Presented by Tinker-Nave Summer Field Research Grant Recipients: Tanairi Diaz-Lopez, Fernanda M. Hernandez Betanzos, and Mariana Sarkis Olson.

Presentation #1: “Puerto Rican Artists and their Fight for Black Representation,” presented by Tanairi Diaz-Lopez.
The presentation is a summary of the investigation about the Arts in Puerto Rico, Blackness, the discourse of el mestizaje, and the key findings of the research.

Presentation #2: “Ritual Use of Sahumadores in Central Mexico: Preliminary Research,” presented by Fernanda M. Hernandez Betanzos.
This presentation will discuss my research interests, centering on the preliminary work I did over the summer in Mexico, thanks to funding from the Tinker-Nave Foundation. These activities include visiting UNAM’s Instituto de Investigaciones Antropologicas, the National Archives, Templo Mayor, the Anthropology Museum, and the Teotihuacan Laboratory. My research interest as an archaeologist, specializing in Mesoamerica and specifically central Mexico, focuses on the material culture associated with ritual practices, such as the burning of incense through the use of centers (the type known as ladle-frying-pan centers, or sahumadores) and the botanical elements burned in them. This project utilizes multidisciplinary approaches (i.e. ethnohistory, ethnoarchaeology, residue, fingerprint, and stylistic-attribute analysis) to further our understanding of how ritual practices shaped everyday life and the varied dimensions in which this activity took place while considering contemporary practices for comparative analysis.
Fernanda is a Ph.D. student working in Mesoamerica, specifically, in central Mexico. Her interests includes ethnoarchaeology, ethnohistory, ethnobotany, itinerancy and migration, the material culture of medicine, cultural hybridity and syncretism, and Indigenous archaeology. She is working towards preserving Mexico’s cultural patrimony through community outreach and hopes to advocate for the repatriation of pre-Columbian artifacts from abroad.

Presentation #3: “The Intimate Lives of Unmarried Families in 18th-Century New Spain,” presented by Mariana Sarkis Olson.
My presentation will focus on the challenges of archival research conducted in Mexico in the summer of 2024. I will present the results of the primary sources found on unmarried families processed by the Ecclesiastical Court of New Spain between the 17th and 18th centuries.
Mariana is a Brazilian historian who studies Latin America and early modern Iberia history, emphasizing the colonial period in New Spain (present-day Mexico). She is in her second year as a PhD student in the History Department, and her research areas are Colonialism, Family history, Legal history, and Atlantic history. One of her central focuses is on understanding how civil and ecclesiastical justice regulated families and their cultural and moral customs between the Habsburgs and Bourbons periods in Mexico. One aspect of understanding such intervention is through the family arrangement of amancebamiento. Mariana is placing this topic by examining judicial processes from Real Audiencia and Tribunal Eclesiástico of New Spain during the 18th and 17th centuries.