| This study integrates, within a cultural- ecological paradigm, environmental information, a geographical approach to the archaeological record, and historical archival research. The goal is twofold: (1) to define the fundamental structure of the aboriginal Karankawan adaptive system at the time of initial European contact, and (2) to determine how the Karankawans responded to the pressures exerted upon their native lifeways by the expanding northeastern frontier of New Spain during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.;Data gained from survey and excavation are interpreted to show that the Karankawans had developed a strategy of subsistence, settlement and seasonal mobility which took optimal advantage of the broad ecotonal nature of their native habitat. During the fall and winter, these people congregated at shoreline locations, in large socioeconomic groups, to exploit the seasonal abundance of major economic fish species, most notably black drum and redfish. During the spring and summer, the groups split up into smaller bands, moving up rivers and streams to camp along prairie margins and focus subsistence activities on the procurement of bison and whitetailed deer.;The historic, archival material, mostly unpublished, shows that this fundamental adaptive system was resilient under the impacts and pressures of Spanish colonization of the region. In spite of an initial decline in population due to exposure to European diseases, the Karankawans were able to achieve demographic stability and to ultimately adjust to the Spanish mission and presidio complex by quite strategically incorporating the mission into the traditional adaptive system as an ecological resource. It was their ability to do so which rendered them adaptable to change along a colonial frontier, and finally resulted in a viable interaction with the Spaniards and a partial peaceful acculturation to patterns of Spanish culture.;The study is a synthesis of multidisciplinary data that shows how one cultural group adapted to rapid exogenous change. As such, it demonstrates the high potential of a historical, cultural-ecological paradigm to explicate the dynamic processes of human adaptive transformations. |
