Caribbean (Other Keyword)
76-87 (87 Records)
The focus of this paper is on the actions of human fingers, hands, and bodies in the emergence and creation of the extraordinary subterranean cavescapes of Isla de Mona in the pre-Columbian and early colonial Caribbean. The interiors of around 30 of the island’s 200 caves have been extensively modified by scraping substances off, and applying substances to cave walls, leaving marks, extractive patches, meanders, and designs on hundreds of square metres of cave surfaces. These activities were...
Using surface chemical markers to identify patterns of human activity: the case of Tierras Nuevas, Puerto Rico (2017)
Human activities leave chemical traces in the sediments, which can give us clues about the content of the subsoil and the activities that might have occurred in the past. In this study we evaluate the potential of the geochemical evaluation of sediment samples collected from surface survey for the identification of buried patterns of human activity at the site of Tierras Nuevas, is an archaeological site in a tropical environment. Based on topographical characteristics, we had identified...
The Value of Colonialism as a Model for Anglo-Caribbean Material Practices at Emancipation (2016)
Archaeologies of colonialism have presented models that draw out the complex political interactions of meaning making via material practices that take place at the intersection of daily lives between populations of colonized and the colonizer. Traditional approaches to the archaeology of slavery within the Anglo-Caribbean have tended to transpose these categories onto enslaved Africans and white settlers. The result is a tendency to emphasis meaning making through material in terms of...
Were Hutia Domesticated in the Caribbean? (2017)
The Caribbean islands had limited endemic terrestrial fauna and they lacked any of the New World domesticated animals until fairly late in prehistory. Given the depauperate terrestrial fauna of these islands the early Native American inhabitants relied on marine resources and endemic rodents for a significant proportion of the animals in their diet. It has been argued that rodents from the family Capromyidae, various species of hutia, were managed and perhaps domesticated in the Caribbean. In...
What to Do with All Those Digital Data: Examples from the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) (2018)
The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS) is a Web-based initiative designed to foster inter-site, comparative archaeological research on slavery throughout the Chesapeake, the Carolinas, and the Caribbean. The goal of DAACS is to facilitate research that advances our historical understanding of the slave-based societies that evolved in the Atlantic World during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this paper we argue that the digital methods encapsulated within...
Why are Archaeological Collections Relevant in the 21st Century? The Caribbean Experience (2016)
The late 19th century and beginning of the 20th century provides us with numerous examples of the acquisition of collections carried out by museums. When archaeologists talk about those collections, housed at museums worldwide, the discussions are often directed towards how the lack of context limits or nullifies their research potential. I argue that we need to go back and carefully re-examine the research prospects of these collections. This presentation considers several avenues for research...
Work and Models of Efficiency in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Sugar Factories: A Caribbean Case Study. (2015)
Industrial design can increase labor management and mobility, increase efficiency, and structure worker behavior. As the industrial period evolved during the eighteenth century experiments in factory layouts produced efficient modes of production. But when the labor is enslaved, efficiency may not always be defined in terms of time or cost. This paper presents the industrial foot-print and spatial design of factories at several sugar plantations spanning over two centuries of operation on a...
The work space of the British planter class, 1770 – 1830 (2013)
Focusing on Jamaica, the largest and most prosperous eighteenth-century British sugar colony, this paper will analyse the work space of wealthy Caribbean planters within a wider British-Atlantic context. The letters and probate inventory of Simon Taylor (1738-1813), one of the wealthiest sugar planters of his generation, will provide the main basis for the paper, which will analyse two aspects of the world of the planters and their perceptions of it. First, it will examine where plantation...
A Yard and It’s Belongin’s: Archaeological Research of Laborer Houseyards on the Morne Patat Estate, Dominica (2017)
Caribbean ‘yards’ and their associated structures have long been of interest to archaeologists determined to understand how the domestic spaces of enslaved laborers both embodied and reflected kinship ties, labor arrangements, and socio-political shifts. Often regarded as an elemental feature of Caribbean society, houseyards are the spaces where the repeated acts of daily life took place, as a result, understanding how enslaved laborers utilized and altered their domestic space over generations,...
You Say You Want A Revolution? Diverging Consequences Of The French Revolution On French Caribbean Slave Societies. (2018)
The late 18th century was a period of tremendous social and political upheaval throughout the Atlantic World, as revolution wracked the British colonies of North America, leading to the establishment of the United States. The American Revolution in turn inspired the French Revolution, with far-reaching impacts throughout the Americas, including the abolition of slavery in some colonies, revolution in other colonies, and a degree of stasis in yet other French colonies. All of these outcomes had...
Zooarchaeological Fish Remains and Signals of Resource Depression from Jamaica and Beyond (2015)
This poster presents an analysis of archaeofaunal fish remains from Bluefields Bay, Jamaica and findings of resource depression from the Caribbean. The Jamaican collection derives from recent excavations of a shell midden in Belmont, encompassed by the Bluefields Bay marine sanctuary. Preliminary radiocarbon results suggest the site dates to the late Taino occupation of Jamaica known as Meillacan Ostionoid (900-1500 AD). The Jamaican collection contains over 17,000 bones, with 8,961 specimens...
Zooarchaeology of the Vertebrate Fauna of Tibes: Uniformity in Transition (2016)
This paper presents the results of a recent zooarchaeological analysis of vertebrate remains from the Tibes Ceremonial Center near Ponce, Puerto Rico. Two excavation units contained intact and undisturbed deposits with the potential to provide information pertaining to social dynamics and socio-cultural change at the site. Radiocarbon dates from the two units indicate that each archaeological deposit occurred during times of perceived dynamic social and cultural activities on the island. During...