Caribbean (Geographic Keyword)
126-150 (537 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Primary Sources and the Design of Research Projects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A deeper analysis of the neighborhoods (barrios) of San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, during the early 1900’s provides a clearer scope of the complexities of population density and work related activities. For instance, Barrio Ballajá, the smallest neighborhood located to the northwest of the walled city, had a population of...
Commercializing for its People: "Pulperías" and "Ventorrillos" in the City of San Juan, 1910-1920. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Primary Sources and the Design of Research Projects" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research is a case study in which the themes of "pulperías" and "ventorrillos", within the walled city of San Juan Puerto Rico in 1910 and 1920, is approached as a potential line of archaeological research. The main objective is to identify the existence of these commercial loci within the study area through the analysis of...
Communities of Practice and Sequencing from Older Caribbean Collections in the NMAI and NMNH (2018)
The Caribbean holdings of the National Museum of the American Indian and the Anthropology Department of the National Museum of Natural History contain material from historically important early excavations like those of M. R. Harrington in eastern Cuba in 1915 and Herbert W. Krieger in the Dominican Republic in 1928. Moreover, they include the results of early collection efforts by such luminaries as Jesse W. Fewkes and Theodor de Booy, which means that they contain some of the key specimens...
Community Archaeology at the St. John's River Site, Grenada (2016)
The St. John’s River site is an early Late Ceramic Age settlement on Grenada’s west coast, largely destroyed by the expansion of a public cemetery, stadium, and bridge. The St. George’s Community Archaeology Project (SGCAP) was a summer program developed to engage young people and community members in the investigation and preservation of the remaining areas of the site. During the summers of 2011 and 2012, surface collection, shovel testing, and four excavation pits were implemented. The...
Community Entanglements: Archaeology, Heritage, and Community Partnership at the Little Bay Plantation, Montserrat, West Indies (2015)
Tourism has replaced sugar as the Caribbean’s economic engine. The ruins of sugar mills incorporated into resorts create cultural experiences rooted in romanticized notions of colonialism. Paradoxically the labor structure of this externally driven model replicates the racial, economic, and social divisions of the plantation structure. Promoted as "sustainable," the recent shift to heritage tourism while advantageous to archaeology is rife with the colonizing potential of Eurocentric tourism and...
Comparative analysis of ceramic assemblages from 18th century Caribbean enslaved populations (2015)
Multiple ceramic samples were type identified and analyzed for the use in a regional comparative analysis of enslaved populations. The sampled ceramics were obtained from multiple contexts collected from various Caribbean locations. The comparative analyses clarify social dynamics, prosperity, and sustainability within enslaved populations. Afro-Caribbean, colonial tradewares, and exotics were compared by quantifying frequency and present/absent along with the level of diversity in the local...
Comparative Analysis of Leper Hospital Landscapes on St. Croix and St. Kitts (2022)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. From biblical times to the 21st century, leprosy has afflicted populations. Medically and socially, leprosy alters patients’ quality of life. This poster compares two Caribbean island healthcare landscapes in terms of government funding, structural planning, and sheds light on the healthcare of marginalized populations. St. Croix’s leper hospital was established in 1888 by the Danish...
Comparing Age-at-Death Profiles from Cemeteries on Sint Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Exploring Globalization and Colonialism through Archaeology and Bioarchaeology: An NSF REU Sponsored Site on the Caribbean’s Golden Rock (Sint Eustatius)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. On the Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius (Statia), there are several cemeteries dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, primarily utilized during a time of colonization and trade by the European colonial powers, Netherlands, Great...
Comparing Patterns of Skeletal Pathology in Enslaved Africans from an Eighteenth-Century Cemetery on St. Eustatius (2021)
This is an abstract from the "NSF REU Site: Exploring Globalization through Archaeology 2019–2020 Session, St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research investigates the patterns of skeletal pathology of 15 enslaved individuals in an eighteenth-century cemetery on St. Eustatius. Nine different pathology markers were analyzed from the 15 individuals of St. Eustatius and compared to individuals from the Newton...
Conch Shells and Concrete: Differential Mortuary Treatment in Christiansted Cemetery, St. Croix, USVI (2022)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. As part of the 2021 National Science Foundation funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates Exploring Globalization Through Archaeology site investigations of the St. Croix Leper Hospital (1888-1954), team members documented over 1200 graves in the Christiansted Cemetery. After identifying the names of hospital residents from census records (1890-1940) and the names of 240 individuals...
Constructing Space and Community within Landscapes of Slavery in Early 19th c. Jamaica (2016)
While household artifact analyses contribute a great deal to understanding the enslaved experience in the colonial Caribbean, where possible, landscape studies allow archaeologists to more completely reconstruct past built environments of slavery. Using a landscape approach, this paper investigates the use of space by the enslaved population at Marshall’s Pen, a 19th c. Jamaican coffee estate. Through landscape survey, we can better understand how enslaved men and women actively constructed...
Constructing Stories from Archaeological Evidence and Documentary Sources (2017)
The archaeological collections crisis we have been facing for the last couple of decades has forced many of us to rethink how to conduct research without adding to the problem. Although the idea that you need to excavate in order to do "archaeology" still permeates the opinions in academia, we have been seeing more research projects that revisit archaeological collections. Therefore, how can we make archaeology students aware of other research possibilities? The archaeological excavations...
Contact and Colonial Impact in Jamaica: Comparative Material Culture and Diet at Sevilla la Nueva and the Taino Village of Maima (2017)
In June 1503, Columbus and his two battered ships were run aground in the sheltered harbor of St. Anns Bay Jamaica, 1.4 kilometers from the Taino village of Maima. After spending a year marooned there, the Spanish left with the knowledge of the people and resources of the area. Six years later, in 1509, the Spanish returned to found the Jamaican colonial capital of Sevilla la Nueva. By the time Sevilla la Nueva was abandoned in 1534, Maima was deserted. Historical records kept by the colonists...
