Ms. Maria Hroncich-Conner will present the June 2014 History Notes lecture at Branigan Cultural Center on Thursday, June 12 at 1pm. Her lecture is titled Acculturation and Preference: An Investigation of Household Ceramics from a 17th Century Spanish Estancia.
In early Spanish households in New Mexico pottery served a number of purposes, both functional and aesthetic. Ms. Hroncich-Conner is a specialist in ceramic technology of the colonial Southwest. She will discuss ways in which early Spanish colonists used and valued household ceramics within a colonial frontier. This work forms the basis for her dissertation, Status, Form, and Necessity: A Comparative Investigation of Ceramic Selection across Four Spanish Households in Seventeenth Century New Mexico. Using ceramics excavated from four contemporaneous seventeenth century households in north-central New Mexico, she hopes to elucidate which ceramics early Spanish settlers considered to be most essential and what they reveal about colonial concepts of value and necessity within the confines of a limited and unpredictable economy.
Ms. Hroncich-Conner has eight years of experience in archaeology. She has conducted archaeological excavations, archaeological surveys, historical investigations, archival research, academic presentations and course instruction exclusively in the American Southwest. She is currently Adjunct Faculty at New Mexico State University, and has previously worked as a Lab Instructor at the University of New Mexico. She has authored and co-authored several cultural reports and has participated in a wide variety of archaeological projects throughout the Southwest.
History Notes, monthly lectures on historical topics, take place on the second Thursday of each month at 1 pm. Please check our webpage for facebook for a full listing of these and other Branigan Cultural Center public programs.
The Branigan Cultural Center is located at 501 North Main Street. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 9am to 4:30pm. For more information, contact the Branigan Cultural Center at (575) 541-2154 or visit the Center’s website at las-cruces.org/museums.
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