Objetos y cultura. rituales, flujos y elaboraciones en el Nuevo Reino de Granada

TL;DR

This article examines the circulation, appropriation, and commercial and symbolic uses of objects in colonial New Kingdom of Granada society, especially eighteenth-century Antioquia and the Viceroyalty. It argues that objects were social elaborations and cultural mediators linking domestic life, rituals, roads, and trade.

Key findings

• Objects in colonial domestic life were socially differentiated and ritualized: elites used silver cutlery, mirrors, religious images, fine china, and books, while common people used clay vessels, coconuts with silver bases, and often ate with their hands.
• In mining, tools became identifiers: in Nóvita and Citará slave cuadrillas, the text distinguishes *negros de barra*, *negros de batea*, *negros de almocafre*, *negros de cachos*, and the *negro forjador/herrero/maestro de la fragua*; names and ethnic origins sometimes disappeared in favor of the object/tool each enslaved person carried.
• Between 1773 and 1777, the three power centers of the Province of Antioquia—Rionegro, Medellín, and Santa Fe—received 5,157, 2,653, and 1,152 *cargas* of clothing, Castilian/Quito/Kingdom goods, respectively, linked to mining expansion, population growth, and slight road improvement.
• Dress and objects marked ethnic and social privilege and were regulated by Indian legislation: *negras* and *mulatas* were prohibited from wearing gold, pearls, or silk, except married to Spaniards under limited conditions, while capes, daggers, and swords were reserved for nobility and people of Spanish origin.

Methods

• Historical and qualitative study of material culture, drawing on archival sources including AGN (*Testamentarías del Cauca*, *Negros y esclavos del Cauca*, *Mejoras Materiales*, *Juicios Civiles*, *Abastos*), AHJM (Caja 177, Caja 191), AHM (*Cabildo*), and ACC (*Minas*), plus printed primary sources and secondary literature.
• Analyzes circulation, appropriation, commercial and symbolic uses of objects in domestic life, rituals, roads, and trade, focusing on eighteenth-century Antioquia and the Viceroyalty of New Granada.
• No formal sampling or statistical model is used; evidence comes from testaments, inventories, letters, lawsuits, cabildo records, and administrative/traveler reports.

Limitations

• The paper states no explicit limitations.
• Evident from the text: it is a broad interpretive essay relying on selected archival examples and secondary synthesis, without systematic sampling or quantitative analysis, so findings are illustrative rather than exhaustive.
• Evident from the text: geographic and temporal scope is concentrated on eighteenth-century Antioquia and the Viceroyalty, with some nineteenth-century asides, rather than a comprehensive survey of the entire New Kingdom of Granada.