Caribbean (Geographic Keyword)
76-100 (537 Records)
This case study explores how food consumption in the military garrison of San Juan de Puerto Rico played a role in the negotiation of status and identities during the Spanish colonial period. Since defense of the territories was the primary task, the military tended to have priority to the access of exotic foodstuffs, such as wheat products. Nevertheless, Puerto Rico was quickly relegated to the margins of the Spanish Empire and legal ships ceased to arrive in a constant mode. Thus, we want to...
Bioarchaeology, Barbados, Eastern Caribbean: Isotopic Analyses of Teeth and Bone from Human Remains (2015)
Bioarchaeological studies have grown in sophistication and are now helping test assumptions about island garden agriculture (palm, cassava and/or maize) and the relative contributions of marine proteins. Bone and teeth samples from five sites on Barbados were processed by Center for Applied Isotopic Studies, University of Georgia and data are reported for δ13Cco, δ13Cca, δ15Nco, and δ18Oap. Stable isotope ratios, adjusted ratios, and apatite-collagen spacing correspond with results from...
Biology of Shipwrecks in the Dominican Republic: How Submerged Cultural Resources Facilitate the Growth of Endangered and Threatened Coral Species (2023)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Shipwreck sites have long been studied archaeologically to gain insight into past cultures, trade routes, and ways of life of the people on board. However, the intersection of archaeology and biology on shipwrecks can prove to be just as significant, as shipwrecks in tropical Caribbean waters facilitate the growth of corals through increased benthic rugosity. Reefs are one of the first...
Black Pitch, Carved Histories: Prehistoric wood sculpture from Trinidad’s Pitch Lake (2015)
Since 6000 BC, if not earlier, Trinidad has been the gateway into the Caribbean for waves of South American migrants - the first stepping stone in the long chain of islands that make up the archipelago. Its critical position to the settlement of the Caribbean is reflected in its deep archaeological record, documenting the complex interactions between its diverse peoples over millennia. Unique among its archaeological sites is Pitch Lake, one of the largest natural deposits of asphalt in the...
Blurring Historical Lines: Cultural Divisions in the Lesser Antilles (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presentation complicates the cultural and temporal divisions of pottery types in the Caribbean. Specifically, this work seeks to elucidate the overlapping nature of Kalinago, Taíno, European, and Maroon pottery styles in the Lesser Antilles. Using archaeological material and data from La Soye, Dominica, and reference works from across the Lesser...
Bones of the Lucayans: Radiocarbon dating of human remains from the Bahamian Archipelago (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. The Bahamas were among the last islands to be settled in the Caribbean, with no known occupation prior to ca. AD 600 and reportedly complete depopulation by ca. AD 1520. The constrained island setting and restricted timescale provides an excellent opportunity to address a range of questions relating to island adaptations, all...
Breadth of Fresh Air: A Continued Examination of the Reversed "Crab-Shell Dichotomy" in Grenada’s Pre-History (2018)
In a previous paper, we examined past faunal studies from Troumassoid period (AD 800-1600) sites in Grenada, concluding that an expansion of diet breadth likely occurred during this time. Our conclusion contradicted the traditional "crab-shell" dichotomy proposed by Rainey and Rouse, but confirmed findings from elsewhere in the Caribbean. Presented here is a continuation of this work, with new faunal analyses incorporated from recently excavated inland, western, and earlier (Saladoid) sites, as...
Breaking and Making Identities: Transformations of Ceramic Repertoires in Early Colonial Hispaniola (2017)
Placed within the context of the ERC-NEXUS1492 research, this paper focusses on transformations in indigenous social and material worlds in Early Colonial Hispaniola. The initial intercultural encounters in the New World have led to the creation of entirely new social identities and changing material culture repertoires in the first decennia after colonization. The incorporation of European earthenwares in the indigenous sites of El Cabo and Playa Grande will be contrasted with the presence of...
The Breaking and Making of Ceramics in the Pre-Columbian Caribbean: A Technological Approach to Grog Identification (2015)
Grog is a technological phenomenon present in archaeological assemblages spanning widely across time and space. Traditionally defined as a grounded down, previously fired ceramic used as temper during clay preparation, grog belongs to a wider category of additives which increase porosity and reduce shrinkage, thereby lessening the likelihood of vessel crack progression during the drying and firing stages of ceramic production. Beyond this basic description of its functional properties, grog has...
Breaking the untold rule: community archaeology a bond of people and information (2015)
The relationship between the academia and non-academic individuals is often challenging, as there are tensions between who owns the power to produce knowledge. Citizen science is breaking this untold rule by incorporating the communities, fostering interactions that help transform segregated relationships. Recovery of knowledge from traditional and local perspectives has shown that individuals and communities hold very valuable, deep knowledge regarding their specific surroundings and daily...
British Peasant Ideologies and Technological Approaches to Marginal Caribbean Landscapes (2017)
British colonial ideology originated, in part, from a view of the proper relationship between people, land, and government that was rooted in the ecology of Britain itself. This view was informed in the Caribbean by Barbadian and other large-scale sugar planting colonies, but the British Virgin Islands are ecologically and politically distinct. This paper employs high-resolution satellite imagery and GIS modeling to explore what happens when a British "peasant" ideology is laid onto a very...
Building resilience and sustainability through collaboration and community research (2015)
The island of Barbuda, West Indies has a relatively unique history, land tenure and geography. Despite its arid climate and thin soils, the enslaved and eventually free people of Barbuda developed a complex herding ecology and built historic wells that are strategically located around the island to support their sustainably resilient agricultural practices. Now, these wells are largely abandoned and people are increasingly dependent on external food and water. An interdisciplinary team of...
