Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A century of research on the early inhabitants (previously called “Archaic” peoples) of the Caribbean has, too often, been restricted by boundaries and labels, be they geopolitical borders or the temporal and cultural categories assigned by colonial historical sources or early archaeologists. Recent decades have seen many relevant advances, both methodological and theoretical, in the reconstruction and conceptions of these early lifeways, and yet conversations and discussions that cross these lines/boundaries are too few (with the exception of work like Hofman and Antczak 2019), thereby reifying the labels and forestalling the development of more refined understandings of this early period, its people, their ways of being, sociocultural interactions, and transcendence to other spaces and moments of the precolonial Caribbean. This symposium features the research of scholars working across the insular and mainland Caribbean and intends to scale-up discussions about recent findings and theoretical and methodological perspectives concerning the first Caribbean population from local or regional research to the entirety of the circum-Caribbean area. The objective is to build new understandings of the diversity and commonalities of the early Caribbean populations from a multiscalar perspective and create research synergies that cross the diverse boundaries that have limited their better comprehension.

Other Keywords
Archaic • Paleoethnobotany • Caves and Rockshelters • Material Culture and Technology • Subsistence and Foodways • Survey • Theory • Experimental Archaeology • Use-Wear Analysis • Early Settlers

Geographic Keywords
Republic of Panama (Country) • Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Country) • Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (Country) • Department of Martinique (Country) • Republic of El Salvador (Country) • Department of Guadeloupe (Country) • Cayman Islands (Country) • Antigua and Barbuda (Country) • Turks and Caicos Islands (Country) • Belize (Country)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-10 of 10)

  • Documents (10)
Documents
  • Acknowledging Behavior and Process in Early Caribbean Stone Tools: The Case of the Ortiz Site, Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Allison Sabo. Daniel Koski-Karell. William Pestle.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Since the 1930s, scholars have examined variation in early lithic assemblages across the Caribbean archipelago. Long-held explanations for the genesis of these assemblages (and the differences among them) include cultural/stylistic factors, aspects of raw material...

  • Archaic Ingenuity through Continuous Change (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Harold Kelly. Corinne Hofman.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaic groups worldwide are often categorized as less technically and culturally developed. However, their deep understanding of nature and their environment and ability to translate this knowledge to adapt to new circumstances proves otherwise. Paleoclimatic research in...

  • Early Ceramics in the Coastal Guianas (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Martijn Van Den Bel.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Ancient ceramics (beyond 2000 BC) have been found in the western part of the Guianas, notably in the coastal swamp areas of Guyana from the 1950s onward (Alaka). They are also known from the Courantyne River in Suriname (Kauri) and have only recently come to light in...

  • Early Occupations of the Mountainous Interior of Puerto Rico (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Reniel Rodriguez Ramos.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent excavations conducted in three cave sites in north-central Puerto Rico have revealed that human occupation of the mountainous interior of the island took place much earlier than previously thought. The available evidence, recovered from Cueva del Abono, Cueva Matos,...

  • The Evolution of Plant Resource Diversity in Precolonial Puerto Rico with Direct Implications for the Rest of the Greater Antilles (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Deborah Pearsall. Philip Riris. Peter Siegel.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Except for Jamaica, the earliest human occupations in the Greater Antilles date to ca. 6000 cal yr BP. Contrary to older ideas, the view taking shape now is that survival strategies incorporated a range of plant domesticates along with wild resources obtained through...

  • From Mayarí to “Protoagricola”: A Discussion on the Creation of Archaeological Cultures in Cuban and Dominican Archaeology (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jorge Ulloa Hung.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The diversity, complexity, and transformation of early settlers of the Caribbean are some of the main foci in current Caribbean archaeology. Since the 1960s, the presence of ceramics in some of these early contexts in Cuba and Hispaniola have generated new classifications...

  • Genomic Contributions to Understanding Early Caribbean Settlement (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Stone. Reniel Rodriguez Ramos. William Pestle. Maria Nieves-Colón.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Caribbean, archaeological and linguistic research have contributed a wealth of knowledge to our understanding of human settlement, yet many issues surrounding dispersal trajectories, adaptation to island environments, and population dynamics over time are still...

  • Las poblaciones arcaicas del Cabo Samaná, República Dominicana (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Adolfo Lopez. Daniel Shelley.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Monumento Natural Cabo Samaná, situado en la provincia de Samaná, en la República Dominicana, atesora una serie de importantes sitios arqueológicos de época arcaica en las cuevas y abrigos que jalonan el farallón rocoso. El equipo de arqueólogos de Guahayona Institute...

  • Raiders of the Lost Arca: An Early Foraging Landscape in Cabo Rojo/Lajas, Southwestern Puerto Rico (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only William Pestle. Carmen Laguer-Díaz. M. Jesse Schneider. Stephen Jankiewicz. Clark Sherman.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent fieldwork in the intertidal zone of southwestern Puerto Rico has revealed a landscape of over 40 heretofore undocumented shell mounds (some as large as 4,200 m2 and as tall as 10 m above the surrounding tidal plain) formed by millennia of targeted human foraging...

  • Reconstructing Early Settlement in the Northern Lesser Antilles while Honestly Accounting for Site Loss (2024)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only John Crock.

    This is an abstract from the "Coloring Outside the Lines: Re-situating Understandings of the Lifeways of Earliest Peoples of the Circum-Caribbean" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Significant site loss due to sea-level rise and modern development significantly impacts the known and potentially present inventory of archaeological sites attributable to the initial peopling of small islands in the northern Lesser Antilles. Coastlines available for...