Islands at the Crossroads: Migration, Seafaring, and Interaction in the Caribbean
A long sequence of social, cultural, and political processes characterizes an ever-dynamic Caribbean history. The Caribbean Basin is home to numerous linguistic and cultural traditions and fluid interactions that often map imperfectly onto former colonial and national traditions. Although much of this contact occurred within the confines of local cultural communities, regions, or islands, they nevertheless also include exchanges between islands, and in some cases, with the surrounding continents. recent research in the pragmatics of seafaring and trade suggests that in many cases long-distance intercultural interactions are crucial elements in shaping the social and cultural dynamics of the local populations.The contributors to "Islands at the Crossroads" include scholars from the Caribbean, the United States, and Europe who look beyond cultural boundaries and colonial frontiers to explore the complex and layered ways in which both distant and more intimate sociocultural, political, and economic interactions have shaped Caribbean societies from seven thousand years ago to recent times.ContributorsDouglas V. Armstrong / Mary Jane Berman / Arie Boomert / Alistair J. Bright / Richard T. Callaghan / L. Antonio Curet / Mark W. Hauser / Corinne L. Hofman / Menno L. P. Hoogland / Kenneth G. Kelly / Sebastiaan Knippenberg / Ingrid Newquist / Isabel C. Rivera-Collazo / Reniel Rodriquez Ramos / Alice V. M. Samson / Peter E. Siegel / Christian Williamson"
At the Margins of the Plantation: Alternative Modernities and an Archaeology of the "Poor Whites" of Barbados
This dissertation is an historical archaeological examination of the “poor whites” or “Redlegs” of Barbados. Excavations were undertaken from October 2012 to July 2013 in an abandoned tenantry, Below Cliff, on the east coast of the island, once inhabited by dozens of families locally referred to as the “poor whites” or “Redlegs”, said to be the descendants of seventeenth century European indentured servants. Combining archaeological, ethnographic, and historical methodologies, this dissertation explores class relations of Below Cliff residents to processes of capitalism as well as other island laborers, including Afro-Barbadians. Additionally, racial categories are interrogated through an analysis of complex and interracial genealogies of Below Cliff residents that call into question the legitimacy of determinate racial categories of black and white. I argue that Below Cliff is best understood as an alternative modernity, a place in which residents were directly affected by processes of modernization, but through their own ways of relating to economic forces and their own experiences of race relations they were able to engender alternatives to modernity that were all their own. At the Margins of the Plantation: Alternative Modernities and an Archaeology of the “Poor Whites” of Barbados
Clastic Quartz Particles as Indices of Provenance
ABSTRACT Previous work on the use of detrital quartz as an index to provenance is critically examined, and it is concluded that the only two valid criteria advanced are 1) composite nature of polygranular fragments, and 2) shape of monogranular particles. The present study develops the second criterion, an attempt being made to group grains as either igneous or metamorphic solely on the basis of shape. Measurement of elongations (long axis/short axis) of several thousand quartz grains from sandstones of each of two formations revealed a statistical difference in the grain shapes of the two sandstones. Grains from several badly weathered crystalline rocks were also measured, and it was found that the average elongation for the grains of a granite was less than that for the grains of a schist By analogy, it is concluded that the grain shape difference between the two sandstones is due to their derivation from different source rocks.