The burials of Tibes, reconsidered (2016)
The 1970s Tibes excavations of the Sociedad Guaynía unearthed the remains of well over one hundred individuals from various portions of what is currently understood to be the earliest ceremonial center in the Caribbean. Despite attempts to avoid burials, more recent (and ongoing) excavations by the Proyecto Arqueológico del Centro Ceremonial Indígena de Tibes have increased this number to a modest degree. Taken together, the resulting corpus of bioarchaeological material represents one of the...
Calcite Rafts as a Proxy for Reconstructing Holocene Surface Water Conditions of Hoyo Negro: A Phreatic Coastal Karst Basin in Quintana Roo, Mexico (2015)
Located in the Sac Actun cave system on the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, Hoyo Negro pit (HN) has proven to be a very important pre-Maya archeological site as human (Naia, dated between approx. 13 000 - 12 000 calendar years ago) and faunal remains have been discovered (Chatters et al., 2014). Reconstructing the flooding history (accessibly when the cave system was dry) and water chemistry of HN is critical to our understanding of the movement of humans and fauna into and through the...
The Caribbean and the Beginnings of American Archaeology and Anthropology (2016)
Both American and native Caribbean scholars and amateurs of different capacities and experience contributed to the formation of the discipline of Archaeology in the region, especially in Puerto Rico and Cuba. Before 1920 came around, these islands had seen the likes of John Wesley Powell, William H. Holmes, Jesse Walter Fewkes, John Alden Mason and none other than Franz Boas himself. The interesting thing is that these people not only did what they did, but that the Caribbean, its data and the...
Caribbean Anthropogenic Paleozoogeography: Cultural and Ecological Significance of Animal Introductions in the Lesser Antilles (2016)
Studies of exotic animal introductions in the insular Caribbean have focused on the paleozoogeography, origin, and dispersal patterns of these taxa, but have yet to resolve a number of important, related issues. Among these are the critical problems of distinguishing live introductions from the import of animal parts and assessing the degree of animal management practiced by Amerindians. These questions are fundamental to understanding the broader cultural and ecological significance of faunal...
Caribbean archaeological collections in European museums: an overview (2016)
This presentation will discuss the partial results of the research project “Caribbean Collections at European Museums: Historical Processes and Contemporary Practices”, carried out in collaboration with André Delpuech (Musée du quai Branly). The project is part of the ERC-Synergy project NEXUS1492: New World Encounters in a Globalizing World. Although there is a wealth of scientific literature on Caribbean pre-colonial art, so far there is no comprehensive catalogue or inventory of...
Caribbean Archaic Faunal Exploitation: Analysis of Museum Collections (2019)
This is an abstract from the "How to Conduct Museum Research and Recent Research Findings in Museum Collections: Posters in Honor of Terry Childs" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Yale Peabody Museum curates one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive archaeological collections from the greater Caribbean region. These collections were acquired during a multi-decade research program on the culture history of the region. While the focus of...
Caribbean landscapes during the late-precolonial and early-colonial periods (2016)
People in the Caribbean have been interacting with their landscapes for at least 8,000 years (Trinidad), sometimes in ways that leave only subtle traces of actions and in others the evidence is dramatic. Over this span we see variable trajectories of landscape engagements, ranging from early relatively intense activities followed by abandonment to continuous occupations throughout prehistory to places occupied late in the historical sequence. First colonizers to the Caribbean modified and...
Caribbean Landscapes in the Age of the Anthropocene: The First Colonizers (2016)
Identifying first human colonization of new places is challenging, especially when groups were small and material traces of their occupations were ephemeral. Generating reliable reconstructions of human-colonization patterns from intact archaeological sites may be exceedingly difficult given post-depositional taphonomic processes and in cases of island and coastal locations the inundation of landscapes resulting from post-Pleistocene sea-level rise. Paleoenvironmental reconstruction is a better...
Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race (1957)
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Caribbean's First Farmers: The Story of St. John in southwestern Trinidad (2016)
Recent starch grain analysis of three grindstones from St. John has confirmed that the Ortoiroid people of St. John (southwestern Trinidad) were in fact the first farmers of the insular Caribbean. This discovery is significant for the region as it provides proof that as far back as 7,700 years ago, early native communities in the Caribbean were actively engaged in the sowing, harvesting and processing of a range of cultivars. This paper will explore early farming at St. John in relation to...
Carronade, Rudder, Ballast and Sheathing of the Anémone: characteristic or rarely observed elements (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Anémone Project Les Saintes (Guadeloupe) : Result of the first multi-year underwater archaeological excavation in the French West Indies 2015-2019", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The wreck of the Anémone has yielded equipment that allows its identification, such as its 12-pound carronade (model 1818), or that is rarely observed, such as its rudder, which is exceptionally well preserved, its sheathing...
Cattle management, Archives, and Geoarchaeology: Using Documentary Data to Understand the Role of Cattle Management in Transforming Puerto Rican Environments (2018)
Livestock have been an important component of Puerto Rican subsistence since European colonization to the present. Raising cattle to produce hides, meat, dairy, and other products was envisioned and exploited as an alternative source of income during periods of economic instability in the island, particularly during the period between 1660 and 1750. While in many parts of the Americas grazing caused significant changes to the local ecosystems through soil erosion and fertility loss, the role of...
Causes and Consequences of Colonization in the Caribbean: What Is Known and What Is Unknowable (2017)
One of the defining characteristics of humans is our propensity to migrate. However, the push or pull factors resulting in human migrations may be impossible to know in some cases. Furthermore, our sole reliance on the archaeological record may mislead our understanding of the timing and impact of migrations. Recognizing migrations in the archaeological past is made especially difficult in cases where migrating groups were small, leaving ephemeral traces of their occupations. Paleoenvironmental...