Caribbean (Other Keyword)
51-75 (88 Records)
In the winter of 1503-04, Christopher Columbus was marooned and provisioned by the Taino village of Maima located on the north central coast of Jamaica. What we know about the Taino of this village remains what was written in the accounts of those marooned Spanish explorers. After the year spent in this village the Spanish returned to the area and founded the settlement of Sevilla la Nueva, resulting in the people of Maima becoming victims of forced labor, conversion and disease. What is...
Mounds of Mollusks: A Preliminary Report of the Zooarchaeological Assemblage Recovered from the Slave/post-Emancipation Laborers’ Quarters at Betty’s Hope Plantation, Antigua, West Indies (2015)
Betty’s Hope plantation operated continuously for nearly 300 years during the colonial period in Antigua, West Indies. Since 2007, excavations have been conducted on several parts of the site including the Great House, Service Quarters, and Still House contexts. Zooarchaeological analyses have begun to untangle the foodways patterns in daily life at Betty’s Hope, particularly the incorporation of local resources with specific class-based patterns despite the general disdain the English...
Paleoenvironmental Dimensions of Historic Landscape Change at LaSoye, Dominica (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. European colonization of the Caribbean and the imposition of imperialist practices of resource extraction and slave labor is possibly the most significant change in human-environment interactions since the early Holocene. Multi-proxy study of ecological responses to land use during this time is...
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...
Pottery and Identity: Elites in Puerto Rico (2013)
Late nineteenth century Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony whose economy depended on export crops like sugar and coffee. The elite were often Spaniards and ties to Spain were close because this helped the elite to maintain their control over the labor force. They imitated Spanish elite cultural behavior such as the promotion of thermal baths for improving health. This paper explores the social and economic context for an elite domestic assemblage from a large landowner household that established...
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...
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...
Reading Between The Iron Lines: An Analysis Of Cannon Arrangement On Caribbean Shipwrecks (2018)
The aim of this study is to explore how cannon distribution on shipwreck sites can be analyzed to reflect the wrecking event of the ship, crew procedure or emergency action in jettisoning heavy artifacts during a time of disaster, post wrecking salvage operations and in situ changes on the site due to environmental factors like marine growth patterns and fluvial processes. The datasets will include unpublished archaeological information gathered during the 2015 and 2016 East Carolina University...
Reevaluating the Pre-Columbian Colonization of the Caribbean using Chronometric Hygiene and Bayesian Modeling (2017)
The timing and pattern of initial human arrival to the Caribbean islands is discontinuous and anomalous, especially considering their proximity to both mainland areas and adjacent islands. With the exception of Trinidad, which was probably colonized ca. 8000 BP—but was connected to mainland South America during the late Pleistocene/early Holocene (and remains close to Venezuela)—some of the Antilles appear to have been colonized quite early ca. 7000-6000 BP, while others were settled centuries...
The Religious Landscape of Barbados Quakerism (2018)
Considering its size and the historical interest it has sparked, remarkably few physical or documentary traces of the Religious Society of Friends ("Quakers") in Barbados survive. This paper combines data from a 2016 reconnaissance of Quaker-related sites on the island with a GIS analysis of these landmarks, high resolution satellite imagery, and a 1675 map of the island in order to consider the relationship of the Quaker community to the Barbadian landscape, both social and physical. The...
Robert Schuyler as a Model of Making Space for Diversity of Thought (2017)
As one of the first historical archaeologists to publish on issues of race and ethnicity, Robert Schuyler’s legacy on such topics has been carried forward by many of his students. My research centers on a free black American enclave who settled on the island of Hispaniola, enslaved laborers on plantations in the Caribbean, and an African American brothel owner and the women who worked for her in Fargo, ND. While all of these projects are united through a focus on race, identity, and power...
Rum and Archaeology: A Preliminary Report of the Excavation of the Still House on the Betty’s Hope Plantation, Antigua. (2015)
A great deal of research has been undertaken on the slave trade, sugar and the African diaspora, however, the impact of rum has garnered little attention from scholars. Rum was an important social and economic catalyst during the 17th-20th centuries, impacting all strata of society from the lowest slaves to the highest echelons of British society. During the 18th and 19th centuries rum developed from a waste product into highly desirable merchandise that was used as a social lubrication to ease...
