Coloniality in Patagonia: historical archaeology and postcolonial critique in Latin

America
Author(s): Marcia Bianchi Villelli
Source: World Archaeology , MARCH 2011, Vol. 43, No. 1, POSTCOLONIAL
ARCAEOLOGIES (MARCH 2011), pp. 86-101
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41308479

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 Coloniality in Patagonia: historical
archaeology and postcolonial critique
in Latin America

Marcia Bianchi Villelli

Abstract

In recent years, the colonial expansion of modern society has been studied by various disciplines and
from a range of theoretical perspectives. South American historical archaeologists in particular have
highlighted the homogenizing nature of this global process in order to re-evaluate the particular
nature of different contexts in time and space. This paper focuses on the articulation between the
scales of the global and the local and explores the role of local processes in the constitution of
colonial societies. Latin-American postcolonial theory - or decolonized thinking - adds to this
debate through the critical assessment of modernity in order to acknowledge colonial legacies in the
social sciences. This perspective is presented here in combination with a case study from the Spanish
colonization of the Patagonian coast in the late eighteenth century, in particular the settlement of
Nueva Poblacion v Colonia de Floridablanca (Bahia San Julian, province of Santa Cruz, Argentina).

Keywords

Modern society; modernity/coloniality; historical archaeology; Patagonia; late eighteenth century.

From the general to the particular: modern society in historical archaeology

Over the last two decades historical archaeology has discussed its goals and object of
study. The debate initially ranged from methodological issues - the use of historical
sources (Andren 1998; Funari et al. 1999; Moreland 2006) - to chronological origins in the
study of the 'Georgian order' (Deetz 1977; Leone and Potter 1988).
In recent years, the trend has been towards a global perspective, focusing on the study of
the formation of modern society (Orser 1996). This has involved the emergence, expansion
and consolidation of global capitalism since the fifteenth century, including consistent and

O Routledge World Archaeology Vol. 43(1): 86-101 Postcolonial Archaeologies

§' Taylor & Francs croup © 2011 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0043-8243 print/1470-1375 online
DOI: 1 0. 1 080/00438243.20 1 1 . 54490 1

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 Coloniality in Patagonia 87

significant changes in everyday life (e.g. Beaudry et al. 1991; Johnson 1996; Leone and
Potter 1999; Leone et al. 1987; Little 1994; Orser 1996; Shackel and Little 1992).
Critical responses were voiced before long. The postmodern turn to criticizing master
narratives and universalizing categories like colonialism, slavery or the evolution of
capitalism influenced the debate about modernity and globalization in a range of
disciplines, including archaeology (Appadurai 1996; Cooper 2005; Gosden 1999; Hodos
2009; Miller 1995). In historical archaeology, the assimilation of intellectual production
around the world showed how the globalizing concept of modernity necessarily implies a
developmental model that is both homogeneous and teleological (Hall 2000; Lima 2002).
Today, South American historical archeology emphasizes the multiple trajectories
experienced by societies and foregrounds the historical depth of the process. It also resists
the straightforward application of Anglo-Saxon models to Latin American processes to
account for both global and local scale (Funari and Zarankin 2004; Funari et al. 1999;
Gilchrist 2005; Hall and Silliman 2006; Johnson 1996, 2006; Lima 2002; Senatore 2005;
Senatore and Zarankin 2002; Zarankin and Salerno 2008; Zarankin and Senatore
2005, 2007).
These alternative perspectives in turn pose several questions. How are we to connect the
local and the global scales? What role may be given to local actors and processes? Is it
possible that underneath these paradigmatic changes modern society continues to be seen
in monolithic and unchangeable terms?
Drawing on critical perspectives in disciplines such as history, literary studies, sociology,
social geography and postcolonial studies, scholars in Latin America have come to
question the influence and effectiveness of modern discourse in the social sciences, as they
recognized the variability of colonial legacies. In the last decade, postcolonial studies have
found their place in archaeology (Gosden 2001; Leone 2009; Liebmann and Rivzi 2008),
while Latin-American archaeologists have followed suit more recently (Curtoni 2009;
Gneccho 1999; Gneccho and Haber 2007; Verdesio 2001).

