Lucayan Legacies : Indigenous Lifeways in the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ostapkowicz, Joanna.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Lucayan Indians.

Archaeology.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (366 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Leiden : Sidestone Press, 2023.

Summary:

This book is about Lucayan legacies - the heritage of the people who made The Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands (the Lucayan archipelago) their home from the 8th to the 16th centuries. This legacy is not simply the surviving physical record, consisting of artefacts of stone, shell and wood - it is a history entangled in the early antiquarian and archaeological interests in the region, resulting in the museum and institutional collections both within and beyond the islands. Many of the collections now in museums were acquired between 1850 and 1950, before professional archaeology emerged as a field in the region, and are largely unknown even to many archaeologists working in The Bahamas and the wider Caribbean, let alone to local island communities and the wider public. In drawing together this widely dispersed corpus, this comprehensive, richly illustrated study aims to foreground the material culture of the Lucayans, making it more accessible and reinstating it as an important part of the region's archaeological heritage. Development on the islands dating back to the 17th century has resulted in the loss of much of the earlier heritage, with a rate of destruction that has only increased in recent decades as a result of both human activity but also global climate change, seeing rising sea levels and ever-more violent storms. In this context, it is important to take stock of the islands' surviving Lucayan heritage, and integrate it back into the narratives of the past. Many of the most elaborate artefacts ever found on the islands - including a number of wood carvings - have not been recovered from archaeological excavations, but rather as a result of early guano mining and cave exploration. This has led to them often being marginalised, reinforcing an impression of a comparatively 'simple' Lucayan society. A central tenet of the book is that

this impression is mistaken, and that the Lucayans had a rich material culture and were active participants in social, economic and political exchanges with the larger islands of the Greater Antilles. By integrating these legacy collections with a historiography of archaeological investigation in the region, the volume addresses topics ranging from the first occupations on the islands, to an island-by-island review of finds and settlements, and a consideration of Lucayan lifeways. Further, it explores some of the new directions this heritage is taking through the work of contemporary Bahamian and TCI artists.

Contents:

Intro

Foreword

Acknowledgements

The cultural legacies of the Lucayans

1.1 Lucayan: some definitions

1.2 The setting

1.3 The impact of history on prehistory

1.4 The dispersal of Lucayan cultural heritage

1.5 Local museums, local interest?

1.6 Heritage protection

Lucayan prehistory: current understandings

2.1 Chronologies and migrations: the Lucayan archipelago in a circum-Caribbean context

2.1.1 The Archaic in The Bahamas/TCI: absence of evidence or evidence for absence?

2.1.2 Sources of early Bahamian/TCI settlers: the debates

2.1.3 Linguistic clues: Lucayan toponyms

2.1.4 Why were The Bahamas/TCI settled? The push and pull of colonisation

2.1.5 Migrants, chronologies and permanent vs. seasonal settlements

2.2 Settlements: the world in one village (or two)

2.2.1 From the land: plants

2.2.2 From the land: animals

2.2.3 From the sea: fish, shellfish, turtles

2.2.4 From the sky: birds

2.3 Socio-political organisation and trade

2.4 Life, death, afterlife

2.4.1 Origins: foundations for a new life

2.4.2 Transitions: adolescence and puberty

2.4.3 Lives lived: adulthood, connections, ceremonies, roles

2.4.4 Burial and passage to another world

Collectors, Collections and the early years of Lucayan archaeology: a brief history (1780‑1950)

3.1 Explorations 1850‑1900: Gibbs, Frith, Murphy, Blake, Brooks

3.2 Investigations 1900‑1959: de Booy, Rainey, Krieger, Goggin, Granberry

3.2.1 Theodoor de Booy (active 1911‑1912)

3.2.2 Froelich G. Rainey (active 1934)

3.2.3 Herbert W. Krieger (active 1936‑7

1947)

3.2.4 John Mann Goggin (active 1937

1952, 1955, 1960)

3.2.5 Julian Granberry (active from 1952)

3.3 Archaeological investigations from the 1960s onwards: a brief introduction

Island archaeologies

4.1 The northern islands

4.1.1 Grand Bahama.

4.1.2 Abaco

4.1.3 Andros

4.1.4 New Providence

4.2 The central islands

4.2.1 Eleuthera

4.2.2 Cat Island

4.2.3 The Exumas (Great, Little and Cays)

4.2.4 San Salvador

4.2.5 Rum Cay, with a note on Conception Island

4.2.6 Long Island

4.3 The southern islands

4.3.1 Acklins and Crooked Island, Long, Samana and Plana Cays

4.3.2 Mayaguana

4.3.3 Great Inagua

Turks and Caicos

4.3.4 Providenciales and West Caicos

4.3.5 North Caicos

4.3.6 Middle Caicos

4.3.7 East Caicos, South Caicos and cays

4.3.8 Grand Turk and cays

Material Culture

5.1 Lucayan 'art'? Lucayan aesthetics

5.2 Bodies adorned

5.2.1 "The social skin": Lucayan body painting

5.2.2 The body draped in beauty: shell and stone beads, pendants and earflares

5.3 The ephemeral arts: plant fibres and textiles

5.3.1 Cotton: weaving Lucayan wealth

5.3.2 Plant fibres: the patterns of life

5.4 A forest for wood carving

5.4.1 The woodcarver's craft

5.4.2 Duhos: context, concepts and a few clarifications

5.4.3 Vessels and platters

5.4.4 Canoes and paddles

5.5 The emergence of Palmetto Ware

5.5.1 Palmetto Ware: red clay, shell tempered

5.5.2 Making a Palmetto pot: clay, coil, and fire

5.6 Stone tools: forms, functions and facilitators

5.7 Petroglyphs

5.7.1 Abaco

5.7.2 San Salvador

5.7.3 Rum Cay

5.7.4 Long Island

5.7.5 Crooked Island

5.7.6 Mayaguana

5.7.7 Great Inagua

5.7.8 Middle Caicos

5.7.9 East Caicos

Histories

6.1 Columbus in The Bahamas: 12 to 27 October 1492

6.2 European trade goods

6.3 The colonial period: charted islands, enslaved bodies

6.3.1 The lexicon of discovery: the Lucayos in the earliest maps

6.3.2 Slavery and the Islas inútiles (the 'useless islands')

6.4 Lucayan adaption, resistance and persistence.

6.4.1 Diego Colón (active ca. 1492‑1518)

6.4.2 Caonabó (active 1493‑1496)

6.4.3 Survivors of the slave raids: Catalinica, Beatrizica and the pearl divers (post-1520)

6.5 Lucayans and national identity

6.5.1 Contemporary artistic visions: Lucayans and the building of a national iconography

References

Appendix

National institutions with Lucayan archaeological collections

International institutions with Lucayan archaeological collections

Blank Page.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Part of the metadata in this record was created by AI, based on the text of the resource.

ISBN:

9789464261035

OCLC:

1380463243