Future events

  • 15-16/02/2024: Research Workshop: Colonialism and Gender in the Making of the Global Modernity (16th-18th Centuries).
    Organizers: Sandra Montón-Subías (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) and Enrique Moral de Eusebio (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona/Universitat Pompeu Fabra).
    The event will be held at the Pompeu Fabra University with the participation of Sergio Escribano (Universidad del País Vasco), Beatriz Marín (University of Liverpool), Estela Rosselló (Universidad Nacional de México), Andrés Gutiérrez Usillos (Director del Museo de América, Madrid), Lisa Overholtzer (McGill University), Diana di Paolo Loren (Harvard University), Dawn Rutecki (Grand Valley State University), Irene Silverblatt (University of Duke) and Patricia Martins Marco (University of California, Los Angeles).

Past events

2023

  • 31/05/2023: We invite you to our first conference of the series "Feminist Talks in Archaeology: The representation of the past in the present". Are there women in Paleolithic museums? And are these women really Paleolithic women? ​​​​​. By Lucia Diaz, from the National Museum / Altamira Research Center. Conservation/Research Department (Santillana del Mar)

    Date: May 31, 2023
    Place: Sala Casamilglia, Edificio Roger de Llúria, Campus Ciutadella UPF
    Time: 12:30h - 14:00h

2022

  • 30/11/2022: We invite you to our last conference of the CGM -2022 cycle: "When the action is theirs: ceramics, gender and colonialism in communities of practice in São Paulo, Brazil" by researcher Dr. Marianne Sallum The conference will be held virtually through the Zoom platform, with live broadcast from the Campus UPF Ciutadella.
    Date: November 30, 2022
    Broadcast: Aula 23.103Time: 16:00h - 17:30h (Spain)
    12:00h - 13:30h (Brazil)

  • 8/11/2022: On November 8 will take place the seminar: (Re)Trobades. Una visió arqueològica a la primera circumnavegació mundial (1519-1522). Professors Sandra Montón (UPF) and Natalia Moragas (UB) will participate with the paper: "El 6 de marzo, que era miércoles": Guam i la cultura CHamoru abans i després de Magallanes. The seminar will be held at the Museu d'Arqueologia de Catalunya (Pg. Santa Madrona 39) from 17h to 20h.

  • 7/10/2022: Premio Fernando Coronil 2022 para Dr. Konrad Antczak por el libro "Islands of Salt: Historical Archeology of Seafarers and Things in The Venezuelan Caribbean 1624-1880”.

  • 5-7/10/2022: The interdisciplinary workshop "Crises and Gender Inequalities from the Present to the Past" will be held from October 5 to 7 within the framework of Planetary Wellbeing. Enrique Moral de Eusebio and Sandra Montón will participate with the presentation "Colonial crisis and patriarchal turn: The 'new normality' of Chamoru societies in the Mariana Islands in early modernity" on October 6 during Panel 3 at 17h. The event will be held at the Pompeu Fabra University, Mercè Rodoreda Auditorium Ciutadella Campus - UPF, Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27 Barcelona.

  • 15/06/2022: CGM Research Group invites to the second lecture of the CGM 2022 Lecture Series, featuring: "Memoria y patrimonio colonial en la Barcelona intercultural. Elementos para nutrir el debate". Mtr. Camila Opazo Sepúlveda. Universitat de Barcelona.

    11:00h - 12.30h
    Room 20.287 - Jaume I Building
    UPF - Cuitadella Campus
    Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27
    Barcelona

  • 18/5/2022: CGM Research Group invites to the opening of its first lecture series 2022 with the presentation of: UNA ARQUEOLOGÍA DE LA PERIFERIA DE LAS PERIFERIAS. BUSCANDO EL SENTIDO A UNA TESIS EN EL CUERNO DE ÁFRICA. Pablo Gutiérrez de León Juberías. CSIC - Institute of Heritage Sciences (INCIPIT).
    14:00h - 15:30h
    Room 20.287 - Jaume I Building
    UPF - Cuitadella Campus
    Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27
    Barcelona

  • May - Nov 2022: CGM Conferences - 2022. This conferences is proposed by the CGM-Colonialism, Gender and Materialities research group to bring to UPF archaeological and historical voices and perspectives on the interrelationship between these three components in the configuration of modernity. With this, we want to raise new and fruitful debates on the origins and operation of systems of domination that contribute to the creation of a social theory useful for understanding and transforming today's society.

  • Winter 2022 - Course : Gender, Sexuality, and Diversity: Past and Present - Barcelona Program for Interdisciplinary Studies (BaPIS) - UPF. This course offers an introduction to critical questions related to gender, sexuality, the body, and diversity in an increasingly globalized world. The course will provide students with theoretical and methodological tools derived from Gender and Feminist Studies so that they become able to analyze a variety of topics from a critical and “engendered” point of view. The topics examined will be diverse, and will include, among others, primate behavior interpretation, the origins of gender inequality, patriarchal violence, beauty canons, assisted reproduction, prostitution, transsexuality, intersexuality, contemporary sexualities, or new family models.
     

  • 18/11/2021 - 6/3/2022 - Exhibition: “BIBA CHAMORU. Culture and Identity in the Mariana Islands”. As part of the official program of the V Centenary and the cycle “Let's go around the world”, the National Museum of Anthropology in Madrid, presents from November 18, 2021 to March 6, 2022 the temporary exhibition "BIBA CHAMORU. Culture and Identity in the Mariana Islands". The exhibition brings to the public in Spain the history and cultural richness of an enclave so remote and little known among us with which we have very close ties, a past also marked by unequal relations.

  • Thursday, March 3, 2022 - Round Table: Round Table on the occasion of Pacific Day and the closing of the exhibition BIBA CHAMORU: Culture and Identity in the Mariana Islands. Pacific Day! Next Thursday, March 3 will take place the Round Table organized by the Spanish Association of Pacific Studies, Casa Asia and the National Museum of Anthropology on the occasion of Pacific Day and the closing of the exhibition "BIBA CHAMORU: Culture and Identity in the Mariana Islands", with the aim of reflecting on the 501 years of the arrival of the Magellan-Elcano expedition to Guam on March 6, 1521. The roundtable will include the participation of Sandra Montón, director of the Aberigua project.
    National Museum of Anthropology (Madrid).
    From 7:00 to 8:30 p.m.
    Auditorium of the MNA.

2021

  • Novembre – December 2021 - Campaign for the organization and study of archaeological materials - Guam 2021. During the months of November and December, the Aberigua project team and members of the CGM Research Group (Colonialism, gender and materialities) developed a campaign of organization and study of the archaeological materials from the excavations carried out at the "San Dionisio" site, located in the town of Humåtak, south of the island of Guam.

  • 19/11/2021 - Seminar: El patrimonio arqueológico y su socialización. Nuevos retos y propuestas para la educación en igualdad en el ámbito museístico.  The project ABERIGUA Participates in Mesa 2: 

    • La necesidad de incorporar nuevos enfoques y otras identidades al relato histórico (12.30 – 13.40), with the following interventions:

    • Reinterpretando los géneros: la proyección eurocéntrica sobre la identificación de lo femenino en las culturas precolombinas by Andrés Gutiérrez Usillo.

    • ¿Se puede descolonizar la historia? ¿Es posible? Algunas reflexiones desde el feminismo by Sandra Montón Subías.

    • ¿Incluir o integrar? Los peligros de añadir nuevos sujetos de forma acrítica al relato (pre)histórico by Enrique Moral de Eusebio

      Organiced by PastWomen, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.

  • 30/9/2021 - Conference: Colonialism, Resistance, and In-Between Things in the “Spanish” Pacific. Presentation by Sandra Montón Subías in the conference Materialising Frontiers. Colonialism, Slavery, and in-Betweeners. University of Cambridge.

2020

  • Summer 2020 - Archaeological Fieldwork in Guam

  • 05/03/2020 - Seminar: Considerando a las mujeres en la (Pre)Historia. Cuestionando los discursos sobre el pasado, by Margarita Sánchez Romero. Co-organized by IUHJVV, GRACME and CGM. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

  • 14/02/2020 - Workshop: Epistemologies y metodologies de recerca feministes. Una aproximació interdisciplinària. Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Carmen Á. Granell, Enrique Moral de Eusebio & Sandra Montón Subías will be participating in this event. 

