Caribbean (Geographic Keyword)
376-400 (537 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent analysis of the lithic assemblage from the Ortiz site, an early (2340 cal BC–cal AD 310) habitation site in Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico, has revealed the persistent parallel manufacture of blade and expedient flake technologies, with an average of 16.1% of the flaked stone assemblage consisting of blades. While other early Puerto Rican lithic assemblages...
Possible Evidence of Sloth Butchery: Results from a Faunal Analysis of Padre Nuestro Cavern, Dominican Republic (2016)
Between 2005 and 2010, dive teams from the Indiana University Bloomington Center for Underwater Science performed surface collections of the entrance chamber to Padre Nuestro Cavern, a submerged freshwater limestone cavern located in the East National Park in the southeastern peninsula of the Dominican Republic. They extracted Chican ostionoid ceramics indicating use of the cave by the Taino culture (ca. AD 1000-1492), Casimiroid lithics indicative of the Archaic culture (ca. 6000-500 BC), and...
Postemancipation Bois Cotelette: An Update on Current Fieldwork (2016)
This paper is a summary of the ongoing analysis of artifacts and spatial data recovered from postemancipation house sites on the Bois Cotelette Estate in Dominica. This project began as an examination of the social and economic impact of emancipation on the lives of the formerly enslaved. The projects goal is to explore how a shift in labor conditions altered the physical layout of postemancipation settlements and determined the kinds of access individual households had to local and regional...
Potential Early Connections Between the Greater Antilles and Lower Central America in the Light of Toponomastic Analysis (2016)
This presentation looks at the paterns of interaction in the Western Caribbean at the time of early migrations onto the islands, with a special focus on the potential long-distance connection between Lower Central America and the Greater Antilles indicated by several important observations: a recent comparative study of ancient DNA from the pre-contact site of Canímar Abajo in western Cuba; circulation of some plant species (e.g., pollo maize; Zamia); the practice of dental modification on...
The Pre-Columbian Exchange: The Anthropogenic Zoogeography of Insular Caribbean Translocations (2016)
The post-Columbian introduction of exotic animals in the West Indies initiated a cascade of ecological changes, resulting in extensive defaunation, reduction and homogenization of biodiversity, loss of ecosystem services, and extinction of island endemics. Yet, these changes were not without precedent in the Caribbean, one of the world’s foremost biodiversity hotspots. Evidence suggests that in the years before 1492, Amerindians in the region had already profoundly impacted insular ecology,...
Pre-Columbian Human Mobility and Interaction in the Caribbean: A Zooarchaeological and Ancient DNA Study of Guinea Pigs (2015)
Current zooarchaeological records indicate that humans introduced domestic guinea pig from South America to the Caribbean islands around AD 600. Using zooarchaeological and ancient DNA datasets from domestic guinea pig remains in the Caribbean, we address human mobility and interaction between the islands of the Caribbean and South America during the second half of the Ceramic Age (ca. AD 600-1500). We present new data regarding the continental origins of pre-Columbian guinea pig in the...
Pre-Columbian Vertebrate Remains from the Coconut Walk Site, Nevis, West Indies (2015)
Archaeological investigation of the Pre-Columbian site of Coconut Walk on the island of Nevis (northern Lesser Antilles) revealed midden deposits dating between ca. AD 850-1440. While the site had been previously excavated by the British Time Team television show in 1998, only cursory examination of faunal remains was conducted (NISP=451). We report on the complete analysis of more than 18,000 recovered vertebrate remains from a 5×5m trench in the core midden area, providing enhanced...
Precolumbian Mortuary Practices in Antigua (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A series of burials were excavated from one of the longest inhabited precolumbian sites in the Caribbean, Indian Creek located in Antigua. Research on mortuary practices throughout the Caribbean remain sparse, with varied excavation strategies and limited documentation further complicating our understanding. Our research design integrated geoarchaeological...
Prehistoric Exploitation of the Manatee in the Maya and Circum-Caribbean Areas (1985)
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Prehistoric Population Mobility in the Caribbean: Genetic and Isotopic Investigations at Grand Bay, Carriacou, West Indies (2015)
Archaeological research at Grand Bay, a large Late Ceramic Age (ca. AD 400-1300) Amerindian village site on Carriacou in the southern Caribbean, has revealed vast amounts of evidence that sheds light on Pre-Columbian adaptations to small island environments. More than a decade of research here and at other locations on Carriacou have revealed dozens of human burials, including many found in mortuary contexts rarely seen in this part of the Lesser Antilles. Ongoing research on past lifeways of...
A Prehistory of South America: Ancient Cultural Diversity on the Least Known Continent (2014)
A Prehistory of South America is an overview of the ancient and historic native cultures of the entire continent of South America based on the most recent archaeological investigations. This accessible, clearly written text is designed to engage undergraduate and beginning graduate students in anthropology. For more than 12,000 years, South American cultures ranged from mobile hunters and gatherers to rulers and residents of colossal cities. In the process, native South American societies...
Preliminary ancient DNA analysis suggests a complex origins scenario for pre-contact Puerto Rican populations (2016)
Recent archaeological research suggests that indigenous groups in Puerto Rico stemmed from multiple and continuous migrations of continental indigenous populations. This view is supported by contemporary genetic studies, which have found evidence of genetic affinity between multiple modern Native American groups and the native ancestry components of modern, admixed Puerto Ricans. Overall, these findings challenge the traditional single-migration model for the peopling of Puerto Rico, and suggest...
Preliminary Investigations on a Coastal Caribbean Island: A Multi-proxy Environmental Study at the Sabazan Amerindian Site, Carriacou, Grenada (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Amerindian, enslaved African, and European peoples who successively settled the Caribbean island of Carriacou beginning AD 400 encountered a distinctive environment marked by recurrent drought, few terrestrial fauna, and the largest reef system in the region. Evidence suggests Carriacou’s ecology was altered dramatically by humans, reflecting efforts to...
