In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, much of what is now the south-western United States was known as Alta California, a remote part of New Spain. The presidios, missions, and pueblos of the region have yielded a rich trove of ceramics materials, though they have been sparsely analysed in the literature. Ceramic Produc¬tion in Early Hispanic California fills that lacuna and reinterprets the position of Alta California in the Spanish Colonial Empire.

Using both petrography and neutron activation analysis to exam¬ine over 1,600 ceramic samples, the contributors to this volume ex¬plore the region’s ceramic production, imports, trade, and consump¬tion. From artistic innovation to technological diffusion, a different aspect of the intricacies of everyday life and culture in the region is revealed in each essay. This book illuminates much about Spanish imperial expansion in a far corner of the colonial world. Through this research, California history has been rewritten.