THE CARIBBEAN BEFORE COLUMBUS. By William F.Keegan and Corinne F.Hofman. xx and 332 pp.; maps, ills, bibliog., index. New York. Oxford University Press, 2017. 105.00(cloth),isbn9780190605257;105.00 (cloth), isbn 9780190605257; 105.00(cloth),isbn9780190605257;29.95 (paper), isbn 9780190605254; $14.39 (ebook) lccn 2016021992 (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Pre-Columbian Caribbean: Colonization, Population Dispersal, and Island Adaptations
Once considered a backwater of New World prehistory, the Caribbean has now emerged from the archaeological shadows as a critical region for answering a host of questions related to human population dispersal, Neotropical island adaptations, maritime subsistence, seafaring, island interaction networks, and the rise of social complexity, among many others. In this paper, I provide a review of: (1) what is currently known about the antiquity of Pre-Columbian colonization of the Caribbean using archaeological, biological, and oceanographic data; (2) how these data inform on the dispersal of what appear to be many different population movements through time; and (3) the subsequent adaptations (e.g., technological, subsistence, and economic) that took place across the islands after initial contact. Results of more than a century of research demonstrate that the Antilles were settled much earlier than once thought (ca. 7000 cal yr BP), in multiple waves that show strong linkages to South America, but possibly originated from more than one source location. Dispersal was patchy, with several intriguing chronological and spatial disparities that scholars are now investigating in more detail. Beginning ca. 2500 cal yr BP, and accelerating around 1500 cal yr BP, the frequent transport and exchange of goods, services, animals, plants, knowledge, and spiritual ideologies between the islands as well as mainland areas — particularly South America — testify to the interconnected nature of Pre-Columbian societies in the region. The use of more advanced analytical techniques, including ancient DNA, archaeobotany, stable isotopes, and various approaches to geochemical and mineralogical sourcing of artifacts, which until recently have been largely underused in the Caribbean, is opening new avenues of research that are creating exciting opportunities for examining ancient Amerindian lifeways.
Paleoenvironmental evidence for first human colonization of the eastern Caribbean
Identifying and dating first human colonization of new places is challenging, especially when group sizes were small and material traces of their occupations were ephemeral. Generating reliable reconstructions of human colonization patterns from intact archaeological sites may be difficult to impossible given postdepositional taphonomic processes and in cases of island and coastal locations the inundation of landscapes resulting from post-Pleistocene sea-level rise. Paleoenvironmental reconstruction is proving to be a more reliable method of identifying small-scale human colonization events than archaeological data alone. We demonstrate the method through a sediment-coring project across the Lesser Antilles and southern Caribbean. Paleoenvironmental data were collected informing on the timing of multiple islandcolonization events and land-use histories spanning the full range of human occupations in the Caribbean, from the initial forays into the islands through the arrival and eventual domination of the landscapes and indigenous people by Europeans. In some areas, our data complement archaeological, paleoecological, and historical findings from the Lesser Antilles and in others amplify understanding of colonization history. Here, we highlight data relating to the timing and process of initial colonization in the eastern Caribbean. In particular, paleoenvironmental data from Trinidad, Grenada, Martinique, and Marie-Galante (Guadeloupe) provide a basis for revisiting initial colonization models of the Caribbean. We conclude that archaeological programs addressing human occupations dating to the early to mid-Holocene, especially in dynamic coastal settings, should systematically incorporate paleoenvironmental investigations.
Prehistoric settlements in the Caribbean
Archaeology International, 1997
Mesoamerican arch aeology has fo cused mainly on th e ancient civilizations of the mainland, but kn owledge of early settlement, society and economy in th e Caribbean islands is essential for our understanding of th e prehistory of the region as a wh ole. In stitute staff and students are curren tly working in th ree islands: Puerto Rico, Tortola and Barbados.
Indians Came To The Caribbean Before Columbus
People of South Asian/Indian origin in the Caribbean commemorate Indian Arrival Day annually to memorialize the advent of their forefathers to the New World in 1845 as indentured labourers from India. Little do they (and others) know that bands of Indian migrants had come to the Americas by crossing the strip of narrow land at the Bering Strait 13,000 years ago. The theory of diffusion which provides the basis of such a claim has been supported by recent archeological, historical and genetic discoveries. This paper interprets the material evidence left by the Mayans in Belize and the Amerindians in the Caribbean to support the hypothesis of Indian contact and influence. This paper will be read along with a slide presentation to illustrate the similarities between the ancient cultures of Middle America and Hindu India.