  • 13/02/2020 - Matrices de dominación, colonialismos y espacios engenerados: Una reflexión sobre la interrelación de las “diferentes diferencias” desde la arqueología. Session of the TAG IBÉRICO, Lisbon. Co-organized by Beatriz Marín-Aguilera and Enrique Moral de Eusebio.​​

  • 14/01/2020 - Seminar:  Arqueologías del Colonialismo Español en Guam: El Proyecto ABERIGUA by Sandra Montón-Subías & Natàlia Moragas. Departamento de Historia de América, Universidad de Sevilla.

2019

  • 10/12/2019 - Seminar: Debats Transcolonials. Mirades des del cos by Mireia López-Bertran and Diana DiPaolo Loren. Barcelona, Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Organizan: GRACME y CGyM.

  • 22/11/2019: Several newspapers from Spain refer to archaeological and historical project ABERIGUA in Guam:

  • 20/11/2029: El projecte ABERIGUA investiga l'impacte que va tenir per als habitants de Guam (Illes Mariannes) la seva inserció a la xarxa colonial de l’imperi espanyol a l'època moderna. Liderat per Sandra Montón Subías, professora d'investigació ICREA-UPF de el Departament d'Humanitats, el passat mes de juliol va concloure la seva tercera campanya d'excavacions.

    Noticia: "Un projecte arqueològic estudia la incorporació de l'illa de Guam a la xarxa colonial de l’imperi espanyol".

  • 21/7/2019: Several newspapers and webpages from Spain refer to our 2019 archaeological campaign in the San Dionisio Church from Humåtak, Guam:

  • 31/05/2019 - Seminar:  Going Colonial, Going Global. Gender and Material Culture in Early Modernity by Sandra Montón-Subías. Archaeology Seminar Series, University of Sydney. 

    This seminar will present the intimate connection between material culture and gender in the making of the (very) early modern colonial globalization. The 16th and 17th centuries witnessed the rise of historical processes vital in moulding the world to its present shape. While scholars have extensively studied the worldwide translocations of people, goods and ideas, the fact that this globalization also took shape through the cross-continental circulation of gender ideology, gender policies, and engendered knowledge, technologies and skills has not been sufficiently explored. Neither has material culture’s active role in these been sufficiently scrutinized despite its potential to reveal otherwise unnoticed cultural features.

    Through and archaeological project currently being developed in Guam (Mariana Islands), focus will be placed at the crossroads of Modern Colonialism, Gender Systems and Maintenance Activities, a concept born in archaeology to highlight the foregrounding nature of a set of routine daily practices that are essential to social continuity. 

  • 28/05/2019 - Archaeologies of Cultural Contact and Colonialism in Micronesia. The ABERIGUA project by Sandra Montón-Subías. Centre for Classical and Near Eastern Studies of Australia (CCANESA), Sydney.

  • 21/05/2019 - Seminar: Craving for Wheat and Meat: Colonial Foodways and Material Culture in the Mariana Islands, 1668-1674 by Veronica Peña Filiu. Leibniz Institut of European History (IEG).

  • 15/03/19 -La Arqueología Histórica: Zona de Contacto, VII Jornadas de Arqueología IUHJVV. Organized by Enrique Moral de Eusebio, Verónica Peña Filiu and Sandra Montón-Subías. CGM. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. 

    Con este título, inspirado en el término acuñado por Mary Louise Pratt en Imperial Eyes, las VII Jornades d’Arqueologia UPF-IUHJVV proponen debatir sobre las diversas reflexiones –teóricas, políticas, metodológicas, etc.- que la palabra "contacto" suscita entre lxs investigadorxs que trabajan en situaciones coloniales post-1500 relacionadas con la expansión de las monarquías ibéricas por el mundo. Contacto que puede hacer referencia a las relaciones que se establecen en la actualidad entre disciplinas y subdisciplinas, entre metodologías diversas, entre comunidades del pasado y del presente, o entre las personas interesadas en las repercusiones de los procesos coloniales en el presente.

    Organizan: Enrique Moral de Eusebio, Verónica Peña Filiu y Sandra Montón Subías.

    PROGRAMA

    10.00-10.30 Registro
    10.30-10.40 Bienvenida, Dr. Stephen Jacobson (director del CER-IUHJVV).
    10.40-10.50 Presentación, Sr. Enrique Moral de Eusebio, Sra. Verónica Peña Filiu, Dra. Sandra Montón Subías.
    11.00-11.40 Mesa 1. Arqueología del colonialismo ibérico en Canarias y África

    Moderador: Dr. Stefano Biagetti (UPF).

