 | Instalaciones y Paisajes Azucareros Atlánticos (siglos XV-XVII) : Arqueología y Patrimonio Between the 15th and 17th centuries, sugar cultivation and processing, a Mediterranean industry throughout the Middle Ages, experienced what we can aptly describe as the first period of its prosperous Atlantic history. Following its introduction to Madeira by the Portuguese, sugarcane cultivation and sugar production became the epicentre of a lucrative trade that spread, in step with Iberian colonial expansion, to the Azores and the archipelagos off the African coast: the Canary Islands, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe. From there, it reached the Caribbean and the Americas, where the sugar mills eventually outstripped their counterparts on the other side of the Atlantic in the 16th century. The sugar estates that sprang up along the Atlantic at the time were manufacturing and residential complexes that epitomised much of the technological prowess of the period, while at the same time providing unique insights into social segregation, domination and exploitation, both of human beings and of the land and its resources. This book explores the material dimension of these sugar mills and the landscapes of which they are both cause and effect. As such, it attaches particular importance to the analytical perspectives and methodologies of archaeology and the history of technology. Notwithstanding, the editors of this book are convinced that the evidence and material traces of the past only exist and survive in the present. They have therefore chosen to give pride of place to the study of heritage in the broadest sense of the term. María del Cristo González Marrero, PhD in Medieval History and Professor at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, is a specialist in the study of the materiality of late medieval Hispanic society. She has combined this line of research with studies related to insular and North African archaeology. Recently she has been the principal investigator of the project entitled Patrimonio agrario y agronomía práctica. Técnicas agrícolas e historia rural en la Gran Canaria indígena y colonial (s.s. X-XVI), funded by the CajaCanarias Foundation and La Caixa Foundation, part of whose results are presented in this book. Jorge Onrubia Pintado, historian and archaeologist, is currently director of the Laboratory of Archaeology, Heritage and Emerging Technologies of the UCLM. He specialises in the history of the Amazigh Maghreb and the pre-Hispanic and colonial Canary Islands. His current lines of research include landscapes and built spaces, the dynamics of colonisation and acculturation, the history of techniques and the theory of materiality, the archaeology of the image, and 'public' archaeology and heritage processes. |