Latin American postcolonial theory

Rooted in its own postcolonial background, the Latin American perspective, which is also
known as the 'modernity/coloniality' program, centers on the proposal to resist the
naturalization of the political, economic and cultural processes that the continent has gone
through over the past five centuries (Castro-Gomez and Mendieta 1998; Castro-Gomez
2003; Coronil 1999; Dussel 1993; Lander 2003; Mignolo 1995, 2000; Quijano 1993). ' El
giro decoloniaF or the 'decolonized turn' stands for the displacement of the Eurocentric
locus of enunciation towards new epistemic spaces integrated within a new terminology
that takes into account the complexity of gender, race, class, sexuality and knowledge
hierarchies in geopolitical processes (Castro-Gomez and Grosfoguel 2007: 17).
Latin American 'decolonized thinking' thus contributes to a critical assessment of
Eurocentrism in academic discourse, because 'modernity is not primarily a geographic
phenomenon and therefore it is not Europe that generated modernity, but it is the cultural
dynamics of modernity that generates a twofold representation called "Europe" and
"Others", among which is "Latin America'" (Castro-Gomez 1998: 133).

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88 Marcia Bianchi Villelli

If we accept that modernity is not an abstract structure but a historical process, t

acknowledge its historicity means situating its origin in the European shift away from the
periphery of the Muslim world in the sixteenth century AD. As a result, previousl
detached networks like Africa, Asia and the Pacific along with Americas became
connected with the emergence of the Atlantic commercial circuit (Mignolo 2003). The
Latin American perspective also questions the notion that modernity could be
independent from colonialism. If modernity represents the result of the consolidation of
European colonialism in America, Africa and Asia (Dussel 1993), it cannot be considered
an autonomous process. In Lander's words:

[t]he effectiveness of modern scientific thought is . . . the notion according to which the
characteristics of so-called modern society are the expression of spontaneous
tendencies, the natural historical development of society. Industrial liberal society is
not only a desirable social order, but the only possible.
(Lander 2003: 11)

This Eurocentric representation also relies on the coloniality of power (Quijano 1993),
whereby colonial plunder is legitimized by the representation of incommensurable differences
between the colonizer and the colonized. As a corollary, the materiality of colonial and
unequal centre-periphery relationships was embodied in racial difference (Quijano 2003).
The implications of the European discursive construction are substantial, as it claims
that European events provide the starting-point of modern society and that, by
implication, there is no need for further development. It also implies that fc[t]he cultural
Other was not "dis-covered" ( descubierto ), or admitted, as such, but concealed, or
ktcovered-up" ( encubierto ), as the same as what Europe assumed it had always been'
(Dussel 1993: 66). It is therefore no exaggeration to claim, as Mignolo (2003) has done,
that in Eurocentric discourse both capitalism and modernity are presented as European
rather than global phenomena.
The Latin American position insists by contrast that the eighteenth century is an effect
rather than the point of departure of modernity and that coloniality, as Mignolo (2003)
suggests, does not derive from modernity but that has been constituted outside it. This
means that the colonies are as much part of the process of modernisation as the metropolis
and that it is not possible to understand the capitalist center without its peripheries. In
order to explore modernity, we thus have to consider the center as much as marginal
regions.

From the particular to the general: modern/colonial society

Returning to historical archeology, attempts to revaluate modern society are hampered by

the fact that local contexts' imply a specific situation involved in a process that happened
in a specific place at a specific time. This means we need to think of change in terms of the
social practices distributed between centre and periphery and their outcomes.
In other words, we should shift the focus of our explanations from the changing struc-
tures of society to the changes in daily life and the transformation of social practices.