    Dra. María del Cristo González Marrero (ULPGC) - De la renuencia al contacto y la conveniencia: Arqueohistoria de la Arqueología Histórica en Canarias.
    Dr. Jorge Onrubia Pintado (UCLM) - Contactos locales, conflictos globales: Arqueología de la expansión colonial ibérica en las islas Canarias y el África atlántica (siglos XIV-XVI).

    11.40-12.10 Pausa Café
    12.10-12.50 Mesa 2. Arqueología histórica en el Pacífico
    Moderadora: Dra. Ana Delgado (UPF).
    Dra. María Cruz Berrocal (UniCan) - La arqueología Histórica: zona de conflicto.
    Dra. Sandra Montón Subías (UPF), Sr. Enrique Moral de Eusebio (UPF) y Sra. Verónica Peña Filiu - Arqueología histórica: zona de (dis)tensión.

    12.50-13.30 Debate
    13.30-15.00 Pausa Comida
    15.00-16.20 Mesa 3. Arqueología del colonialismo ibérico en América
    Moderadora: Dra. Mertixell Ferrer (UPF).
    Dra. Beatriz Marín Aguilera (McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, U. of Cambridge) - ¿Fronteras o zonas de contacto? Paisajes y disciplinas conflictivas en Chile colonial.

    Dr. Lauro Olmo Enciso (UAH) - Colonialismo y Desigualdad Espacial: indicadores arqueológicos de zonas complejas de contacto.
    Dr. Sergio Escribano Ruiz (UPV/EHU) - Con (o sin) tacto. Por qué lo llaman contacto cultural cuando quieren decir colonialismo.
    Dr. Konrad Antczak (U. of Amsterdam) - El contacto y sus simetrías: buscando movilidades marítimas extraimperiales y tendiendo puentes intercontinentales.
    16.20-17.00 Debate

  • 07/03/19 - Seminar IUHJVV: Género e invisibilidad en los museos de arqueología, by Lourdes Prados. Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.​
    Link to video.

  • 05/03/19 - Patrimonio y Primera Globalización. La Presencia Ibérica en Guam y las Islas Marianas,  by Sandra Montón-Subías. Universidad Autonoma de Madrid.

    En esta conferencia presentaremos el patrimonio que ha resultado de la inserción de Guam y las Islas Marianas (Micronesia, Pacífico occidental) en la red colonial del imperio español de época moderna y las principales acciones que se emprenden de cara a su protección y conservación. A través del proyecto ABERIGUA, que se está desarrollando actualmente en la villa de Umatac, discutiremos el papel fundamental que las comunidades actuales desempeñan en la puesta en valor de este patrimonio.

2018

  • 05-08/09/18 - Gender and Colonialism, AGE (www.archaeology-gender-europe.org) Session of the 24th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, Barcelona. Co-organized by Sandra Montón-Subías, Beatriz Marín-Aguilera, and Leila Papoli-Yazdi.

    This session aims to discuss the effects that different types of colonial domination had on different local sex/gender systems. Colonialism brought into co-existence groups of people with different sex/gender systems in the framework of asymmetrical relations of power. It thus frequently altered and/or disrupted natives’ gender understandings that were incompatible with those brought and imposed by colonial powers. 

    Focus will be on the role that material culture and the body played in these colonial processes in relation to gender. We will welcome contributions that reflect on how gender transformations were performed and implemented on the ground, and what they entailed for the people who experienced them. Topics include (but are not limited to) the re-structuration of living spaces, children's socialization, food systems, dress, kinship, healing practices, belief systems and sexuality.

  • 05-08/09/18 - Iberian Cultural Contact and Colonialism in the island of Guam: the ABERIGUA project, by Sandra Montón-Subías. 24th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, Barcelona.

    In this paper, we will present ABERIGUA, an archaeological project that investigates the impact that the incorporation of Guam and the Mariana islands by the colonial network of the Spanish empire had on the local Chamorro population. We are seeking to understand the changes, but also the continuities that survived through this general process. We are particularly focusing on all those changes and continuities that took place in: 1) socio-ecological systems; 2) socio-political systems (with special attention to gender and sexual politics); and 3) the sphere of maintenance activities (a set of practices that, grosso modo, include tasks related with care giving, food processing and cooking, weaving, socialization of children, hygiene and public health, and organization and maintenance of daily-quotidian residential spaces).

