Caribbean (Other Keyword)
1-25 (123 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. It all started modestly enough. A September 1937 drive to New Orleans from Santa Fe and then passage on the United Fruit Company liner Tivives with the ultimate destinations of Quirigua and Guatemala City. This small group of ten with their leader...
The 1950s, Postwar Resumption and Reconsiderations (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. World War II disrupted archaeology, with SAA members in uniform and travel restricted. Members resuming their careers in the late 1940s faced a more egalitarian America as thousands of men from uneducated families entered colleges on the G.I. Bill....
The Abbey of Pedro Mártir de Anglería – Excavation, Reconstruction and Conservation of an Early 16th Century Ecclesiastical Structure in Jamaica (2016)
Christianity anchored the material practices and social institutions of the Spanish settlers in the New World and while Christian friars undoubted arrived in Jamaica with the initial group of settlers in 1509, the Jamaican abbacy was not formally founded until 1515. The ecclesiastical authorities used temporary thatch and wood structures for worship at the capital of Sevilla la Nueva until funds were provided for the construction of a stone church in 1524. The abbey however, was not quite...
The African Diaspora: Using Media Archaeology to Redefine Diasporic Connection (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. When thinking of the African Diaspora one cannot deny the themes of resistance, resilience, and justice that seem to unite these very distinct cultures. This project focuses on the African diaspora and interrogates what diaspora means using media archaeology. Media archaeology is defined as a field of study that seeks to understand how change over time...
Afterlives of Slavery on the Post-Emancipation Caribbean Plantation (2017)
This paper offers some opening remarks that introduce the conceptual framework informing this session. A rich body of archaeological literature has investigated plantation slavery in the Caribbean region, but far less attention has been paid to the post-emancipation landscape and the significant transformations that affected the lives of laborers. We seek to address how a focus on the post-emancipation Caribbean plantation landscape can provide unique insights into how notions of freedom were...
AMS Radiocarbon Dates Establish Ballcourt Site Chronologies for Toita and Llanos Tuna in Precolonial Puerto Rico (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study addresses the relative paucity of dated archaeological sites in Puerto Rico and expands the islands’ existing database of radiocarbon dates. Our project focuses on developing AMS radiocarbon chronologies from two ballcourt sites: Toita, located in central eastern Puerto Rico, and Llanos Tuna, located in southwestern Puerto Rico. Current...
Ancient networks of the Caribbean: Interaction and Exchange across the Historical Divide (2017)
In this paper, we present multiple lines of evidence for the existence of interwoven and dynamic ancient networks in the Caribbean. This region is characterized by a long and unique history of social relationships between communities and peoples at various temporal and spatial scales. Through time, Caribbean networks of human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas were shaped by expanding and contracting group territories, fission and fusion of local communities, and variable degrees of...
Archaeology and Digital Heritage at the Chief Jacko Site: Landscapes of Maroons in Dominica (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Global Archaeologies of the Long Emancipation", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. For more than 50 years hundreds of self-emancipated Africans inhabited the mountainous interior of the Caribbean island of Dominica (Wai’tukubuli) where they formed various communities who actively resisted European colonialism and slavery not only to maintain their freedom, but to assist in liberating enslaved Africans throughout...
An Archaeology of Dictatorship in Cuba: The Escuadrón 41 of the Rural Guard in Matanzas (1958) (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The archaeology of dictatorships in Latin America has had a significant development in the last decades, especially focusing on the south and central continental experiences. However, there is a lack of attention to the dictatorial processes in the Caribbean from an archaeological perspective. Cuba is not the exception. After the military coup of March...
Arqueología de un Posible Cementerio Prehispánico en la Zona Intermareal en Barú, Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Entre costas, ríos, lagos y manantiales: Arqueología subacuática en contextos prehispánicos en Latinoamérica y el Caribe" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Desde hace varios años, en la Península de Barú e Islas del Rosario, al sur de la Bahía de Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), se ha venido hablando de la existencia de un cementerio prehispánico ubicado en el borde costero de la región. Distintas prospecciones...