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 Coloniality in Patagonia 89

By emphasizing particular contexts and assessing multiple and contradictory social prac-
tices, we may be able to enhance our understanding of past lives. To do so, however, entails
the risk of falling into the trap of reducing the changes of meanings to mere epiphenomena
or little more than surface manifestations of an eventual change that was previously and
elsewhere set in motion. In other words, transformations of social practices would risk
being taken for granted and being relegated to the anecdotal level of explanation.
One way out is to acknowledge the notion of social transformation, which implies a
concept of social change that is internal and contextual to social interaction. Such a
concept can obviate the 'top-down' argument to make it clear that society is established
within these contexts, not without them. I therefore propose to think of social change in
terms of mutually sustaining historical schemas and social practices that recursively
empower and constrain social action (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1984). From this
perspective, social change has the capacity to extend previously adopted schemas to
new contexts of practice (Sewell 1992). Social change is therefore not situated so much in a
revolutionary break or radical innovation as in the alteration of relationships (Foucault
1980). The result is not necessarily a new social form but something that is rearranged and
that reappears differently in the relationships of a given society (Sewell 1992).
To make my point and to illustrate this perspective, I will in the remainder of this paper
explore the case study of the 'Nueva Colonia y Fuerte de Floridablanca'. This was a
settlement at modern Bahia de San Julian (Santa Cruz province, Argentina) that was
created as part of a plan designed by the Spanish Crown to defend the Patagonian coast.
The colony of 'Floridablanca', as it is usually known, offers the possibility of studying in
detail a marginal context in the expansion of modern society. The settlement was designed
in accordance with a model of social organization, which sought to impose patterns of
social interaction relating to individual organization, mobility and planning of space
(Senatore 2005). Beyond this colonial setting, however, a social scenario emerged from
local practices that was both unplanned and unforeseen by the Crown. My argument is
that this scenario offers an opportunity to explore alternatives to the colonial order. As
new relationships, practices, social roles, places, objects and exchange spheres emerged in
Floridablanca, the question is whether these practices reproduced the same schemas
defined by the Crown or created new social and material settings.

The colony of Floridablanca (Patagonian coast, 1780-4)

The historical background of the late colonization of the Patagonian coast (Argentina)
was the modernization of the Spanish state in the late eighteenth century. The ideological
and political discourses of the Spanish Enlightenment aimed to include Patagonian ports
in the system of colonial trade and to restructure the colonies in the extreme south of
South America at different levels. The creation of the viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata
(1776) brought about a political and administrative reorganization in order to regain
control over local elites, to improve tax collection and to assert the Spanish presence on
the Patagonian coast (Chiaramonte 1986; Lynch 1992).
The colonization strategy that was devised for the Patagonian coast between 1779 and
1784 involved the establishment of three settlements (Fig. 1). The main ones were 'Nuestra

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90 Marcia Bianchi Villelli

Figure 1 Maps showing the location of the three Patagonian coastal settlements (Argentina) and the
site of Nueva Colonia y Fuerte de Floridablanca in Bahia San Julian, Province of Santa Cruz,
Argentina.

Senora del Carmen de Patagones' at the mouth of the Rio Negro (Buenos Aires province)
and 'Floridablanca' on the Bay of San Julian (Santa Cruz province) and a smaller
secondary settlement called 'Puerto San Jose' on the Valdes peninsula (Chubut province).
Although the Patagonian foundations had a defensive purpose, the underlying social
project aimed at developing stable populations by relocating Spanish settler families
(Senatore 2005). They signed a contract with the Crown to stay permanently in the new
colonies in exchange for land, seeds, tools and housing.
The 'Nueva Colonia y Fuerte de Floridablanca' was founded on the Bay of San Julian
in 1780 (Fig. 2). More than 150 people were brought to Patagonia, including officials,
troops, craftsmen and a number of convicts from the Rio de la Plata area as well as several
Spanish families, who were to take charge of agriculture. As prescribed in the Crown's
plan, the village was laid out around a central plaza that was lined by the fort, measuring
50m on either side, a hospital, a bakery, a forge, a stockyard. Two rows of houses were
built for the peasant families.
Throughout the four years of its existence, Floridablanca continued to be expanded. In
addition to the 'official' buildings, a number of structures were built by inhabitants of
Floridablanca themselves and for their own purposes (Senatore 2007) (Fig. 2). Because of
low crop yields, harsh living conditions and high maintenance costs, however, the colony
was quickly considered to be useless to the viceroyalty and only four years after its

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 Coloniality in Patagonia 91

Figure 2 Archaeological map of the site of Floridablanca. The archaeological buildings mentioned in
the text are highlighted in grey: the house of a settler family, the so-called pulperia and the unplanned
houses (after Bianchi Villelli 2009 and Senatore 2007).

foundation Floridablanca was abandoned by Royal Order. The Crown ordered the total
destruction of all buildings and the Spanish peasants were relocated to other colonies of
the viceroyalty.