    We will also present the preliminary results from fieldwork campaigns conducted in June-July 2017 and April-May 2018 at the church and cemetery of San Dionisio and the Palace of the Governor. Both sites stand as archaeological witnesses of the 17th, 18th and 19th century colonial processes. Conflating historical written sources and archaeological information, we seek to contribute a better understanding of the historical-archaeological legacy connected to Iberian cultural contact and colonialism in this part of the western Pacific.

  • 05-08/09/18 - Food and Cuisine in Spanish Colonial Guam (17th and 18th centuries), by Verónica Peña-Filiu and Sandra Montón-Subías. 24th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, Barcelona.

    Historical archaeologists working in the Spanish colonial Americas have widely recognized the significant efforts that colonial agents made to "recreate" Iberian foodways in the New World. Independently of their greater or lesser success, scholars have also signalled the important consequences that the previous efforts had on native communities. In this paper, and drawing from the previous scholarship, we will move to the western Pacific and discuss the social implications that food imperial politics had in Guam (Mariana Islands) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

    The incorporation of Guam by the colonial network of the Spanish empire took place in 1565, but the permanent occupation of the island began latter, in 1668, in the framework of Jesuit global missionization. Since then, new animals, plants, recipes, culinary equipment and cooking technologies were introduced to “recreate” foodways deemed appropriate by missionaries. Importantly, new forms of land exploitation and native labour followed, as well as new attitudes towards food in terms of gender and class.

    Through the analyses of historical and archaeological evidence we will discuss how these new foodscapes took shape through everyday life practices, and their main repercussions for Guam’s indigenous inhabitants –the Chamorro– in terms of food production, cooking and consumption.

  • 05-08/09/18 - Fire with fire: Ethnosexual conflicts and resistances at the early colonisation of the Mariana Islands, by Enrique Moral de Eusebio. 24th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, Barcelona.

    In 1668, a group of Jesuits landed in the Mariana Islands (Western Pacific) with the aim of evangelising their native inhabitants (the Chamorros). However, this contact soon became an armed clash, since some Chamorros were reluctant to adopt certain practices preached by the fathers.

    The aim of this communication is two-fold: First, I will argue that sexuality (and the practices and discourses associated with it) was one of the most controversial points in that conflict. Second, I will analyse, from an archaeological, transfeminist and intersectional perspective, the role played by different materialities in the “ethnosexual conflict” between Spaniards and Chamorros. I will claim that that confrontation was articulated around two buildings, two heterotopias produced from very different sexual epistemologies: the guma' uritao, where young Chamorro males were initiated into adulthood, and the Jesuit school, space where Chamorro boys and girls learnt the Christian doctrine and, therefore, the European sexual standards. The recurrent burning of both buildings by members of the two sides shows both the ferocity with which the Spanish colonial agents tried to implement their evangelising and colonial project and the resistance of Chamorros themselves against such project. Following Barbara Voss, I will conclude that sexuality, far from being a "consensual" and "domestic" element of colonial encounters, in many cases received a public and even violent treatment.

  • 3/7/2018: Several newspapers and webpages from Spain refer to our 2018 archaeological campaign in the San Dionisio Church from Humåtak, Guam:

  • 18-20/06/18 - Colonising Taste and Desire: Eating and Sexual Practices in the Mariana Islands at the Beginning of the Spanish Colonial Period (17th Century), by Verónica Peña Filiu and Enrique Moral de Eusebio. Workshop: Gender and Empire: A Transimperial Approach to Gender Politics and the Colonial State, 1848-1945, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

    As Claude Lévi-Strauss noted, in a large number of human groups there exists a strong connection between the act of eating and the sexual intercourse. The aim of this communication is to show how, during the evangelisation and colonisation of the Mariana Islands, Spanish colonial agents targeted both activities in their attempt to “reduce” and control native Chamorro populations. Pre-contact eating and sexual practices, deeply rooted in the daily life of the natives, were radically different from European standards. Therefore, the colonisers promoted a series of policies directed to accommodate such practices to the Christian doctrine and, hence, to a “civilized” way of life. In analysing those policies, we will also discuss the canonical historiography of the Marianas by showing how the colonial agents, far from comprising a monolithic and homogeneous group that successfully imposed their goals, faced several problems and internal divisions during the development of their project.


