This archaeological study reconstructs Pre-Columbian exchange networks in the Lesser Antilles based on lithic artefact distributions among the different islands.

Comprising 20 scientific contributions to the archaeology of Guadeloupe, French West Indies, this volume places the latter Caribbean Island in the spotlight by presenting the results of four contemporaneous archaeological sites. By means of these four sites, this book explores a variety of issues contemplating the transition from the Early to the Late Ceramic Age in the Lesser Antilles. Studies of pre-Columbian material culture (ceramics, lithics, faunal, shell and human bone remains) are combined with additional microanalyses (starch and phytolith analyses, micromorphology and thin sections) to sort out the processes that triggered the cultural transition just before the end of the first millennium CE. The multidisciplinary approach to address these sites Saladoid shows the current state of affairs on project-led archaeology in the French West Indies and should be of great value to both researchers and students of Caribbean archaeology, material cultures, zooarchaeology, environmental studies, historical ecology, and other related fields.

The islands of the Caribbean are remarkably diverse, environmentally and culturally. They range from low limestone islands barely above sea level to volcanic islands with mountainous peaks; from large islands to small cays; from islands with tropical rainforests to those with desert habitats. Today's inhabitants have equally diverse culture histories. The islands are home to a mosaic of indigenous communities and to the descendants of Spanish, French, Dutch, English, Swedish, Danish, Irish, African, East Indian, Chinese, Syrian, Seminole and other nationalities who settled there during historic times. The islands are now being homogenized, all to create a standard experience for the Caribbean tourist. There is a similar attempt to homogenize the Caribbean's pre-Columbian past. It was assumed that every new prehistoric culture had developed out of the culture that preceded it. We now know that far more complicated processes of migration, acculturation, and accommodation occurred. Furthermore, the overly simplistic distinction between the "peaceful Arawak" and the "cannibal Carib," which forms the structure for James Michener's Caribbean, still dominates popular notions of precolonial Caribbean societies. This book documents the diversity and complexity that existed in the Caribbean prior to the arrival of Europeans, and immediately thereafter. The diversity results from different origins, different histories, different contacts between the islands and the mainland, different environmental conditions, and shifting social alliances. Organized chronologically, from the arrival of the first humans-the paleo-Indians-in the sixth millennium BC to early contact with Europeans, The Caribbean before Columbus presents a new history of the region based on the latest archaeological evidence. The authors also consider cultural developments on the surrounding mainland, since the islands' history is a story of mobility and exchange across the Caribbean Sea, and possibly the Gulf of Mexico and Florida Straits. The result is the most up-to-date and comprehensive survey of the richly complex cultures who once inhabited the six archipelagoes of the Caribbean.

Montserrat is a small island in the Leeward islands of the eastern Caribbean and at present a British Overseas Territory. It has suffered greatly in recent times, first from the devastations of Hurricane Hugo in 1989 and since 1995 from the still-ongoing eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano that has caused two-thirds of the island’s population to emigrate and left half the island a dangerous exclusion zone. Archaeological research here began only in the late 1970s, but work over the past four decades has now made it possible to present an archaeological history of Montserrat, from the earliest known traces of human activity on the island about 5,000 years ago to the present. This book draws on all the available archaeological evidence (including that from the co-authors’ own island-wide survey and excavation project since 2010), as well as newly available archival documents, to trace this little island’s long history and heritage. This is not the story of an isolated and remote island: Montserrat is shown rather to be a place intricately connected to the flows of people and goods that have travelled between islands and across the Atlantic at various points in time, both Amerindian and historical. Despite its small size and seeming irrelevance, Montserrat has in fact always been networked into regional and global systems of connectivity. An underlying theme of this volume is resilience. It presents insights from the archaeological and documentary evidence on how the island’s inhabitants have coped with often adverse conditions throughout the course of its history – hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, slavery, disease, invasions, and impoverishment – all while remaining proudly connected to heritage that celebrates the accomplishments of island residents.