Colonial order in Floridablanca

Since 1998 the research project 'Archaeology and History in the Spanish Colony of
Floridablanca (Patagonia coast, XVIII century)' has investigated the site under the
direction of Dr M. X. Senatore. Its aim is to investigate the social organization of the
settlement as defined by the Spanish Crown in line with Spanish Enlightenment ideals to
design social projects with an agricultural base and egalitarian social conditions (Senatore
2005). In order to do so, the project focuses on the relationships between the structural
principles and the social practices of the individuals inhabiting the site (Bourdieu 1977;
Giddens 1984).
The project has allowed the critical evaluation of Enlightenment discourses and a better
understanding of their historical and fragmented character (Senatore 2005). It has done so
by examining the axes of social organization as embodied across a wide range of practices.
These have included in particular the arrangement of peasant families, the organization of
space and time (Senatore 2007), the practices of consumption (Bianchi Villelli 2007), the
contexts of social transformation (Bianchi Villelli 2009), inter-ethnic relationships with
indigenous people (Buscaglia 2009), sociability seen through foodways and eating habits
(Marschoff 2007, 2010), the organization of productive practices (Bosoni 2010) and the
construction of personal identity (Nuviala 2008).

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92 Marcia Bianchi Villelli

The emphasis on social practices in Floridablanca has made it possible to explore specific
meanings in this colonial context. The role of the Spanish Crown was characterized by
centralization and direct intervention in social organization, especially in the networks
production (Bosoni 2010; Senatore 2007), supply, circulation and consumption of goo
(Bianchi Villelli 2007, 2009; Buscaglia 2009; Marschoff 2007, 2010). These forms of soci
organization were not only defined by the colonial project but also designed by and
materialized through the practical arrangements of daily life in San Julian.
Peasant families constituted the essential social unit, on which the reproduction and
growth of the village was based (Senatore 2005: 276-7). The settlers were organized b
social categories like families, officials, soldiers, craftsmen and convicts and each grou
had its own duties, housing conditions and tenure regime. All buildings for these group
were designed and built by the Crown. While each social category had been assigned
particular place, the creation of built space functioned as another dimension to organiz
social interaction (Senatore 2005: 278).
Third, the main activity planned was agricultural production. Although it had goo
results, they were not enough to sustain the families and horticulture and exploitation of
other local resources, both terrestrial and marine, were taken up as self-sufficient practices
without any regulation whatsoever (Bosoni 2010; Marschoff 2010). Each family provide
for its own household, while the rest of the population received a salary in relation to their
activities (Senatore 2005). The colonial administration ultimately controlled supply and
consumption networks in the village, as the viceroyalty supplied most food and goods
even if they were supplemented by the exploitation of local resources (Bianchi Villelli
2007). The settlers received regular food rations from the Crown and could also buy from
the warehouse if their wages permitted (Bianchi Villelli 2007; Marschoff 2007;
Senatore 2005).

Beyond plans

In addition to the 'officially' planned organization, another social scenario also gradually
materialized in Floridablanca that had not been foreseen by the Crown. It may be defined
in opposition to official organization, because it was never mentioned in the formal
historical records of the settlement and because it was not based on any preconceived plan
or order. As such, it had the potential from the start for the development of new practices,
social interactions, places, objects and networks of exchange (Bianchi Villelli 2009: 19).
These informal developments and their narrative as well as material dimensions beyond
the plans of the Spanish Crown have been analyzed from an interdisciplinary perspective
by combining material culture studies and the analysis of historical documents relating to
Floridablanca. The focus of this study has been on social practices in order to understand
how everyday routines contributed to the organization and (re)production of the material
conditions of existence (Bourdieu 1977; Giddens 1984).
In the case study presented below the social and material spaces designed by the Crown
are contrasted to those established beyond its plans. In order to discuss the tension
between the colonial categories and their implementation in practice I highlight how new
dwelling spaces were created and social interaction was enabled in the context of a colonial