Seafaring Capabilities in the Pre-Columbian Caribbean
Journal of Maritime Archaeology, 2013
At historic contact Europeans remarked on the skill and proficiency of native Caribbean Amerindians to build and travel in dugout canoes. While archaeological examples of these have been recorded throughout the circum-Caribbean, very few exist in the Antillean chain of islands. Despite this deficiency, indirect evidence of seafaring along with archaeological data has suggested to many that the sea was an artery that linked prehistoric communities together between islands and continents through exchange networks and settlement ‘lifelines’. It is clear that frequent interaction was taking place prehistorically in the region, but examination of seafaring capabilities and the general lack of hard archaeological evidence for contacts in many places suggest this was largely restricted to interaction between the islands and with South America. The fact remains that seafaring in the Caribbean, as one of the smaller aquatic realms inhabited by humans in the past, was highly influenced and largely structured by oceanographic and anemological effects that limited the development of various watercraft designs and navigational techniques which are seen in many of the other world’s seas and oceans. In this paper I: (1) synthesize what is currently known about the antiquity and development of early seafaring in the Caribbean; (2) highlight debates about the level of technologies found in the region; (3) discuss how environmental conditions likely influenced seafaring capabilities and settlement patterns; (4) outline the possible evidence for connections between the different surrounding mainland areas; and (5) provide a comparison with seafaring technologies found in the Pacific to help contextualize the Caribbean into the broader context of global seafaring.
2019
Early Settlers of the Insular Caribbean: Dearchaizing the Archaic offers a comprehensive coverage of the most recent advances in interdisciplinary research on the early human settling of the Caribbean islands. It covers the time span of the so-called Archaic Age and focuses on the Middle to Late Holocene period which – depending on specific case studies discussed in this volume – could range between 6000 BC and AD 1000. A similar approach to the early settlers of the Caribbean islands has never been published in one volume, impeding the realization of a holistic view on indigenous peoples’ settling, subsistence, movements, and interactions in this vast and naturally diversified macroregion. Delivered by a panel of international experts, this book provides recent and new data in the fields of archaeology, collection studies, palaeobotany, geomorphology, paleoclimate and bioarchaeology that challenge currently existing perspectives on early human settlement patterns, subsistence strategies, migration routes and mobility and exchange. This publication compiles new approaches to ‘old’ data and museum collections, presents the results of starch grain analysis, paleocoring, seascape modelling, and network analysis. Moreover, it features newer published data from the islands such as Margarita and Aruba. All the above-mentioned data compiled in one volume fills the gap in scholarly literature, transforms some of the interpretations in vogue and enables the integration of the first settlers of the insular Caribbean into the larger Pan-American perspective. This book not only provides scholars and students with compelling new and interdisciplinary perspectives on the Early Settlers of the Insular Caribbean. It is also of interest to unspecialized readers as it discusses subjects related to archaeology, anthropology, and – broadly speaking – to the intersections between humanities and social and environmental sciences, which are of great interest to the present-day general public. Also see the other publications from the NEXUS 1492 Research Project
The current archaeozoological knowledge in the Caribbean seems ill-matched and fragmented, we should set the Caribbean archaeological research in its historical, epistemological and economical context. Initially practiced by naturalists and scientists from Occident, then by Caribbean, north-American and Europeans academics, this research reflects in one hand the major occidental thoughts in anthropology and human sciences, but on the other hand the political and economical regional diversity of the Caribbean. Indeed, since the beginning of the XXth century, the Europe an excitement about the Tainos of the Greater Antilles allowed both academic (governement and university) and rescue archaeology in the whole Caribbean. It is based on survey and excavation techniques adapted to the tropical environments, as well as on specialized studies, such as Archaeozoology, following European practices. Moreover, an increasing number of excavations occurred in the Caribbean for the past decades. Regional Museums have opened, and European and North American universities and academic institutions have settled in several islands. Researches have developed on subsistence, on environmental exploitation, on technology, on villages organization, on exchanges and chronocultural shifts. Finally, a number of archaeozoological researchers provided micro-regional and regional synthesis for the Caribbean. This paper introduces the particular geography of the Caribbean, a brief history of the pre-Columbian archaeology and archaeozoological researches in the Caribbean, and the major cultural pre-Columbian changes found through Archaeozoology.
What is the Caribbean? An Archaeological Perspective
The Caribbean as a culture area has traditionally been limited to the Antilles and northeastern South America. This geo-cultural construct has thus served to alienate the Antillean chain from other surrounding continental regions that are also bathed by this body of water. Evidence recently recovered from the Antilles of jade circulation that indicates long-term macro-regional interactions across the Caribbeanscape will be presented. These data will be used to show the limitations imposed the current configuration of the Caribbean culture area and to propose the consideration of the Greater Caribbean as a geohistorical area of study.