Norte

Center, Ariete Casco, Santa Marta, and Obreros Middle. Mocha ware

is part of the factory produced slipware group of refined

earthenware ceramics decorated with applied slip decoration.

There is a dendritic transferprint design (Nature Motif) that

showed up in Quequeisquillo Norte West and Obreros Middle in

various colors. The motif resembles tree-like or branching

markings.

Another decorative motif that appeared in Quequeisquillo

Norte West and Santa Marta North transferprint is the Greek Key

and Dragon’s Breath pattern. This pattern is a meandering

decorative border that was constructed from a continuous line,

shaped into a repeated motif. This represents a traditional

174 | P a g e

decoration harkening back to the Hellenic cultural empire. The

Medici motif was located in three areas, Quequeisquillo Norte

West, Quequeisquillo Norte Center and Obreros Middle. There are

quite a few vessels decorated with blue and purple transferprints

and it seems that the nature motif is consistently preferred

throughout the hacienda. Based on the data, there is a

consistence of color and design but more so there is a preference

for more vessels of a particular pattern or motif in different

colors. This ceramic preference and patterning suggests a fairly

consistent ideological view across the hacienda throughout time,

possibly due to the historically authoritarian Spanish

infrastructure that organized hacienda life through a strong

hierarchical ideology.

Summary

If there is a class structure shown by ceramics, one would

expect (Bourdieu 1986) that people of the same class would have

similar taste in decoration, dining style, and cost of the

ceramics. Some areas have displayed inverse patterns (at least

in ware type), while the patterning in form is consistent, and

175 | P a g e

the patterning in decoration is distinctive. This inverse

patterning could be an indicator of a strong local identity and

higher indio status by retaining redwares in higher percentages,

while also displaying the desire and ability to participate in

the European market.

Some regions are highly consistent, like Quequeisquillo

Norte. The three zones within this region follow similar trends

in ware distribution, vessel form, and decoration. The

inhabitants of these zones were probably overseers or managers on

the hacienda able to save wages and enthusiastically participate

in the international market (Appendix C). Other regions display

mirroring behavior, like San Antonio and Los Caminos and

Quequeisquillo Norte and Ariete. Los Obreros shows similar

patterns between the zones in vessel form and decoration. This

mirroring behavior is an attempt to mimic the buying patterns of

those seen in a position of power and synthesize a relationship.

Quequeisquillo Norte, Los Obreros and Los Caminos show similar

tastes in ceramic form and decoration. These areas appear to be

trying hard to create and represent their identity through their

176 | P a g e

colorful ceramic choices. Santa Marta and Cangrejera are two

sites that are not contemporaneous but reveal similar trends in

vessel form (Table 5) as well as in decoration (Table 7) or lack

of decoration. The only vessel forms are cup/bowl and plate seen

in Santa Marta South. This seems quite austere compared to the

abundance of vessel forms found in the other zones. Similarly,

the only decoration in the two zones is found in Santa Marta

South and includes blue transferprint and annular decoration.

Again, compared to the other zones, variation in decoration is

rather lacking. The Ariete region could have been the location of

the hacienda owners, who became absentee owners by the nineteenth

century based on the low number of ceramic sherds. Some regions

display inverse relationships, like Miramar and Los Obreros and

Santa Marta and Cangrejera. These regions displayed different

ware, vessel and decorative preferences, indicating the

individual tastes of these groups based on their socioeconomic

status.

Orser states that individuals and social groups try to amass

various kinds of capital to reify and enhance their positions

within society (Orser 2005). Orser incorporates Bourdieu and Marx

177 | P a g e

into this argument further clarifying that labor is embodied in

economic capital as well as cultural capital that can be

converted into currency and objectified through a complex network

of past and present social relations (Orser 2005). The people

living and working on this hacienda were utilizing the ceramics

to negotiate and display their status on the hacienda and by

obtaining ceramics made available through international trade

markets.

Social power, or agency, is exemplified by the ability of

groups of people to acquire artifacts or goods through any number

of processes including market trade and patina (McCracken 1990).

