Domestic Architecture and Power: The Historical Archaeology of Colonial Ecuador

Abstract

The field of historical archaeology is still young in South America, and can honestly be said to be in its infancy in Ecuador. Thus Ross Jamieson’s study of the city of Cuenca is a welcome addition to the literature, especially because his overall goal is “to use Cuenca as an example in order to examine the role of domestic architecture and domestic material culture in the Spanish colonial world” (p. xi). He begins by making the laudable statement that his work is “not an attempt to outline the patterned regularity of a monolithic Spanish colonial culture” but rather an effort to explore “how the negotiation of power in colonial Cuenca was carried out by the people who lived there” (p. ix). Specifically, he rejects the more traditional notion of material culture as a “text” whose exact meaning can be decoded by a knowledgeable expert, and argues instead that objects have infinitely mutable meanings depending on their context and the perspective of the viewer (pp. 12–13).The book’s careful research stands upon three legs: the architecture of a variety of domestic houses; the excavations of archaeological test pits carried out by the author in 1993–94; and an archival study of notarial documents giving detailed inventories of household goods. One of the most complete inventories, by good fortune, belonged to one of the standing houses Jamieson was able to survey.The book’s merits, however, depend upon the separable elements of its theoretical agenda and its research, rather than upon their marriage. That is, the details provided in the chapters do not always lead the reader to the conclusions promised by the author at the outset: they do not seem to provide evidence of cultural contest, but rather of Spanish victory. The house layouts, whether urban or rural, upper or lower class, are all based upon the Spanish architectural model, despite the fact that we know native laborers were responsible for building some of them. Jamieson even does a Foucauldian analysis of who gets to observe whom from which vantage point, and we are not surprised to learn that it is the elites who are able to monitor others while they themselves can withdraw easily to inner recesses (pp. 125–26). Sometimes the data seems to cry out for alternative interpretations, but the author resists offering them. For example, the one-room houses of the poor on the outskirts of the city all had streetside porches, which Jamieson assumes the elites wanted to see built so that they might keep track of the activities of the poor. How are we to know, however, that the poor did not prefer to carry out their daily activities on the streetside, rather than in the small yards behind their houses, specifically because they liked to observe the public affairs of the city? Side commentary in court cases I have read in Ecuadorian archives lends more weight to the latter interpretation than to the former.Only in his conclusion does Jamieson provide concrete examples of the “negotiation of domestic relationships through material culture,” specifically through dining rituals. Here, however, it turns out that he is not thinking of the perspectives of different groups or individuals within the household, as much as the elites’ ability to seize resources newly available to them as residents of the New World in defining themselves as wealthy and powerful in front of their visitors and servants. Given their proximity to mines, they used silver tablewares they could never have owned in Spain, and encased Andean coconuts and gourds in Spanish-style silver filigree to serve American products like cocoa and Paraguayan tea (pp. 204–5). But whether Jamieson’s material proves what he wants it to or not, it makes for fascinating reading and will certainly help provoke scholarly discussion of the issues he raises.

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