     

  • 04-08/06/18 - Cuerpos "reducidos": Chamorros, jesuitas y corporalidad durante la colonización temprana de las Islas Marianas, by Sandra Montón-Subías and Enrique Moral de Eusebio. IX Reunión de Teoría Arqueológica de América del Sur (TAAS), Ibarra (Ecuador).

    La colonización española del archipiélago de las Marianas (Pacífico occidental) comenzó con la llegada, en 1668, de un reducido grupo de jesuitas a la isla de Guam. Tras un breve periodo de convivencia pacífica, varios conflictos estallaron entre los religiosos y los chamorros (habitantes nativos de las islas) debido a la restructuración del modo de vida que los jesuitas intentaron imponer en la isla. Dichos conflictos concluyeron con la concentración de los chamorros en un número limitado de “reducciones”, construidas ex novo por los españoles con el fin de facilitar su conversión al cristianismo.

    El objetivo de esta comunicación es analizar, desde una perspectiva de género y feminista, los cambios y continuidades experimentados en las dinámicas corporales de los chamorros dentro de ese proceso de “reducción”. Argumentaremos que, lejos de ser un proceso uniforme e ineludible, la “reducción” de los cuerpos chamorros dio lugar a la adopción, la adaptación y el mantenimiento de distintas prácticas y estándares corporales (tales como la desnudez, el pudor o la “decencia”, estrechamente ligada al ámbito de la sexualidad), dentro de un proceso de etnogénesis mayor que se manifestó a distintos niveles y escalas.

  • 04-08/06/18 - "Arderán sus colegios": Prácticas de resistencia etnosexual durante la colonización temprana de las Islas Marianas, by Enrique Moral de Eusebio. IX Reunión de Teoría Arqueológica de América del Sur (TAAS), Ibarra (Ecuador).

    En 1668, un grupo de jesuitas españoles viajó hasta las Islas Marianas (Pacífico occidental) con el fin de evangelizar a sus habitantes locales. Sin embargo, el proyecto evangelizador pronto se convirtió en un conflicto armado, debido a la resistencia que mostraron los nativos (denominados “chamorros”) a la hora de adoptar ciertos puntos de la doctrina cristiana.

    El objetivo de esta comunicación es analizar, desde una perspectiva arqueológica, feminista e interseccional, las prácticas de “resistencia etnosexual” desempeñadas por los chamorros en dicho conflicto. Argumentaré que este último se articuló en torno a dos materialidades concretas, dos heterotopías producidas desde epistemologías sexuales muy diferentes: la guma’ uritao, lugar de iniciación a la adultez para los jóvenes chamorros, y el colegio jesuita, espacio de aprendizaje de la doctrina cristiana y, por tanto, de los estándares sexuales europeos. La quema recurrente de ambos edificios por integrantes de los dos bandos muestra tanto la ferocidad con la que intentó implantarse el proyecto evangelizador de los jesuitas como la capacidad de resistencia de los propios chamorros. Siguiendo a Barbara Voss, concluiré que la sexualidad, lejos de ser un elemento “consensual” y “doméstico” de los encuentros coloniales, recibió en muchos casos un trato público e, incluso, violento.

  • 15/02/18 - Género y cultura material entre los Gumuz y Dats'in de Etiopía. Una aproximación etnoarqueológica, by Almudena Hernando. Seminari IUHJVV, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

2017

  • 25/10/17 - La “Reducción” del Paisaje: Jesuitas, Chamorros y “Paisajicidio” durante el Siglo XVII en las Islas Marianas, by Enrique Moral de Eusebio. CotArq, Congreso Internacional sobre Otras Arqueologías, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, 25-27 October 2017.

    Los jesuitas españoles que llegaron a la isla de Guåhån (actual Guam) en el año 1668 atribuían dos significados al término “reducir”: por una parte, lo empleaban como sinónimo de “someter”, de “subyugar” a los habitantes nativos a la doctrina cristiana. Por otra, con “reducir” también se referían al acto de extraer a dichos “nativos” de sus antiguos pueblos y reubicarlos en otros, diseñados por los españoles de acuerdo con la racionalidad urbanística europea de la época.

