Use of natural resources for indigenous ceramic production in the Lesser Antilles during the Ceramic Age and Early Colonial Period.

The cultural encounters between the Old and New Worlds are among the most infamous in human history. The Caribbean was the centre stage for interactions between cultures of dramatically different backgrounds, which after a turbulent colonial period eventually laid the foundations for the modern-day, multi-ethnic societies of the region. This project focuses on inter-community social relationships and transformations of island cultures, and societies in the Caribbean across the historical divide (AD 1000-1800). The primary aim is to understand the impacts of cultural encounters in the Caribbean by studying transformations in material culture. Continuity and change in the indigenous ceramic material culture repertoire, from the late pre-colonial to the early colonial period, will be studied. Amerindian ceramic manufacture and style across the historical divide, mixed Amerindian-African-European artifact assemblages dating to the early colonial period, and the provenance of the pottery and the interrelationships in manufacturing techniques and technological choices will be described. Provenance studies with methods including petrography and geochemistry (XRF, ICP-OES) will be performed. A compositional map of clay sources and pre-colonial pottery will be compiled as a baseline for this study.