The Icky Sticky: Foodways, Identity, and Isotopic Residue Analysis at La Soye, Dominica

Summary

This is a poster submission presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

As part of the La Soye research project, this poster explores the socioecological dynamics of the Kalinago people, European colonists, and island ecologies during the early-modern era. Through the GC-IRMS and starch analysis of a collection of earthenware potsherds, this paper reconstructs the dietary patterns of La Soye’s inhabitants. Preliminary data suggests that the inhabitants were consuming a mixture of Old and New World species. This paper is part of a dissertation project sizing the impact of the Columbian Exchange on cuisine, and the influence these cuisines had on identity maintenance and construction in the Caribbean. Food dynamically binds and builds cultural vertices; it serves as a reminder of the recent past and creates opportunities for exchange, fusions, and genesis. Therefore, food may be used as a proxy to reconstruct colonial-indigenous interfaces; especially in zones of high cultural complexity such as the La Soye trading hub.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• 2023 SHA Poster Submissions

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow