Caribbean (Geographic Keyword)
351-375 (597 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Lucayan Taino of the Bahama archipelago actively bred and managed the hutia rodent (genus Geocapromys) for centuries before the arrival of Europeans. Seven field seasons of excavations at the pre-Columbian Lucayan site of Palmetto Junction on Providenciales, Turks & Caicos Islands have produced exponentially more hutia skeletal material than has been...
Mammal species diversity on Cayman Brac (Cayman Islands) via collagen fingerprinting (2016)
The endemic terrestrial mammals of the Cayman Islands in the western Caribbean Sea all appear to have become extinct since the start of human colonisation 500 years ago. Extinct fauna include two species of the soricomorph Nesophontes and three species of Capromyid rodent. Introduced rodents and domesticated species now exclusively represent the terrestrial mammal fauna of the Cayman Islands. The Cayman Islands are carbonate-dominated successions typified by karst limestone that includes...
Mapping Sans-Souci: Geophysical Survey at the Palace of Henry Christophe, Haiti (2016)
The Royal Palace of Sans-Souci, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located in the town of Milot in northern Haiti, served as a central political space within the short-lived Kingdom of Haiti (1811-1820). Despite the critical importance this site holds for our understanding of state formation in the years following the Haitian revolution, we know precious little about the construction history of the site itself, which extended back into the Colonial Era. During the summer of 2015, archaeologists from...
Marginality is the Mother of Invention: A New Institutional Economics Perspective (2016)
It has long been assumed that the original inhabitants of the Bahama archipelago practiced lifeways that were essentially identical to those practiced on their larger neighbors. Recent research suggests that there actually were substantial differences, including a much higher degree of mobility and a focus on maize instead of manioc cultivation. Some of these differences may be attributed to their origins in Cuba, versus Hispaniola; and the possibility that their ancestry can be traced to what...
"Marineness" and Variability in Maritime Adaptations in the Late Ceramic Age Northern Lesser Antilles (2016)
Archaeological investigations in the northern Lesser Antilles have demonstrated Amerindians’ dependence on marine foods and maritime exchange throughout the Late Ceramic Age. While these data confirm the assumption that small island populations were, by necessity, maritime adapted, they also reveal subtle variability in the degree to which islanders’ depended on marine resources and the extent to which they engaged in interisland exchange networks. We use environmental and archaeological data to...
Maritime Survey Results of La Soye Bay (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Encounters on the Caribbean Frontier: Archaeology at LaSoye, Dominica", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper focuses on the maritime components of the LaSoye archaeological project. Excavations from the terrestrial site, LaSoye 2, in 2018 and 2019 revealed that this site was occupied within the 16th century. An initial underwater survey via snorkel and scuba were conducted in 2019 to establish...
Maritime to the Max: The Keys to Success for Small Island Populations in the Caribbean (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The land-sea dichotomy has structured many historic debates surrounding coastal populations in the pre-Columbian Caribbean. Settlement, subsistence, exchange and cultural affiliation have all been measured on a terrestrial versus marine continuum which often undervalues the primacy of...
Material Culture Associated to Elite Females in 16th Century Puerto Rico (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 paper presents a case study on how to approach the study of elite women in Puerto Rico during the 16th century using primary sources and archaeological evidence. The main objective of the research was to reconstruct aspects of the daily life of women through their cultural assemblages, as recorded during the early colonization of...
The Material Culture of Maroon Communities in the Early Circum-Caribbean (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Disentanglement: Reimagining Early Colonial Trajectories in the Americas" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines early maroon settlements of the Circum-Caribbean and is based upon original research in a wide assortment of Spanish archives, as well as archaeological investigations of African sites in the Americas. As in Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, in Spanish Florida, I find Africans readily adapted...
A Material Science Consideration of New World Encounters: Multi-method Approaches to the Archaeology of the Caribbean (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Following a recent review of excavated materials from the island of Mona (Puerto Rico), this paper examines the transformation of cultural and technological practices brought about by New World encounters. We focus on the affective material conditions that emerge in the 16th century Caribbean by applying a materials science approach to the newly integrated...
The Materiality of Migration (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of Immigration and Refugee Resettlement" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper considers what archaeologists can contribute to contemporary issues through doing what we do best—analyzing material culture to create narratives. I use this approach to personify a particular group of liminal, stereotyped people whose anonymity is critical for their survival—undocumented migrants. This paper is part of a...
Measuring Seasonality in Codakia orbicularis Clams from Lucayan Sites in the Bahamas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The shells of Codakia orbicularis clams are common at archaeological sites throughout the Bahama archipelago. These clams were harvested as food, and their abundance indicates that they were processed in habitation areas. Previous studies have suggested that the shells record daily, tidal, and seasonal growth sequences that can be used to determine when...
Mesoamerican Gulf and Caribbean Coastal Adaptations. In: Coasts, Plains and Deserts: Essays in Honor of Reynold J. Ruppe (1987)
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A Methodological Analysis of Vertebrate Remains from Coconut Walk, Nevis, West Indies (2016)
The accelerated pace of Pre-Columbian archaeological research in the Caribbean over the last 20 years has afforded great opportunity to better understand past human-ecosystem relationships in the region and how these have been shaped by natural and cultural processes. In keeping with this research agenda, we report the results from a robust analysis of 18,500+ marine and terrestrial vertebrate remains recovered from a dense midden deposit at the Late Ceramic Age (AD 760-1440) site of Coconut...