Preliminary Results Project Naval Shipwrecks in West Indies during the American Revolutionary Period 1774-1783 (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This paper aims to present preliminary results of the first year of the project dealing with three naval shipwrecks sites in West Indies. In English Harbour (Antigua) the remains of a wreck possibly identified as the Lyon (ex Beaumont) are evaluated. The first archaeological assessment indicates the presence of a large wooden hull...
Preservation of Faunal Remains from an Underwater Cavern, Padre Nuestro, Dominican Republic (2015)
Between 2005 and 2010, Indiana University dive teams performed surface collections of the entrance chamber to Padre Nuestro Cavern, a submerged limestone cavern located in the East National Park in the southeastern peninsula of the Dominican Republic. They extracted Taino ceramics, Casimiroid lithics, and many faunal remains including two extinct sloth species (Acrotocnus ye and Parocnus serus), an extinct platyrrhine monkey (Antillothris bernensis), and other commingled bones including sloth,...
A Propitious Influence: Mary Beaudry’s Contributions to Historical and Contemporary Archaeology in the Caribbean (2022)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "“Historical Archaeology with Canon on the Side, Please”: In Honor of Mary C. Beaudry (1950-2020)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Mary Beaudry never promoted herself as an island archaeologist, but throughout the course of her accomplished career she conducted or participated on research projects on several islands, including in the Boston Harbor, the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, and Nevis and Montserrat in...
Provisioned and Caught: Historic Perspectives on Diet in the Danish West Indies (2018)
Historic records indicate that during the late 18th and into the 19th century preserved North Atlantic fishes were shipped to the West Indies as a relatively cheap source of protein to feed enslaved persons and also the planter class. However, in historic zooarchaeological analyses of faunal assemblages from the Caribbean, the presence of these food remains is often not identified. Using two sites from the Danish West Indies, a case will be made for the use of fine-screen techniques to ensure...
Provisioning Antigua and Beyond: How Herding and Farming Transformed Barbuda, West Indies (2016)
The island of Barbuda was farmed by English settlers from the 1660s onwards. The Codrington family of England held the lease to the island from the 1680s-1870, and they introduced a variety of plant and animal species, some of which continue to thrive on the island. Sugar cane was never grown on this dry, low lying island and instead, lime and charcoal were produced along with other subsistence crops for export. Herding became an important part of the economy and, as a result, water management...
Proyekto Paisahe Kultural di Kòrsou: The Environmental Legacy of Curaçao’s Cultural Landscapes (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2022, the Curaçao Cultural Landscape Project (CCLP) initiated a long-term field investigation on the ecological legacy of Indigenous and European colonial occupation of Curaçao, in the southern Caribbean. Drawing together multi-proxy records from human settlement, resource use, and environmental conditions over ca. 4500 years, this interdisciplinary...
Puerto Rican Cultural Heritage Under Threat by Climate Change (2017)
As a tropical, oceanic island in the northeastern Caribbean Sea, Puerto Rico is feeling the effects of climate change. Rising sea level, increased storminess, and unpredictable sudden weather events combine with heavy coastal occupation and little or no coherent development planning, to increase social vulnerability to coastal change. The burden of economic problems that the Island is suffering from also increases the complexities of working towards resiliency. Within this context, coastal...
Puerto Rico’s Cook Books: Recipes of a History (2016)
Puerto Rico’s history is a blend of the different ethnicities that settled in the island after the Spanish Conquest. This ethnogenesis can be studied through the culinary traditions that conform what we now refer to as criollo. Using the works of Mary C. Beaudry and Elizabeth M. Scott as a sounding board, this research consists of two parts. First, an analysis of cooking books available in Puerto Rico during the 19th century in order to establish the different methods and tools available at the...
Putting a Man in the Machine: Experimental Archaeology and Computational Modeling (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Modeling Mobility across Waterbodies" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, numerous studies have shown the importance of the links that existed between the various islands of the Caribbean archipelago in pre-Columbian times. The notion of connection has thus become the central paradigm of the approach of these island but not isolated societies. Thus, until now little addressed, the question of assessing the...
Quantifying Pre-Industrial to Mid-Late 20th Century Anthropogenic Lead and Mercury Pollution in Caribbean Marine Environments (2015)
Various lines of evidence indicate that levels of anthropogenic pollutants, such as lead and mercury, have increased in terrestrial and atmospheric environments since the early 19th century and the advent of industrialization. While exposure to these two heavy metals is a global concern, this study focused primarily on marine environments located in the Caribbean. Using ICP-MS, this study aimed to detect and quantify anthropogenic pollutants, specifically lead (Pb) and mercury (Hg), using...
Quantitative Paleodietary Reconstruction with Complex Foodwebs: An Isotopic Case Study from the Caribbean (2018)
Stable isotope analysis is one of the most effective tools for paleodietary reconstruction and has been widely applied to a vast array of archaeological contexts including the Caribbean region. This region, however, possesses a particularly complex isotopic ecology, including both a large number of isotopically variable food sources and a high degree of isotopic overlap between different food groups. As such, to date, most regional paleodietary studies have been limited to descriptive and...
Queering Colonization in Early Colonial Belize (2019)
This is an abstract from the "The Future Is Fluid...and So Was the Past: Challenging the 'Normative' in Archaeological Interpretations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological narratives of colonial contact have dramatically shifted from a focus on colonizer/colonized dichotomies to discussions about plurality, ethnogenesis, and hybridity. However, much of the work in Mesoamerica continues to define the practice of colonization through a...