"Send Me a Postcard and Don’t Forget to Sign It": Comments from a Current Schuyler Student (2017)
Throughout Robert Schuyler’s career he has mentored leading scholars in the field and continues the tradition of mentorship to this day. As one of his final PhD students, I’ve benefitted from his years of experience, his contribution to forging the discipline of historical archaeology, and his extensive network of former students. All have been invaluable to my growth as an archaeologist. With a liberal advising style, he expects his students to pursue their own research interests and...
Sources of Variations in Breastfeeding and Weaning Practices among Caribbean Populations (2017)
Breastfeeding in humans is a biocultural process shaped by complex interactions of beliefs about health and nutrition, construction of childhood and parental identities, religious values, and lifestyle. While some studies have stated that the type of subsistence does not determine weaning ages in a population, these factors could have affected weaning food choices. This paper analyzes carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes in bone collagen of four pre-colonial Caribbean populations: Paso del Indio...
Spanish Slavers and European Interlopers on the Spanish Lake: Eye Witness Accounts from Shipwreck Survivors in the Lesser Antilles 1620-1635 (2013)
The Caribbean Islands, neglected by the Spanish in their conquest of the mainland, were colonized in the 1620s by French, Dutch and English settlers. In less than 50 years, the neglected Islands would become pivotal in European politics. Wealthy planters in England would control parliament for the next 150 years and the Caribbean would be changed forever, leaving behind a legacy of genocide, slavery and immigration. Slaves played a key role in this process. This paper, based on primary sources...
St. Patrick’s Day and Sugar Plantations: Articulating Landscape Archaeology with Conceptions of Montserrat’s Historical Narratives and Cultural Geography (2013)
Montserrat’s nickname, "the Emerald Isle of the Caribbean", points to the island’s 17th-century Irish connection, sustained today by the annual national commemoration of a failed St. Patrick’s Day uprising by African slaves in 1768. Rooted in this event, the Anglo-Irish narrative is foregrounded in many historical studies of Montserrat’s plantations, slavery, geography, and heritage. Despite the power of this narrative in shaping Montserratian cultural identity, the archaeological record offers...
Subsistence and the resilience of coastal habitats in the Longue durée (2016)
Mollusks recovered from archaeological sites reflect decisions made by individuals in the past, changes in the environment through time, and the interactions between people and landscapes. Therefore, archaeomalacological analyses can help to reconstruct paleoenvironments and to identify changes in consumption practices. Changes should be particularly evident when considered from a deep-time perspective. In this presentation we will be evaluating samples from three archaeological sites spanning...
Subsistence Economies at Morne Patate: A Zooarchaeological Analysis of a Colonial Plantation Landscape in Dominica (2017)
From the 17th through 20th centuries, the Caribbean region experienced unprecedented demographic and environmental change, with the rise and fall of sugar monoculture and the institution of chattel slavery. These transformations were a result of power imbalances at many scales, and the economic, ecological and social consequences of the migrations and interactions were significant and long-lasting. During the Colonial Period, enslaved communities developed diverse socio-ecological practices to...
Trade Winds and Rich Red Soil: Memory and Collective Heritage at Millars Settlement, Eleuthera, Bahamas (2015)
In 1783, following the American Revolution, the British government resettled thousands of Loyalists throughout the Bahamas. The mostly American-born Loyalists brought in captivity, a large population of American-born African descent peoples and were given Bahamian land grants to establish a cotton plantation economy. Cotton never faired well and most plantations shifted toward subsistence activities and basic needs until slavery ended in 1838. Although former plantation owners and emancipated...
Transformative Placemaking: The Intersection of Art, Archaeology, and the Community in Freedom City (2020)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Community Archaeology in 2020: Conventional or Revolutionary?" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. Community-engaged archaeology as a de-colonizing practice has seen a greater emphasis in academic discourse in recent years. However, there is still much work to be done to break down the many barriers within the discipline that impede true collaborative relationships and partnerships. For descendants and...
A Tropical Wave in the Atlantic World: The Comparative Colonial Caribbean Archaeology of Dr. Marley R. Brown III (2015)
Few historical archaeologists in the field today have escaped the influence, advice, and impact of Marley R. Brown III. His reach has extended to the tropical shores of the Caribbean, and his work, along with that of his students, has helped shape the direction of Caribbean historical archaeology. In Bermuda, Barbados, and the British Virgin Islands Marley has fostered a generation of students that have moved beyond site specific processes to embrace the big picture of British colonial and...