摘要：This paper recognizes two problems in recent studies involving technological analyses
and contact period archaeology. In colonial studies, the application of the concept of
technological style typical in prehistoric research contexts (i.e., as an expression of
cultural identity) becomes problematic due to the shifting assignations and appropriations
of class, ethnic, and racial identities within colonial social structures. In such
research contexts an ambiguity of interpretation often emerges between whether an
observed technological style is reflective of degrees of cultural continuity, or a
practitioner¡¯s agency in confronting colonial regimens of practice. Secondly, discussion
of such practices as modes of acculturation, creolization, or hybridization unnecessarily
categorize social relationships embedded in technological practice in terms of a postcolonial
discourse rooted in nationalist politics from which these terms emerged. This
paper argues that instead of applying the observation of technological style to
interpretations based on categories of identity, it may be more informative for the
understanding of the social dynamics and politics of resistance within colonial
interactions to situate such observations in terms of how they reflect mobilizations of
collective action.
The paper explores the intersection of colonial mission and mining interests
and Puebloan mineral use in the early colonial period of New Mexico. Archaeological
and archaeometric data from the excavation of the early 17th century metallurgy
facility within the Pueblo of Paa-ko (LA 162) are combined with ethnohistoric data on
the organization of labor in both colonial work environments and in the production and
exchange of materials involved with Puebloan ritual paraphernalia to argue that
resulting ¡®syncretic¡¯ technologies reflect competing mobilizations of collective action
that offer loci for resistance by resonating with pre-colonial material practices.
