Modeling Entradas

In Modeling Entradas, Clay Mathers brings together leading archaeologists working across the American South to offer a comprehensive, comparative analysis of Spanish entrada assemblages. These expeditions into the interior of the North American continent were among the first contacts between New- and Old-World communities, and the study of how they were organized and the routes they took--based on the artifacts they left behind--illuminates much about the sixteenth-century indigenous world and the colonizing efforts of Spain.

Focusing on the entradas of conquistadors Francisco V zquez de Coronado, Hernando de Soto, Trist n de Luna y Arellano, and Juan Pardo, contributors offer insights from recently discovered sites including encampments, battlefields, and shipwrecks. Using the latest interpretive perspectives, they turn the narrative of conquest from a simple story of domination to one of happenstance, circumstance, and interactions between competing social, political, and cultural worlds. These essays delve into the dynamic relationships between Native Americans and Europeans in a variety of contexts including exchange, disease, conflict, and material production.

This volume offers valuable models for evaluating, synthesizing, and comparing early expeditions, showing how object-oriented and site-focused analyses connect to the anthropological dimensions of early contact, patterns of regional settlement, and broader historical trajectories such as globalization.

Contributors: Robin A. Beck Edmond A. Boudreaux III John R. Bratten Charles Cobb Chester B. DePratter Munir Humayun David J. Hally Ned J. Jenkins James B. Legg Brad R. Lieb Michael Marshall Clay Mathers Jeffrey M. Mitchem David G. Moore Christopher B. Rodning Daniel Seinfeld Craig T. Sheldon Jr. Marvin T. Smith Steven D. Smith John E. Worth

A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series