Barley and identity in the Spanish colonial Audiencia of Quito: Archaeobotany of the 18th century San Blas neighborhood in Riobamba Ross W. Jamieson a, * , Meridith Beck Sayre b a Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada, V5A 1S6 b Department of the History of Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706, USA article info Article history: Received 28 May 2009 Revision received 17 February 2010 Available online 21 March 2010 Keywords: Colonialism Barley Agriculture Urban Ecuador Spanish Historical archaeology 18th century Archaeobotany abstract Archaeological excavation of two late-18th century household middens in the San Blas parish of the colo- nial city of Riobamba resulted in the recovery of samples of archaeobotanical remains dating to the per- iod before the AD 1797 destruction of the city in an earthquake. These seed remains were dominated by barley (Hordeum vulgare) and quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa). The dominance of these two grains in sam- ples from artisans’ households in this marginal neighborhood suggests that we should question the assumption that imported Old World domesticates were associated with more elite houses during the Spanish colonial period in the Andes. Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction On the morning of February 4, 1797 an earthquake that has since been estimated at a magnitude of 8.3 on the Richter Scale struck the city of Riobamba in the Audiencia of Quito, in what is to- day Ecuador (Egred, 2004; Terán Najas, 2000). This was one of the most singularly devastating earthquakes of the Spanish colonial period in the Andes, with an official death toll of 12,553 in the re- gion, including 4877 in the city of Riobamba itself (AGI Quito, 1797). Most of the urban architecture was flattened, and the deci- sion was eventually made to abandon the location and re-found the city 17 km to the northeast, where the modern city of Rio- bamba is located today (Egred, 2004; Terán Najas, 2000). The remains of the colonial city sit under the modern town of Sicalpa, a market town at an elevation of 3000 masl in the highland province of Chimborazo, Ecuador (Fig. 1). This was an Inka, and perhaps pre-Inkaic Puruhá, centre, before the Spanish arrived in the region (Salomon, 1986, p. 192; Terán Najas, 2000, p. 19). Incor- porated by the Spanish conquest into the Viceroyalty of Peru in AD 1534, the region had been a prehispanic centre for the production of maguey/agave fiber products (Villasante, 1991 [1568–1571], pp. 64–65). After the Spanish conquest Riobamba became an impor- tant centre for the production of woolen textiles exported through- out Ecuador and Peru (Tyrer, 1988). The collapse of the textile market in the 18th century led to a period of decline for the city, which culminated in the 1797 earthquake and abandonment of the city (Terán Najas, 2000). Since 2003 the Sicalpa Historical Archaeology Project has been undertaking survey and excavation to study the colonial period archaeology of Sicalpa (Jamieson, 2004; Michaels, 2009; St. Denis, 2008), following upon the 1980s work of archaeologists from Ecua- dor’s Museo del Banco Central (Central Bank Museum) (Jara Chávez, 1991). Initial excavations by the MBC were focused on large-scale clearance of the foundations of several colonial institutions in the city core, such as monasteries. The work of the SHAP, on the other hand, has included a series of smaller-scale excavations emphasiz- ing the analysis of colonial material culture from a variety of con- texts. One focus of this work has been household excavations in the southwest part of the city, an area that during the colonial period was the lower-class parish of San Blas. Colonialism, identity and agriculture In excavating household remains from the Spanish colonial per- iod in Riobamba, we are creating data that can be compared to archaeological work on Spanish colonial sites elsewhere in the Americas. In doing so, we confront a literature in which the ‘‘St. 0278-4165/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2010.02.003 * Corresponding author. Fax: +1 778 782 5666. E-mail addresses: rossjami@sfu.ca (R.W. Jamieson), becksayre@wisc.edu (M.B. Sayre). Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29 (2010) 208–218 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Anthropological Archaeology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jaa