    El objetivo de esta comunicación es en analizar el impacto que el proceso evangelizador emprendido por los jesuitas españoles en Guåhån y, más tarde, en el resto del archipiélago de las Marianas, tuvo sobre la forma en que los chamorros, pobladores originarios de las islas, entendían y se relacionaban con el paisaje. Para ello, me centraré en las estrategias que los jesuitas emplearon para “demonizar” (en sentido literal) los antiguos espacios sagrados de los chamorros, con el objetivo de mantenerlos alejados de sus antiguas creencias. Asimismo, examinaré el papel que jugaron, dentro de dichas estrategias, los nuevos pueblos en los que los españoles realojaron a los chamorros (denominados, precisamente, “reducciones”). Concluiré destacando que el proceso evangelizador puesto en práctica por los jesuitas derivó en un “paisajicidio” que modificó radicalmente los vínculos que los chamorros mantenían con sus paisajes.

  • 20/10/17 - Gender, change, and continuity in colonial Guam (1668-1700 AD), by Enrique Moral de Eusebio and Sandra Montón-Subías. AGE (Archaeology and Gender in Europe) Workshop 2017, "Gender and Change in Archaeology", Lisbon, 19th and 20th October 2017.

    This paper will present changes in sex/gender systems that Spanish colonial domination had in Guam during the early modern period. Most of these changes took place in the sphere of maintenance activities, conversely aimed at granting stability and continuity of life in any human group. Almost since the first moment of permanent colonization in 1668, maintenance activities were made the target of colonial policies. From the concentration of population and re-structuration of living spaces in reducciones to children’s socialization in Jesuit seminaries, through food systems, dress, kinship, healing practices, and sexuality, Jesuit missionaries aimed to dismantle traditional Chamorro lifeways, which were mainly organized through maintenance activities.

    Through this presentation we will also present some thoughts about the interplay between change and continuity in the course of history and values attached to them by hegemonic archaeology.

  • 10/10/2017: Some researchers from our project ABERIGUA have started to collaborate with "Recerca en Acció", a program developed by the Generalitat de Catalunya in order to promote high standard scientific projects among school and high school students.  

  • 07/10/17 - Food Politics and Ethnic Identity in the Mariana Islands during the Nineteenth Century, by Verónica Peña Filiu. Workshop "The Spanish Atlantic and Global Europe: Connections, Encounters, Entanglements in the Long 19th Century", Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 6-7 October 2017.

  • 29/09/17 - Taller: "Arqueología del pudor: mujeres, vestido y reducciones durante el colonialismo español en las Islas Marianas", by Enrique Moral de Eusebio. VII Seminario de la AEHIM (Asociación Española de Historia de las Mujeres). Facultad de Geografía e Historia de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

  • 28/09/17 - Subordinación de género y cultura material. El caso de los Gumuz y Dats’in de Etiopía, by Almudena Hernando (guest lecturer). VII Seminario de la AEHIM (Asociación Española de Historia de las Mujeres). Facultad de Geografía e Historia de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

  • 3/9/2017: The volunteers that collaborated with us in the 2017 fieldwork campaign at the San Dionisio Church, Humåtak, have ellaborated a video in which they expose their fieldwork impressions, as well as their thoughts on the pasts of their village and island.

    Link to the video

  • 31/08/17 - Beauty, gender, body and material culture among the Gumuz and Dats’in. An ethnoarchaeology of two oral societies of Ethiopia, by Almudena Hernando. 23rd Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, Maastricht, 29 August- 3 September 2017.

    The aim of this communication is to understand the diachronic changes and continuities undergone by the body and its care, as well as by the material culture associated with it, at the beginning of the Spanish colonization of the Mariana Islands (17th and 18th centuries). For that purpose, we will claim that the body is not a surface in which identity is inscribed, as if identity could exist as an abstract entity separated from the body that enacts it. Quite the opposite, we will argue that, in oral societies like the pre-contact Chamorro one, notions of “person” and “identity” cannot be ontologically detached from the body and the actions performed through it. The importance of the body and its care as an “understanding of personhood rooted in both social practices and cultural representations”, especially in relation to gender and group membership, made the bodies of native Chamorros an entity to be colonized by the Spanish powers. To better understand the implications of the colonization of native bodies by colonial agents, we will briefly address the way in which current Chamorros, especially cultural practitioners and men involved in self-determination movements, are recovering ornaments and practices related to the bodily care of ancient Chamorro society in a current process of ethnogenesis.