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 Coloniality in Patagonia 93

project that defined precisely who should do what and with which resources (Bianchi
VillelH 2009: 65-111).
In concrete terms, the case study concerns the house of a settler family that was built by
the Crown as opposed to two buildings constructed by different individuals, one of which
is a house and the other a so-called pulperia , which is a kind of grocery store that existed
only in the Spanish Indies. For each of these archaeological contexts (Fig. 2 and Plate 2), I
have analyzed daily practices like the activities that were carried out, the organization of
domestic space, foodways represented, exchange networks and the supply of resources and
goods. This has allowed me to distinguish two spheres of goods and labour: an official
sphere that was managed and supplied by the Crown and an informal one beyond the
control of the Crown that engaged with the exploitation of local resources and exchanges
within the village as well as with indigenous groups in the wider area.

Narrative dimension of the unplanned scenario

The informal and unplanned developments in Floridablanca are poorly documented in the
official accounts of the colony. There is no mention of them at all in the so-called progress
reports about the settlement, with the exception of a single document that was written
after the abandonment of Floridablanca (Senatore 2007). This is a claim for compensation
for the buildings that had been destroyed and it specifies the unplanned buildings in some
detail. It reveals most of all the identity of the people who built these constructions,
namely peasant families, craftsmen, soldiers and convicts. They created alternative places
such as the pulperia to interact with the families of other peasants and troops. What is
significant in these developments is that the decision to construct new buildings implies the
emergence of new spheres of production and of the exchange of labor and goods, since all
of this required negotiation with the Crown's officers but all constructions were paid for by
the owners themselves.

Overall, this stands in clear contradiction to the 'official story' of Floridablanca, as on

the one hand those buildings that were not part of official plans were ignored, which
confirmed the formal social order in institutional terms. As the informal developments
were not outlawed or thwarted, it is on the other hand also evident that alternative forms
of social organization were possible in everyday practice.

Material dimension of the unplanned scenario

Archaeological investigations have made it possible to refine the map of what was actually
built in Floridablanca (Senatore et al. 2008). Our studies have compared three different
buildings, namely a settler's house with unplanned backroom and a house and a possible
pulperia that had both not been planned by the Crown. Figure 2 shows the expanded
village plan with new buildings taking over the surrounding landscape. The initial planned
lay-out of the settlement was maintained with the orderly growth of streets and access to
the central plaza . The unplanned constructions however varied notably in dimensions and
morphology both among each other and as compared to the Crown buildings.
The 'official house' for a peasant family presents the spatial lay-out of a 'model' house
designed by the Crown (Senatore 2005). All houses built by the Crown were identical and

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94 Marcia Bianchi Villelli

were lined up facing the central square (Plate 1). Each house or 'domestic unit' was divided
into two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom that defined the places for sleeping, eating a
storage. The archaeological evidence of the first room encountered when entering the
building, which had originally been intended as a kitchen, indicates that it was used as
place for daily activities that involved the consumption, preparation and storage of foo
(Plate 2). The archaeological evidence was unfortunately insufficient to distinguish specific
functions for the other rooms (Marschoff 2010; Senatore 2007).
It is thus evident that, even if the domestic architecture had been determined a priori by
the Crown, its use and any adaptations were not planned. Even in this 'official' setting, two
rooms had been added to the back of the house to expand it and to reorganize the spac
inside. One of these rooms appears to have been used for storage, while the other was
certainly a meeting space that was organized around the preparation, cooking an
consumption of food, as it included stone and adobe seats as well as two hearths. Th
material remains indicated significant storage and consumption of food, some of whic
had been provided by the Crown (beef and seeds) but much had also been obtain
locally, in particular guanacos (a South-American camel species), fish, mussels an
deep-sea fish like dolphin and whale (Marschoff 2010; Senatore et al. 2008). Th
archaeological evidence of this architectural transformation distinguished this househo
from the occupants of the other 'official' houses.