Arthur C. Parker: Archaeologist and Ethnologist in New York (1881-1955) (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Arthur C. Parker was born in 1881 on the Cattaraugus Reservation in New York. Through out his career he served both as an advocate for Indigenous peoples and sites that they inhabited. His career was based on sites in NY, working with the New York...
An Assessment of Archaeology and Archaeological Methods in Antigua, West Indies: The Last 30 Years (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the past three decades, archaeological research in Antigua has undergone significant transformation. This paper provides an overview of the evolution in methodologies and research questions that helped shape our understanding of Antigua's rich pre-historic and historic cultural heritage. Initially focused on traditional excavation and analysis...
"Back to the Soil": Community Archaeology and Heritage Tourism in Eleuthera, Bahamas (2016)
Over the past several decades there has been a great deal of archaeological excavation and analysis of both U.S. and Caribbean plantations. However, many of these research projects are designed to address archaeological research questions rather than some of the pressing problems faced by descendant communities concerning their heritage. In 1994, UNESCO launched their “Slave Route” project, with the aim of “contributing to a better understanding of the causes, forms of operation, issues and...
Bayamanaco and the Cayman: The Mythic origin of Manioc Cultivation, Amazonia-Antilles (2017)
Recent trace analysis of Greater Antillean culinary implements finds a paucity of evidence for manioc until late times. This is anomalous since it was believed that manioc accompanied the first truly horticultural and ceramic-producing groups, the Saladoids, from the Orinocan lowlands of South America through the Lesser Antilles to Puerto Rico at 800-500 B.C. Such late occurrence also contradicts the fact that manioc is a lowland cultigen, spanning northern tropical South America. Actual tubers...
Before and After the Carnegie Era: On the Financial and Logistical Standardization of US Archaeology (2025)
This is an abstract from the "Digging through the Decades: A 90-year Retrospective on American Archaeology; Biennial Gordon Willey Session in the History of Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Carnegie Institution of Washington program in Mayanist archaeology presents a pivotal transition in how U.S. archaeologists financed and organized large-scale projects in Latin America. In many ways, this organization consolidated an earlier...
Between Seascapes and Sandscapes: An Archaeological Approach of the Insular and Coastal Nautical Spaces in the Colombian Caribbean during the 18th and 19th Centuries (2023)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "In Small Islands Forgotten: Insular Historical Archaeologies of a Globalizing World", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Interdisciplinary approaches from maritime, coastal, island, nautical and underwater archaeology have been developed in recent years in Colombia, particularly on the island of Tierrabomba in Cartagena de Indias, the islands of Providencia and Santa Catalina and La Guajira Peninsula...
Beyond Styles and Modes: Taking a Closer Look at Ceramic Changes in the Greater Antilles (2025)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Undoubtedly, one of the most important developments in human history is the invention pottery. In archaeology alone, it is difficult to imagine how much the discipline would have learned without it. Thanks to pottery we have been able to advance studies in diet, production, chronology, religion, long and short distance interaction, aspects of identity,...
Black Female Slave in the Caribbean: An Archaeological Observation on Culture (2016)
The relationships between white men and black female slaves resulted in the formation of new ethnic identitites and social structures associated with their mixed-heritage or "mulatto" children. Sources like artwork and ethno-historical accounts of mulatto children in areas of the Caribbean and the role of African female slaves lend unique insights into social dynamics and cultural markers of modern populations. This paper examines the historical narratives and archaeological findings of black...
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...
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...
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...
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'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...
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...
Cayman's 1794 Wreck of the Ten Sail (2020)
This is a paper/report submission presented at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The story has been passed through generations. it was the wreck of ten vessels at once, comprising one of the most dramatic maritime disasters in Caribbean naval history. Historical documents and remains of the ships confirm that the narrative is more than folklore. It is based on the loss of HMS Convert, formerly L’Inconstante, a recent prize from the French, and nine of her...