Archaeology Seminar Series - Fall Semester

Christopher B. Rodning

During the mid-sixteenth century, the southern Appalachians formed the northern edge of the Spanish colonial province of La Florida.  This area of southeastern North America was home to several chiefdoms associated with the broader Mississippian cultural tradition of the American South.  The Spanish colonial expedition led by Hernando de Soto traversed the provinces of several chiefdoms in the greater southern Appalachians in 1540, including the province of “Xuala,” in what is now western North Carolina.  One generation later, Spanish colonial expeditions led by Captain Juan Pardo marched inland from the Spanish colonial capital of Santa Elena, in coastal South Carolina, and retraced some of the route followed by the Soto expedition.  Pardo and his men founded several colonial towns in the Carolinas and eastern Tennessee and built forts at them, including Fort San Juan and the town of Cuenca, built beside the town of “Joara,” and intended to become the principal Spanish outpost in the northern borderlands of La Florida.  Archaeological investigations have identified the location of Joara, Cuenca, and Fort San Juan at the Berry site, in the upper Catawba River Valley of western North Carolina.  Archaeological finds at this site shed light on the history of the Native American chiefdom centered at this town during the 1400s and 1500s, and the built environment of the Mississippian town, the Spanish town, and the fort, which, collectively, formed the setting for early encounters and entanglements between Native Americans and Spanish conquistadors and colonists in the American South.

Christopher B. Rodning is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Tulane University. His interests as an archaeologist include relationships between people and place as they are manifested in monuments, mortuary practices, architecture and the built environment, and settlement patterns. Several recent and current projects concentrate on cases of culture contact and colonialism, and, particularly, encounters and entanglements between Native Americans and European explorers and colonists in western North Carolina and elsewhere in eastern North America. Professor Rodning teaches courses on North American archaeology, culture contact and colonialism, and the archaeology of cultural landscapes.