Patina is the quality of age that indicates longevity,

durability, family legacy, value and ultimately power.

178 | P a g e

CHAPTER 7

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Artifacts carry meaning. The hacienda ceramics were both

utilitarian and symbolic (Orser 2005). This research should be

considered a preliminary exploration of social power and identity

at a nineteenth century sugar hacienda in Western El Salvador.

The simple yet extensive organization of labor at this sugar

hacienda was underscored by a complex set of power relations. The

acquisition of specific ceramics gave individuals some social

power and agency in an environment of historical European

domination (Bell 2002; Baugher and Venables 1987; Deagan 1983;

Rothschild 2006; Skibo and Schiffer 2008).

Social Power and Agency

The structural hierarchy of social power woven throughout

the strata of owners, overseers, managers and laborers on the

hacienda is clearly evident in the ceramic discrepancies and

179 | P a g e

distribution on and around the hacienda. The three chronological

grouping on the hacienda help clarify the specific patterns of

consumption in each region’s ceramic assemblage. There was

evidence of class corroboration, like in the examples of Ariete

and Quequeisquillo Norte, where the same ceramic ware, vessel

form, decoration and decorative motifs were chosen or passed down

through family by the people in this area. This helped secure the

social, political and economic position of these individuals at

the top of the hacienda system. If there was a time lag between

similar patterns, the evidence pointed towards emulation, as in

the cases of San Antonio, Los Caminos and Los Obreros. These

regions exhibited similar ceramic trends, but about thirty years

after they first appeared on the hacienda. In addition, there

were some people who had high numbers of whitewares throughout

these chronological periods, which indicates a class boundary

with those who had low numbers of whitewares throughout the

chronological periods.

Ceramics are durable and therefore ever-present on

historical archaeological sites. Their ware, form and surface

decoration make them highly identifiable markers of function,

180 | P a g e

status and cultural association. Historical archaeologists have

noted that there is a correlation between European-made ceramics,

copied or imported ceramics and the social status and ethnicity

of their users (Skowronek 1998). In Spanish colonized areas,

ceramics and other objects were used to assert dominance and

superiority over a native people. As time progressed, the

increasingly mestizo society identified with the Spanish desire

to create a facsimile of the Old World using the material culture

that served as ethnic-status indicators. In the late eighteenth

and early nineteenth centuries due to the liberal Bourbon

Reforms, European made table wares outnumbered non-European

ceramics. This trend goes against Skowronek’s thesis that the

percentage of European imported wares decreased compared to

locally made redwares.

Social power, or agency, is exemplified by the ability of

groups of people to acquire artifacts or goods through any number

of processes including market trade and patina. Those on the top

of the hacienda social network displayed their more expensive

table wares in their assemblages. Those striving to emulate the

high class attempted to purchase cheaper ceramics in similar

181 | P a g e

vessel form and with similar decorative motifs. Those areas that

indicated strong lower class identities still participated in the

Atlantic World conversation by consuming select imported vessels

either through individual purchase or through hand-me-downs.

Research Questions Addressed

Some of the questions left to be answered at the beginning

of this research included to what extent did various individuals

on a nineteenth sugar hacienda in western El Salvador participate

in the consumer revolution? The extent of an individual’s

participation in the international trade market depended on their

ethnicity which was directly tied to their social caste in

nineteenth-century El Salvador. All of the regional ceramic

assemblages on the hacienda contained a mixture of imported

Europeanwares and locally made redwares. In some manner, whether

it was direct purchasing power or handed down ceramics, every

individual had varying levels of access to the goods produced by

the international market.

