Portrait of the Bahamas: Shipwrecks and its belongings.

Summary

The way people feel about their local historical or cultural past reflects their sense and extent of belonging. Identity, therefore, is closely related to the meaning attributed by people to their past. This presentation aims at presenting perceptions of identity related to shipwrecks in the Bahamas, where the circulation of individuals throughout the archipelago is an unending and powerfully formative process. It is well known that awareness of migration patterns is an important contributor to potentiate the understanding of belonging and particular modes of expression in non-sedentary cultures. Preservation of heritage is also dependent on contemporary social and political contexts in which remembering, forgetting, and appropriation are negotiated practices and a part of a peoples identity strategies. This work uses ethnographic interviews and oral histories to illuminate the importance of these submerged pieces of cultural heritage to the living, and moving population of the Caribbean.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Converging Worlds: Excavation of the Highbourne Cay Shipwreck   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 1022