  • 31/08/17 - Bodies of Colonialism. Identity and bodily care in the Mariana Islands, by Sandra Montón Subías, Enrique Moral de Eusebio and Verónica Peña Filiu. 23rd Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists, Maastricht, 29 August- 3 September 2017.

    The aim of this contribution is to present data gathered on an Ethnoarchaeological project carried out with two groups inhabiting the Metema region in Northwest Ethiopia, the Gumuz and the Dats’in. Both societies’ economies are of a non-intensive, hoe farming type, and have been defined by the literature as “egalitarian societies”. While indeed such is the type of relationship that exists between the men, if the women are taken into consideration, clearly unequal and submissive relationships can be observed. The aim of the project (and of this paper) is to analyze the relationships between female beauty, gender identity and material culture, by paying specific attention to the latter’s role in constructing a subordinate subjectivity for these women. Among both Gumuz and Dats’in women, beauty patterns are associated to a body marked by scarification, and are closely linked to colored beads. But, far from merely expressing particular beauty patterns, both dimensions (marked bodies and their associated material culture) are the inherent instruments of a gender “dispositive” (in Foucault sense). This dictates that the female body cannot possibly be conceived of without the mark of the group’s law, nor without the “protection” of material culture, particularly the colored beads. Therefore, beauty is associated to the alleged fragility and vulnerability attributed to women by their respective social orders. This topic will be presented using abundant visual information, the results of interviews with women from both groups, and through an analysis of their respective socioeconomic organization patterns from a gender perspective.

  • 12/8/2017: On 12 August, Natalia Moragas Segura, member of this research group, was interviewed in the RNE radio frequence. She talked about the current political situation of Guam, as well as about the Spanish influence that remains in the island.

  • 11/8/2017: On 11 August, the coordinator of this group, Sandra Montón-Subías, was interviewed in the radio programme "La Ventana", Cadena SER. During the interview, she was asked about the current missile crisis between Washington and Pyongyangthe, as well as about the archaeological project that she co-directs in Guam, and the Hispanic heritage and the past of the island.

    Link to the audio
    Link to the written interview

  • 11/8/2017: On 11 August, Sandra Montón-Subías, coordinator of this research group, was interviewed in the radio programme "La Tarde", COPE. She talked about the archaeological project that she co-directs in Guam, as well as about the Hispanic heritage (both linguistic and archaeological) and the past of the island.

    Link to the audio

  • 21/02/17 - Arqueología del contacto cultural y del colonialismo español en las Islas Marianas (Pacífico Occidental), by Sandra Montón-Subías, James M. Bayman, Natalia Moragas Segura, Verónica Peña Filiu, Enrique Moral de Eusebio, Omaira Brunal-Perry, Andrea Jalandoni and Jacy Moore. Museo Arqueológico Nacional (MAN, Madrid).

    The aim of this talk is to present an archaeological research project concerning the archaeology of early Spanish colonialism in the Mariana Islands. We will introduce the context of our research and our main objectives. Likewise, we will present two doctoral theses that are being conducted in the context of this project, regarding the role played by food and alimentation, as well as gender and sexuality, during the Spanish colonization of the archipelago.

    Link to the video

  • 20/02/17 - Descolonizando la arqueología (del colonialismo), by Sandra Montón-Subías. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Geografía e Historia.

    In this talk, organized by the UCA (Unión Cultural Arqueológica), professor Sandra Montón Subías will speak about the possibilities of decolonizong the archeological stance. For that purpose, she will rely on her own research, focused on the study of early Iberian colonialism in the Mariana Islands (western Pacific), as well as she will introduce the audience to Historical Archaeology and its (unavoidable) intersections with colonial contexts.

  • 20/02/17 - Cultura Material, Colonialismo y Género en el Pacífico. Una Aproximación desde la Arqueología Histórica, by Sandra Montón-Subías. Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Geografía e Historia.

    In this talk, professor Sandra Montón Subías will expose the interrelations between gender and colonialism from an archaeological and feminist stance. In doing so, she will also present to the audience the context and main objectives of her new research projects based on Guam, in the Mariana Islands (western Pacific).

  • 16/2/2017: Our project ABERIGUA (Archaeology of Iberian Cultural Contact and Colonialism in Guam and the Mariana Islands) now has a Facebook page in which we will publish any information concerning the project and our research, as well as any news concerning the Spanish colonialism in the Mariana Islands.

    Open Facebook page.

 

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