Plate 1 View of Floridablanca in the Patagonian landscape of Bahia San Julian. The circle shows t
location of the excavated area.

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 Coloniality in Patagonia 95

Plate 2 Archaeology in Floridablanca, showing on the left the site plan and on the right an overview of
the excavation: A) settler house built by the Crown with two additional back rooms: the 'official
house' (centre) and the back room or kitchen (right); B) one of the unplanned houses: the entrance
and back area of the living floor; C) the so-called pulperia : living floor of the main room, with a double
entrance at the lower right corner (after Bianchi Villelli 2009, Marschoff 2010 and Senatore 2007).

The second archaeological context investigated was an unplanned house, the

construction of which testified to a significant investment of material resources and
energy, even if it was a fairly simple building with just a single room. It nevertheless shows
various unusual features such as a decoratively tiled entrance and its outward-looking
orientation towards the surrounding natural landscape of Floridablanca rather than the
central plaza. Material culture includes a hearth with local faunal remains that
demonstrate food preparation and consumption as well as storage of supplies and
consumption of alcohol. The archaeological evidence thus shows that the members of this
household participated in multiple spheres of social interaction, as they had access to both
the Crown circuits of production and exchange and the informal ones (Bianchi Villelli
2009: 98-103). There is substantial evidence that goods, knowledge and practices were
regularly exchanged and shared with local Tehuelche communities (Buscaglia 2009).
The building identified as a pulperia was by contrast a completely open space in terms of
its design and the everyday practices carried out. It stands out because of its size, the

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96 Marcia Bianchi Villelli

white-washed walls inside and outside that are unique in Floridablanca and its centra
location with a double entrance facing the central square of the settlement. This buildi
clearly served quite different everyday practices compared to the other houses, as is eviden
from the abundant remains of food consumption and alcoholic beverages. There was
clearly demand in Floridablanca for such a public meeting place, which had not been
planned by the Crown (Bianchi Villelli 2009: 103-8).
It was primarily through practice and in the material world that the inhabitants of
Floridablanca complemented the organization provided by the Spanish Crown. They
transformed it with dwelling places, relationships and spheres of exchange and
consumption. The 'unofficial' scenario represented the result of both individual and
collective initiatives, as their diversity bears witness to margins of action available to the
inhabitants of Floridablanca. These practices and initiatives also generated a soci
variability that is evident not only in terms of access to resources - inequality in othe
words - but also in the possibility of engaging with other social networks and grou
within the community - which we may term 'differentiation'.
These initiatives also entailed other developments in the productive and economic
spheres that the Crown had not anticipated. New activities of production, exchange an
labour were taken up to provide manpower and raw materials for the buildings tha
required wood, nails and mud-bricks, to improve the exploitation of local resources
through fishing and hunting large sea mammals and other land animals and to expand the
circulation of imported goods like clothes, fabrics and tobacco (Bianchi Villelli 2009: 8
111; Marschoff 2010). This also led to a greater awareness of and engagement with th
surrounding landscape of the colony and subsequently ever greater exploitation of loc
resources and their use in everyday life.
Closer relationships with the local Tehuelche people finally enabled the exchange o
resources, information and knowledge about the local environment (Buscaglia 2009).
These contacts had never been planned by the Crown but their informal developme
contributed much to life in Floridablanca.
What were the consequences of these everyday and mundane practices for social
reproduction and change in the colony? Despite their evident and widespread presence in
colonial life in Floridablanca and the possible impact on local social relations, official
colonial organization prevailed as all these local developments were studiously ignored in
formal contexts and colonial procedures operated to reproduce the 'official image' of
social order (Senatore et al. 2008). Alternative practices operated in the margins of
everyday life at Floridablanca, as the inhabitants endeavored to improve their own
immediate conditions of colonial life. By doing so, they opened up an alternative future for
the settlement, even if that was subsequently cut short by the abandonment of the site.

