Event: VIRTUAL PIZZA TALK: Indigenous Peoples, Iberian Colonists, and Culture Contact: Architectural Dialogues at the Berry Site, Upper Catawba Valley, Western North Carolina, 1400-1600

Dr. Chris Rodning
Professor, Department of Anthropology, Tulane University
Wednesday February 17th, 12:00pm (PT)

During the sixteenth century AD, several Spanish conquistadors led expeditions that traversed large areas of what is now the southeastern U.S., the province of the Americas known to Iberians as La Florida, and an area of Native North America home to groups of people associated with manifestations of the Mississippian cultural tradition, and the ancestors of historic and modern Catawba, Cherokee, Creek, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and other Indigenous peoples. One of the most prolonged early encounters and entanglements between Indigenous people and Iberian colonists in the northern borderlands of La Florida was centered at the Berry site, located along the eastern edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains in western North Carolina. This site represents the location of a major settlement within the Native American province and polity of Joara, and the location of the Spanish colonial outpost of Fort San Juan and its related town of Cuenca, which was founded in late 1566 but was abandoned in early 1568. Archaeological excavations at the Berry site have identified remnants of Native American occupation before the Spanish entradas led by Hernando de Soto (1539-1543) and Juan Pardo (1566-1568), the archaeological footprints of Fort San Juan and structures nearby that housed Pardo and his men, and remnants of structures and features that likely postdate the Indigenous conquest of Fort San Juan, including wood-and-earth structures and an earthen mound. This talk considers documentary evidence from the Soto and Pardo expeditions, with particular emphasis on the Pardo entradas between 1566 and 1568, as well as archaeological finds at the Berry site. My interpretive focus, and I hope the focus of some comment and conversation, will be the architectural history of the built environment at the site, and what we can learn from it about the nature and culture of "first contacts" and interactions among Indigenous peoples and Iberian colonists in the Native American South.

Register for this Cotsen Virtual Pizza Talk here! You will receive instructions on viewing the talk after registering.