Caribbean (Geographic Keyword)
201-225 (537 Records)
Environmental Archaeology is a diverse field that focuses on the inherent relationships between past people and the physical environments in which they lived. Archaeologists employ traces of past human behavior and cultural practices in their macro-, micro-, geo- and biochemical forms to study past environmental conditions as well as human activities that directly or indirectly involved or impacted the environment. In the Caribbean islands, archaeologists employ a diversity of analytical...
Environmental change and the social context of human adaptation strategies during the Archaic Period in the Caribbean (2016)
The connection between environmental change and social response is complex because change occurs on multiple inter-related factors, human decisions are filtered by social buffers, and the rate and scale of environmental change differs from scale of human decision-making. In this presentation I consider the rate of coastal landscape change before the mid-Holocene affecting human settlement patterns in the Caribbean, evaluate traditional settlement patterns in the context of maritime culture, and...
European Ceramics in the Caribbean: A Glimpse at Globalization during the Colonial Era (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. The Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustatius (Statia) was a free port for much of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries where the forces of globalization, such as people, resources, commodities, and ideas moved unceasingly, altering the world as it was and pushing it closer...
European Material Culture in Indigenous Sites in Northeastern Cuba (2017)
Northeastern Cuba, particularly the modern-day province of Holguin, is one of the areas of the Caribbean with the largest number of indigenous sites yielding European objects. In the sixteenth century, most of these sites maintained direct or indirect links with Europeans, while others were transformed into permanent colonial spaces by the Spaniards. The study of European objects found at these sites suggests that some of these items were acquired through exchange or as gifts. However, the...
Evaluating the Applicability of the Coimbra Method on an Archaeological Sample from Sint 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. To uncover details of past people’s day to day life, bioarchaeologists have attempted to reconstruct possible activity patterns by examining changes that occur at musculoskeletal markers, called entheseal sites (ES). While there is general agreement about the overall effect of...
Evaluating the Brass Pin Wreck as a Cultural and Biological Resource Within the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (2022)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Brass Pin Wreck, located with the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary (FKNMS), is representative of a 19th century composite hulled sailing vessel. This site is known by its numerous bronze pin hull fasteners and its main feature, a large iron mast. In May 2021, Indiana University’s Center for Underwater Science sent a team of divers to survey the site for the first time...
Examining the Religious Dynamics of the Columbian Exchange: Islands of Belief and Conversion (2017)
The major moments of cultural exchange in global accounts of encounter have happened across the oceans and therefore island communities have often been first to experience contact and shape the nature of this encounter. This is certainly the case in the Caribbean where the island Taino were the first to encounter Europeans in the New World. The archaeology of Mona Island provides insights into both the origins of indigenous Taíno identities and religious communities, and the processes of...
Excavations at the Fresh Lake site (SS-7), San Salvador Island, Bahamas (2016)
More than three dozen prehistoric sites exist on San Salvador Island, Bahamas. These consist of small settlements and work areas of the indigenous Lucayans. One of these sites, the Fresh Lake site (SS-7), has been the focus of research by Youngstown State University archaeologists each December since 2012. No clear signs of habitation have yet been found, although over 100 shell beads, along with pottery, shell tools, and shells and fish bones, have been recovered. In this paper, the nature of...
Exchange and Interaction in the Caribbean: The View from Two Collections of the Smithsonian (2015)
Recent research in the Caribbean has produced strong evidence of long distance interaction throughout the Circum-Caribbean region, including possible direct exchange between Central America and the Greater Antilles across the Caribbean Sea. A recent casual survey of the Caribbean collections in the Smtihsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the National Museum of Natural History has identified two objects that may add information on this topic. The first one is a three-pointer...
Exploration in portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) applications to zooarchaeology (2015)
Current research in portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) applications for archaeological research constantly attempts to push the boundaries of what this technology can accomplish. Although research involving lithics, glass, metals and ceramics remain the most common venues of investigation, bone has also become an innovative focus of inquiry. However, because it has been studied significantly less than these other forms of material culture there is still much that is unknown in terms of how...
Exploring Anthropogenic Causes of St. Croix's Environmental Conditions (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "“Folkeliv” and Black Folks’ Lives: Archaeology, History, and Contemporary Black Atlantic Communities", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. In the 21st century St. Croix (of the U.S. Virgin Islands) is a difficult place to live. Present day Crucians, many of whom are descendants of enslaved Africans (who were brought to the island to work on sugar plantations), regularly endure droughts and lack access to...
Exploring Enslaved African Lifeways: An Isotopic Study of an Eighteenth-Century Cemetery (SE600) on St. Eustatius, Caribbean Netherlands (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. Multiple isotope analyses of skeletal tissues are a useful tool for exploring lifeways of past populations. Isotopic analysis of Caribbean populations is still in its infancy, making the technique a useful tool for learning about these populations. St. Eustatius is a small island...
