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Caring for Bodies or Simply Saving Souls: The Emergence of Institutional Care in Spanish Colonial America

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New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care

Part of the book series: Bioarchaeology and Social Theory ((BST))

Abstract

The emergence of care institutions in Europe and later in the Americas was linked with a broad Christian ideology of charity. In this chapter, I explore how methods for providing bodily care become entwined with other kinds of caregiving, such as spiritual or psychological care. This broad perspective on the topic of care may be especially useful when exploring how care was conceptualized and administered in the early period of Spanish colonial rule. This chapter analyses the emergence of institutional care in the Americas through an examination of the Hospital Real San José de los Naturales, the first royally sponsored hospital for the indigenous population in the capital of New Spain. Utilizing historical sources and skeletal remains recovered from the within the architectural remains of the hospital, I highlight how the motivation to provide care or seek care was influenced by the specific historic time and place in which these institutions were founded.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Lorna Tilley and Alecia A. Schrenk for inviting me to participate in the conference session and for providing thoughtful critiques of this chapter. This research was supported by a UC MEXUS dissertation research grant and I was supported as a resident scholar at the institute while completing this work. I would also like to thank Dr. Lourdes Márquez Morfín for providing me with access to the HSJN skeletal collection and the academic community in the Graduate Osteology Laboratory at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historía, in particular Elizabeth Hernández who served as my assistant while collecting data in Mexico.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of California Institute for Mexico and the US (UC MEXUS), Riverside, CA, USA

    Julie K. Wesp Ph.D.

  2. Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT), Mexico City, Mexico

    Julie K. Wesp Ph.D.

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  1. Julie K. Wesp Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Julie K. Wesp Ph.D. .

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  1. School of Archaeology and Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, Aust Capital Terr, Australia

    Lorna Tilley

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

    Alecia A. Schrenk

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Wesp, J.K. (2017). Caring for Bodies or Simply Saving Souls: The Emergence of Institutional Care in Spanish Colonial America. In: Tilley, L., Schrenk, A. (eds) New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39901-0_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39901-0_13

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