The Oxford Handbook of Caribbean Archaeology provides an overview of archaeological investigations in the insular Caribbean, understood here as the islands whose shores surround the Caribbean Sea and the islands of the Bahama Archipelago. Though these islands were never isolated from the surrounding mainland, their histories are sufficiently diverse to warrant their identification as distinct areas of culture. Over the past 20 years, Caribbean archaeology has been transformed from a focus on reconstructing culture histories to one on the mobility and exchange expressed in cultural and social dynamics. This Handbook brings together, for the first time, examples of the best research conducted by scholars from across the globe to address the complexity of the Caribbean past. The Handbook is divided into five sections. Part I, Islands of History and the Precolonial History of the Caribbean Islands, provides an introduction to Caribbean Archaeology and its history. The papers in the following Ethnohistory section address the diversity of cultural practices expressed in the insular Caribbean and develop historical descriptions in concert with archaeological evidence in order to place language, social organization, and the native Taínos and Island Caribs in perspective. The following section, Culture History, provides the latest research on specific geographical locations and cross-cultural engagements, from Jamaica and the Bahama archigelago to the Saladoid and the Isthmo-Antillean Engagements. Creating History, the fourth section, includes papers on specific issues related to the field, such as Zooarchaeology, Rock Art, and DNA analysis, among others. The final section, World History, centers on the consequences of European colonization.

Communities in Contact represents the outcome of the Fourth International Leiden in the Caribbean symposium entitled From Prehistory to Ethnography in the circum-Caribbean. The contributions included in this volume cover a wide range of topics from a variety of disciplines - archaeology, bioarchaeology, ethnohistory and ethnography - revolving around the themes of mobility and exchange, culture contact, and settlement and community. The application of innovative approaches and the multi-dimensional character of these essays have provided exiting new perspectives on the indigenous communities of the circum-Caribbean and Amazonian regions throughout prehistory until the present.

Outgrowth of a session organized for the 75th Anniversary Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology held in St. Louis, Mo., in 2010. Cf. acknowledgments.

This study represents a contribution to the pre-Colonial archaeology of the Windward Islands in the Caribbean. The research aimed to determine how the Ceramic Age (c. 400 BC - AD 1492) Amerindian inhabitants of the region related to one another and others at various geographic scales, with a view to better understanding social interaction and organisation within the Windward Islands as well the integration of this region within the macro-region. This research approached the study of intra- and inter-island interaction and social development through an island-by-island study of some 640 archaeological sites and their ceramic assemblages. Besides providing insight into settlement sequences, patterns and micro-mobility through time, it also highlighted various configurations of sites spread across different islands that were united by shared ceramic (decorative) traits. These configurations were more closely examined by taking recourse to graph-theory. By extending the comparative scope of this research to the Greater Antilles and the South American mainland, possible material cultural influences from more distant regions could be suggested. While Windward Island communities certainly developed a localised material cultural identity, they remained open to a host of wide-ranging influences outside the Windward Island micro-region. As such, rather than representing a cultural backwater operating in the periphery of a burgeoning Taíno empire, it is argued that Windward Island communities actively and flexibly realigned themselves with several mainland South American societies in Late Ceramic Age times (c. AD 700-1500), forging and maintaining significant ties and exchange relationships. Alistair Bright was a member of the Caribbean Research Group at Leiden University from 2003 to 2010 and participated in numerous archaeological surveys and excavations in the Caribbean during that time. His research interests include the archaeology, ethnohistory and ethnography of the Caribbean and South America, as well as the archaeology of island societies throughout the world in general.

Reveals how the expanding world-system entangled the non-Western world in global economies, yet did so in ways that were locally articulated, varied, and, often, non-European in their expression. This interdisciplinary volume brings together a richly substantive collection of case studies that examine European-indigene interactions, economic relations, and their materialities in the formation of the modern world. Research has demonstrated the extent and complexity of the varied local economic and political systems, and diverse social formations that predated European contact. These preexisting systems articulated with the expanding European economy and, in doing so, shaped its emergence. Moving beyond the confines of national or Atlantic histories to examine regional systems and their historical trajectories on a global scale, the studies within this volume draw examples from the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, North America, South America, Africa, and South Asia. While the contributions are rooted in substantive studies from different world areas, their overarching aim is to negotiate between global and local frames, revealing how the expanding world-system entangled the non-Western world in global economies, yet did so in ways that were locally articulated, varied and, often, non-European in their expression.

This volume brings together examples of the best research to address the complexity of the Caribbean past.