Secondly, was there an indication of the ethnicity of the

people who were living and working in this region—transient

182 | P a g e

laborers from Africa and the Yucatan or native Salvadorans known

as the Pipil? Yes, based on the ware, vessel form and decorative

choices it is possible to determine what range of ethnicities

were present at any one area. For example, the remnants of a

teapot were discovered in Obreros Middle. Participation in the

tea culture of the nineteenth century could have been an

important social symbol to those who identify as ladino. Another

example is the presence of only bowl vessel forms found in

Obreros South. This could be an important indicator of

individuals who identify as negro or an equivalent caste, lobo,

that prepares, serves and consumes food in a communal dining

style consisting of stews and soups. The strong preference for

nature and landscape motifs in transferprint decoration is an

hacienda-wide trend that suggests a national identity expressed

in varying degrees by the amount of vessels consumed with this

decorative motif. This trend makes sense when considering the

relevant historical context of the Pipil rebellions spurred on by

passionate and vocal individuals like Anastasio Aquino who

exemplified a nationalistic ideology, which was captured in the

nature and landscape theme.

183 | P a g e

Thirdly, there remains was the question of the social

hierarchy of the individuals living and working around the

hacienda. This question was one of the main foci of my research.

Based on the ware, vessel form and decorative ceramic data

throughout the hacienda, I was able to identify distinct regions

and even sub-regions that revealed individual tastes and

personalities within and between the regions and zones of the

hacienda. Based on three chronological groups, I was able to

identify the probable location of the hacienda owners, managers

and overseers who would probably identify with the higher

peninsular and ladino castes. The ceramic signatures of these

upper and middling classes consist of the earliest examples of

pricey ceramics and ceramic sets in transferprint, molded,

gilded, Adams/handpainted and flown decorations; lower

percentages of local redware as compared to imported whiteware

especially during the first chronological period; and a wide

array of vessel forms including tea wares (saucers, cups, dishes)

and serving vessels (platters, hollowwares and dishes). In

Obreros Middle, as well as those zones who show the possibility

of teawares, these individuals could have been trying to make an

184 | P a g e

impression or a social statement that would associate them with a

higher socio-economic caste, like ladino. Using teawares may have

been an important way to be ladino. The regions that were the

most likely to have provided a home to the upper and middle

classes were Ariete, Quequeisquillo Norte, Miramar, Cangrejera,

Los Obreros and Los Caminos. In addition to the higher classes,

the middling and lower classes, like mestizo, negro and indio,

were suggested by their emulative and mirroring consumer choices.

The ceramic signature of the lower classes consist of later

examples of the ceramics thought of as “high class,” like

transferprint; higher percentages of redware as compared to

imported whiteware, especially in the earlier chronological time

period; and less variety of vessel forms, usually concentrating

on cups, bowls, and hollowwares. The regions that exhibited these

class indicators include San Antonio, Los Caminos, Santa Marta,

Los Obreros and Cangrejera. Returning to an earlier question, do

common people only gain a voice because elites let them, I

believe that this is a case where both sides are using one

another to reach their goals (hegemonic-counterhegemonic). The

elite wanted to maintain their power within the political and

185 | P a g e

economic networks in El Salvador, using the indios as a mass of

bodies to back them up. The common people, indios, were using the

elite to overthrow the Spanish power so that they could gain more

rights and eventually overthrow elite power.

Lastly, I asked what do the settlement pattern and ceramics

reveal about the construction of identity at sugar production

sites in the Early Republican Period of El Salvador? The

turbulent Early Republican period in El Salvador’s history was

riddled with warfare, economic booms and busts, increasing

modernization, and political discontent. Laborers and managers

in the sugar industry had various ethnic backgrounds and faced

different working conditions, but all had to adjust to a new

Liberal social regime. The framework for the social organization

of labor operated during a time when the Salvadoran state became

increasingly connected to the global market, creating a

crossroads of Pipil, creole, ladino, and European traditions. As

the ceramic evidence above shows, laborers and managers at this

nineteenth century hacienda reacted in similar and contrasting

ways materially. The hacienda system relies on profitable

production structured by economic, political and ideological

186 | P a g e

hierarchical control (Orser 1988). This was a time when

individual agency was being negotiated and expressed through the

newly accessible commodities, like ceramics. At this production

site, people of all socio-economic statuses interfaced and

negotiated identity and power influenced by the new liberal

regime. Despite the differences, most all regions embraced a

mixture of imported fine wares and locally made wares. The

creolized assemblages show that ceramic goods transcended

community, ethnic, and class boundaries, re-forming the

expressions of identity.

187 | P a g e

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