Early Human Occupation on Bonaire and Curacao, Dutch Caribbean

Summary

In January 2016, Leiden University initiated a project on Bonaire, Dutch Caribbean. Through a multidisciplinary perspective, and in comparison with earlier Leiden research on Curacao, the goal of this project is to examine how people utilized the landscape during the earliest occupation of the islands. Archaeological investigations focus on two locations; Wanapa II site and caves. Located behind Lac Bay, the Wanapa II site will yield data on settlement dynamics and house structures on Bonaire. The caves will provide proxies on how people envisioned their ritual landscape and utilized the caves within their daily routines. Wanapa II’s unique setting, at the edge of a tidal flat, protected by the bay and mangroves, also warrant a paleo-ecological and coastal dynamics study to reconstruct the environmental setting in which people settled this locations. Through a detailed reconstruction of settlement and environmental proxies, it is possible to determine Bonaire and Curacao’s roles in larger pan-Caribbean networks of exchange and interaction.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• New Insights into the Archaic of the circum-Caribbean

Keywords

Spatial Coverage