EAA 2018: Abstract

This presentation explores the transformation of water irrigation and water distribution systems in early colonial Iberian contexts through methods of historical archaeology. Either in the Iberian Peninsula, in the Atlantic islands or in the Americas, the construction of water mills and the new selections of cultivars made by the Iberian settlers tranformed the original designs and the former organisations of water distribution in different contexts more often than not. Also, native surviving populations could kept the management of their lands to different extents, in spite of the new colonial conditions. This was the case of some Morisco and Indian communities in areas of the Kingdom of Granada and the earlier Viceroyalty of Peru, respectively. No doubt, the presence and the uneven political capacity of these former peasant populations was a crucial aspect which determined both the variety of ways and the chronologies of the transformations introduced by the conquerors. On this respect, common issues emerging from different and coheval colonial contexts are discussed and compared in the light of textual and archaeological evidence. Among others, how and where the new colonists settled and possessed the irrigated fields; whether or not the new and the former irrigators shared turns of water and tracks of land; the different spatial patterns of field distribution resulting from the establishment of the new settlers among or besides native peasants, and the different balance between irrigated and non irrigated areas in the new colonial contexts.

irrigation; settler colonialism; Granada; colonial Peru

Oral presentation

  Abstract (PDF)

Felix Retamero¹