Contemporary archaeology of Haitian vodou caching (2016)
Kneeling on bare earth, the Priestess takes a handful of store-bought confections from their glinting metallic bag and tosses them into a living cache. Candles and carved stones protrude at the sides of this hole, marking intrusions made and remade so many times they have now been lost to memory (even as their matter persists). Following Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas’ call to study contemporary material culture archaeologically, this paper uses and presents ethnographic data collected...
Contemporary Archaeology of the Recent Soufrière Hills Volcanic Eruptions on Montserrat (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In July of 1995, the Soufrière Hills volcano began a series of eruptions that would fundamentally alter the communities and landscapes of the small Caribbean island of Montserrat. By the turn of the millennium, two-thirds of the island had been abandoned or destroyed, and a comparable proportion of the population had relocated abroad. This paper presents the...
Contemporary human uses of forested watersheds and riparian corridors: hazard mitigation as an ecosystem service, with examples from Panama, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela (2016)
Humans have long favored settlement along rivers for access to water supply for drinking and agriculture, transport corridors, and food sources. Settlement in or near montane forests include benefits such as food and wood supply, and high quality water resources derived from watersheds where upstream human disturbance and environmental degradation is generally reduced. However, the advantages afforded by these floodplain and montane settings pose episodic risks for communities located there as...
Contested Landscapes in the Caribbean: Revisiting Colonial Representations of Indigenous Political Hierarchy, Borders and Movement (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Contested Landscapes: The Archaeology of Politics, Borders, and Movement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. What we know today of the Indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean is the result of a process of cultural interpretation and representation originating from the colonial enterprise. For the island of Haytí, later renamed as Hispaniola by Columbus, the first Spanish chroniclers identified a set of indigenous...
Contesting Dispossession. Marronage´s Mobility and the Emergence of a Landscape, 17th and 18th Century, Colombia. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Contested Landscapes: The Archaeology of Politics, Borders, and Movement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Access to land is still a problem in Latin America and the Caribbean (as well as other places, mostly located in the global South). In that context, the landscapes and our analysis of them are directly crossed by power relations, conflict, the creation of borders, contestation of hierarchies, etc. The current...
Contextualizing Tibes and the Local Landscape (2016)
This paper provides archaeological evidence for the local landscape surrounding the Ceremonial Center of Tibes (ca. 500 and 1300 AD) on the south-central coast of Puerto Rico. Settlements identified during recent archaeological survey of the micro-region surrounding the site, in conjunction with archaeological data from well excavated sites in the area, is presented to spatially and temporally contextualize recent findings at Tibes. Settlement variability is characterized and local temporal...
The Continuing Archaeological Investigations on the Northeast Coast of San Salvador Island, Bahamas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Advances in the Archaeology of the Bahama Archipelago" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Youngstown State University archaeologists have conducted research on San Salvador Island since 1995, initially under the direction of Gary Fry and, later, of Thomas Delvaux and Matt O’Mansky. This research has focused on three sites on the east side of the island: the North Storr’s Lake site (SS-4), the Fresh Lake site (SS-7), and...
Contrasting worldviews in Hispaniola: Places and Taskscapes at the age of Colonial Encounter (2017)
Landscape has been an useful analytical tool for archaeologists for a long time. Its definition since its first uses in the discipline has grown and diversified to the point that is has been called a "usefully ambiguous" concept. However, this broad definition should not be applied everywhere and in every temporal/historical context. This concept should not be used as an straight forward analytical tool, but requires a critical contextual revision. For an alternative approach in the area of this...
The Contribution of Canímar Abajo, Cuba to an Understanding of Early Populations in the Greater Antilles (2015)
Excavation at the site of Canímar Abajo, situated in northern Cuba, has yielded new data that contribute to our understanding of early populations in the Greater Antilles. AMS radiocarbon dates on human bone collagen provide a secure chronology for a mortuary context dating to the 2nd millennium BC. Analysis of starch grains recovered from human dental calculus demonstrates that common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) was cultivated by at least 1200 BC. Stable isotope analysis of human bone collagen...
Cookbooks as Documentary Sources: The Material Culture of Kitchens and Tables from 19th-Century Puerto Rican Households (2017)
Puerto Rico’s culinary history is characterized by a blend of the different ethnicities that settled in the island after the Spanish Conquest, as well as the incorporation of pre-Columbian food ways. This ethnogenesis can be studied through the culinary traditions that conform what we now refer to as criollo. This presentation uses El Cocinero Puerto-Riqueño, the only cookbook available from the 19th century in Puerto Rico, as a primary source to address the material culture associated to...
Cookware and Crockery: A Form and Functional View from the Southern Bahamas (2018)
Recent archaeobotanical research on the Palmetto Junction archaeological site located in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands, provides new insights into the livelihoods and subsistence practices of the peoples who inhabited this coastal region from c. AD 1200-1500 Significantly, the plant microbotanical remains, identified as primarily seeds and tubers provide evidence for a continuation in the consumption and manipulation of plant resources. During the late precolonial period people used...
Costly Signaling, Risk Management, and Network Creation: Commodity Production and Exchange in the Historic Caribbean (2015)
During slavery, enslaved and freed Africans throughout the Caribbean engaged in commodity production and exchange for many different but complementary reasons. Slaves and freedman raised crops and animals and produced crafts that they traded as well as engaged in rented labor, both allowed them to barter for other goods and earn cash. For some, this exchange allowed them to survive the hardships of slavery and marginalization. Others were able to accumulate goods and cash that allowed them to...