Exploring Records of Prehistoric Anthropogenic and Climate Change in the Bahama Archipelago (2016)
The peopling of the Bahama archipelago during the eighth through eleventh centuries AD occurred at a rapid pace. In this study we examine several data sets to understand this fast-moving expansion. Sedimentological and geochemical data derived from cores from inland ponds and lakes from several islands in the Bahama archipelago indicate that migration took place during periods of hurricane hyperactivity, sea level changes, and hydrological variability. Settlement data and material culture...
Families Inside and Out: Family Relationships and Institutional Healthcare at a Leper Hospital in St. Croix, USVI (2022)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. From 1888 to 1954, the Danish colonial and later US governments of St. Croix operated a leper hospital on the island. Residents were often admitted for extended periods of time with many living there for decades prior to death and burial in the Christiansted Cemetery. Throughout their residency, patients likely formed family-like relationships within the hospital community and maintained...
Females in Arecibo, Puerto Rico in 1910. (2018)
This research concentrates on reconstructing the identity and roles of females living in the city of Arecibo, Puerto Rico in the early 20th century. Using data from the 1910’s Puerto Rico census as primary source, I intend to identify the jobs and professions reported for the arecibeñas (female from Arecibo) living in urban blocks close to the main city square. The documentation consulted also provides information on their age, marital status, and family role. The objective of this investigation...
Finding Faces in the Yellow Brick Road: The Elusive Lives and Deaths of St. Croix’s Residents with Leprosy (2022)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. From the St. Croix Leper Hospital’s founding in 1888 to its dissolution in 1954, hundreds of individuals with leprosy passed through its facilities. The hospital residents constituted a social fringe that was disproportionately comprised of people of color and about which documentation was often biased. Using a combination of primary historical sources including newspapers, photographs,...
Fingerprints of Community: Decolonizing Archaeological Data Analysis through Networks (2018)
This paper uses the Nexus 1492 database, built over approximately 30 years of fieldwork, to examine ceramic attribute variability throughout the Antillean Islands. Regional ceramic analyses often focus on the construction of ceramic typologies that are then used to compare typological proportions, differences, and similarities at various spatial resolutions across temporal periods. Long-standing critiques of the use of typologies and taxonomies in archaeology (sensu Brew 1946; Gnecco and...
Five Centuries of Post-occupation Formation Processes: Excavations at the Dim Bay Site, Bahamas (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. SS-5, the Dim Bay site, is a prehistoric Lucayan site on the east side of San Salvador Island, Bahamas. Ongoing research reveals intricate stratigraphy in comparison to other sites on the island. While most sites on San Salvador are in protected locations on the leeward sides of dunes, SS-5 is on a low transverse dune by the beach between the ocean and an...
Food Establishments and the Role Women Played in Nineteenth-Century Old San Juan, Puerto Rico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project studies food establishments that were commercially registered between 1897 and 1899 and the role that women played as business owners in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. I analyzed primary sources, which included state-issued permits for local merchants, as well as diverse secondary sources to gain a clearer scope of the socioeconomic dynamics of...
Food for the Soul & Well-being: Ruminations about the Other Face of Ancient Plant Remains (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Intangible Dimensions of Food in the Caribbean Ancient and Recent Past" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper makes the case for a greater concerted effort in archaeobotany to give equal standing to the domain of 'food' for the soul and spirit, that is, useful/edible plants for the well-being of the individual and the community in the past. All too often, the emphasis falls into concerns of staple food as a...
Food in Caribbean Archaeology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Intangible Dimensions of Food in the Caribbean Ancient and Recent Past" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The study of food has been part of modern Caribbean archaeology almost from its inception. While few researchers have tried to go beyond the material aspect of food, most of the studies have been materialist in nature emphasizing aspects such as diet, production, and ecology. This paper serves as an introduction...
Foreigners Building a Future in Colonial San Juan, 1910. (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. Throughout the centuries, San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico and a port city, has received an influx of foreigners who have left their footprint within the urban layout. This presentation will address another way of studying the presence of immigrants, within the six neighborhoods of the walled city of San Juan in 1910. Census data...
Forget We Not: Continuity and Change in Saba's Unique Burial Practices, Dutch Caribbean (2017)
This paper analyses continuity and change in burial practices through time on Saba, Dutch Caribbean, from first colonization in the mid seventeenth century to the modern era. The Saban tradition of stone-lined vaults surrounding the buried coffin is a cultural element from English migrants that dates back to early Welsh and Anglo-Saxon burial traditions, and continues into the present day. This practice, however, appears to be limited to the free dominant culture, as it has not been observed...
Formation Processes of Maritime Archaeological Sites in the French West Indies Through the Example of Guadeloupe: A First Approach (2013)
A broad point of view is applied in order to present this first approach on the formation processes of submerged and coastal archaeological sites in Guadeloupe. Evidence from historical analysis to archaeological observation help to explain formation processes associated with coastal and submerged archaeological sites. This paper presents a typological approach linked with the site location: underwater, coastal and micro island sites. The formation processes of shipwreck sites incorporate...
Forts of San Juan (1981)
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