Caribbean's First Farmers: The Story of St. John in southwestern Trinidad
Author(s): Basil Reid
Year: 2016
Summary
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 farming epistemology of the pre-colonial neotropics.
Cite this Record
Caribbean's First Farmers: The Story of St. John in southwestern Trinidad. Basil Reid. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Orlando, Florida. 2016 ( tDAR id: 403654)
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Keywords
General
Archaic Farmers
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Caribbean
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Trinidad and Tobago
Geographic Keywords
Caribbean
Spatial Coverage
min long: -90.747; min lat: 3.25 ; max long: -48.999; max lat: 27.683 ;