Project description
Exploring Old Panama’s globalisation legacy
In the convergence of four continents, Old Panama, a narrow isthmian pass connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, witnessed a complex web of cultural and commercial contacts. The EU-funded ArtEmpire project will employ an interdisciplinary approach to unravel the diverse impacts of European incursions, African slaves, Asian merchandise, and indigenous alliances during early globalisation. Through historical, archaeological, and archaeometric methodologies, this initiative will challenge prevailing narratives and offer fresh insights into the cultural, biological and economic consequences of this pivotal junction. By exploring the material legacy of Old Panama, the project aims to redefine our understanding of the interconnectedness and survival strategies of the diverse peoples who shaped this historic site.
Objective
European incursions onto the narrow isthmian pass that divided and connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans made it a strategic node of the Spanish Empire and a crucial site for early modern globalization. On the front lines of the convergence of four continents, Old Panama offers an unusual opportunity for examining the diverse, often asymmetrical impacts of cultural and commercial contacts. The role of Italian, Portuguese, British, Dutch, and French interests in the area, as well as an influx of African slaves and Asian merchandise, have left a unique material legacy that requires an integrated, interdisciplinary approach to its varied sources. Bones, teeth and artifacts on this artery of Empire offer the possibility of new insights into the cultural and biological impact of early globalization. They also invite an interdisciplinary approach to different groups’ tactics for survival, including possible dietary changes, and the pursuit of profit. Such strategies may have led the diverse peoples inhabiting this junction, from indigenous allies to African and Asian bandits to European corsairs, to develop and to favor local production and Pacific trade networks at the expense of commerce with the metropolis.
This project applies historical, archaeological and archaeometric methodologies to evidence of encounters between peoples and goods from Europe, America, Africa and Asia that took place on the Isthmus of Panama during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Forging an interdisciplinary approach to early globalization, it challenges both Euro-centric and Hispano-phobic interpretations of the impact of the conquest of America, traditionally seen as a demographic catastrophe that reached its nadir in the so-called seventeenth-century crisis. Rather than applying quantitative methods to incomplete source material, researchers will adopt a contextualized, inter-disciplinary, qualitative approach to diverse agents involved in cultural and commercial exchange.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
41013 Sevilla
Spain