Methodological Perspectives in the Search for Maroon Settlements on St. Croix, US Virgin Islands (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 18th and early 19th century, formerly enslaved Crucians self-liberated and developed a community in St. Croix’s northwest hills. These rugged hills provided an ideal location for self-liberated Crucians (Maroons) to avoid detection and establish settlements. Our recent pilot study survey used a combination of lidar and environmental data to...
Methods to Identify Post-depositional Geochemical Alterations to Ceramics in Submerged Archaeological Sites: a Case Study Using Prehistoric Ceramics from Eastern Dominican Republic (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Geochemical analysis methods such as trace element and stable isotope analyses have been refined in recent years to better address archaeological questions pertaining to clay sourcing as well as ceramic trade and transport. However, these analyses are rarely applied to studies of ceramics from submerged sites due to increased...
Migrations, colonizations, perisferies, and historical divides. An analysis of the construction and deconstruction of the ¨archaics¨ in Cuba and Hispaniola (2016)
The diversity, complexity, and continuity of ¨archaics ¨ communities is one of the most recurrent themes in contemporary Caribbean archeology. Despite this, the tradition of research on this phenomenon goes back more than 40 years in Cuba and La Española, prompting classifications and models under the dominance of four basic theoretical approaches: colonization, difussion, evolution, and transculturation. This paper examines, discusses and compares the treatment and management of archaeological...
Modeling Demographic Change in the Precolumbian Caribbean (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A recent synthesis of radiocarbon dates in the Caribbean indicated two major population dispersals that correspond to the longstanding cultural divisions of the region's Archaic and Ceramic Ages. Using the most reliable dates from this dataset, we constructed both region-wide and local summed probability distributions...
Modeling the Past: Using Structure from Motion (SfM) Photogrammetry to Record the Sugar Works of a Statian Plantation (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 study utilizes structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry as a documentation tool to understand the layout and usage of Site SE095, a sugar works, on the Dutch Caribbean island of St. Eustatius. The research goals are to create a spatially referenced 3D model of SE095;...
Modeling Water Routes Through a Divide: Retracing Movement from the Greater Antilles to the Lesser Antilles in the Late Ceramic Age. (2017)
This paper focuses on modeling hypothetical sea routes between islands within the Caribbean Sea to try and redraw the map of social mobility and material exchange that existed during the Late Ceramic Age (A.D. 1250–1400). With the emphasis for modeling canoe pathways more focused on uncovering possible colonization routes, this map has yet to be thoroughly explored. However, analyzing the back and forth of travel between two sites known to be occupied during the same period can open up ideas on...
Modelling Archaic forager mobility: a discussion on the application of agent-based models (ABMs) to forager mobility strategies in the North-Eastern Caribbean Archaic period. (2016)
Diverse types of models have been proposed to shed light to Caribbean colonization process as well as general patterns of mobility, exchange and connectivity. These models have hitherto been narrative, theoretical and statistical and their products have widened our understanding of the archaeological record. Agent-based models (ABMs) represent a promising step forward on the modelling approach to Caribbean archaeology by placing attention to the interactions among agents and agents and the...
Molecular Disease characterization in a pre-Columbian Indigenous population of Punta Candelero, Puerto Rico. (2017)
Skeletal remains belonging to a Late Saladoid population from Punta Candelero site (AD 640-1200), southeast Puerto Rico were used for the detection of Pathogens. Previous studies have established the presence of trace genetic indicators of molecular disease in skeletal remains, such as syphilis and tuberculosis, with associated history or pathology. In this study, we are investigating the presence of various pathogens associated with pre-Columbian Indigenous populations of Puerto Rico....
Monitoring on Main Street: Archaeological Monitoring in the Charlotte Amalie Historic District in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Islands of Time (General Sessions)" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. From 2016 to 2019, archaeological monitoring was performed within the Charlotte Amalie Historic District in conjunction with the Main Street Enhancement Project, an infrastructural project in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. Extended monitoring and data recovery resulted in the discovery of a range of features and intact deposits associated...
Mortality and Calamity: Catastrophes, Death, and Burials in St. Croix (2022)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. As an island living under colonial rule for almost 400 years, St. Croix has faced many injustices. Its geographical location and climate contribute to a growing list of events, such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and epidemics, that have deadly effects on the population. Using burial notices published in the St. Croix Avis, demographic data recorded from graves in Christiansted Cemetery, and...
Mortality profile of the St. Croix Leper Hospital (2022)
This is a poster submission presented at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Danish government established a leper hospital on the island of St. Croix in 1888 that operated until 1954. This research focuses on the healthcare and mortality of the St. Croix Leper Hospital residents. To establish a mortality profile for the resident population, name, age, and date of death for 240 residents from burial notices published in the St. Croix Avis newspapers from 1889...