Patagonia as part of modern/colonial society

From the fifteenth century onwards, Eurasian trade networks forged connections between
a range of distant environments across the globe and, as a consequence, social change was
never the same again. Study of the multiple contexts linked together by these networks is
central to understanding the different levels on which modern/colonial society expanded.

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 Coloniality in Patagonia 97

Because of the early abandonment of Floridablanca it is not possible to assess long-

term changes. Although this clearly limits the analysis, it does not mean that the colonial
experience at Floridablanca was irrelevant. Because the settlement has usually been seen
as a failed enterprise, Floridablanca has never been studied in any depth by historians,
who argued that the early abandonment made it impossible to add anything to our
understanding of the relevant historical processes (Bianchi Villelli 2009: 117). This
implies not only a belief that changes in everyday practice are somehow less relevant than
major political changes but also a reluctance to challenge the effectiveness of modern
discourse and to expose instances where official accounts were contradicted by facts on
the ground.
It is precisely this point that I believe that the study of everyday practice in
Floridablanca has achieved by highlighting the internal contradictions of local colonial
society in a marginal context such as the Patagonian coast. As it attempted to ensure the
distribution and consumption of manufactured goods, the Spanish Crown adopted a rigid
social design that was, however unable to assimilate the needs of the colony (Buscaglia
2009; Senatore 2005). In the end, I suggest, the unplanned developments expose the
arbitrary nature of the colonial and modern order precisely because they could not entirely
be removed from social life in Floridablanca and were on the contrary even important to
ensure continuity of daily life and social reproduction in the colony.

The global and the local

In this study, I have explored relationships between global and local scales from multiple
points of view. The focus has firmly been on a notion of social change that is internal,
relational, contextual and anchored in materiality, because to overlook the lower levels of
social interaction would amount to denying their active contribution to the structuring
process. It would also remove any possibility of exploring the ways in which local contexts
constitute the global. Switching analytical scales has by contrast made it possible to show
epistemological constructions of 'modern society' were naturalized and to assess critically
the analytical categories used in modern and colonial discourse. Instead of assuming a
history of continuity and progress, I argue that marginal cases were not ruled out a priori.
My discussion of everyday life in Floridablanca also shows, I suggest, how historical
archeology in South America may avoid a narrow focus on mere description of multiple
and diverse practices without attempting to explain these in any way. This study of daily
practice does not, therefore, represent a call to give priority to micro-narratives of history
over global processes. It moves away, on the contrary, from specific local histories to
explore and examine underlying theoretical implications within historical archaeology
(Campagno and Lewkowicz 2007).
The multiplicity of contexts should not just be a theoretical, or indeed rhetorical,
starting-point but it must be solidly grounded in a firm commitment to the analysis of the
materiality of such variability. It has been my aim in this paper not to represent specific
colonial situations in terms of the adoption of European items and traditions but to
question the epistemological assumptions about the role of peripheries, the Patagonian
one in particular, and to highlight their heterogeneity. Its marginality is neither given nor

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98 Marcia Bianchi Villelli

natural but was, and in many ways still is, built upon discourses, practices, power and
control over land, resources and people.

Acknowledgements

I thank Ximena Senatore for supervising my doctoral research and Silvana Buscaglia an
Ramiro Barberena for their comments on this paper. I thank both anonymous reviewe
for the useful comments, and I am also grateful to Peter van Dommelen for his
suggestions, patience and encouragement to overcome language barriers. The research was
carried out within the framework of the 'Modern Society and Material Culture' project
funded by UBACyT F-076 and the 'Modern Times in Patagonia' project, funded by the
Fundacion Antorchas, both under the direction of Dr M. X. Senatore.

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Marcia Bianchi Villelli is a post-doctoral fellow at the National Council of Scientific and
Technological Research of Argentina (CONICET) and a part-time lecturer at the
University of Buenos Aires. She has received her PhD from the University of Buenos Aires
in 2009. Her current research interest is the critical discussion of colonialism, focused on
the role of discourses, practices and materiality within the study of Spanish colonization in
Patagonia. (Project webpage: www.florida-blanca.com.ar).

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