Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Joanna Ostapkowicz
Publisher:   Sidestone Press
Imprint:   Sidestone Press
ISBN:  

9789464261011

ISBN 10:   9464261013
Pages:   400
Publication Date:   09 March 2023
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

List of Figures_x000D_ _x000D_ List of Tables_x000D_ _x000D_ Acknowledgements_x000D_ _x000D_ Foreword: Kim Outten Stubbs, Director, National Museum of The Bahamas (AMMC)_x000D_ _x000D_ Donald Keith H. Keith, Turks and Caicos National Museum Foundation Board of Directors_x000D_ _x000D_ ┬á_x000D_ _x000D_ 1. The cultural legacies of the Lucayans_x000D_ _x000D_ 1.1 Lucayan: some definitions_x000D_ _x000D_ 1.2 The setting_x000D_ _x000D_ 1.3 The impact of history on prehistory_x000D_ _x000D_ 1.4 The dispersal of Lucayan cultural heritage_x000D_ _x000D_ 1.5 Local museums, local interest?_x000D_ _x000D_ 1.6 Heritage protection_x000D_ _x000D_ ┬á_x000D_ _x000D_ 2. Lucayan prehistory: current understandings_x000D_ _x000D_ 2.1 Chronologies and migrations: Lucayan archipelago in a circum-Caribbean context_x000D_ _x000D_ 2.2 Settlements: the world in one village (or two)_x000D_ _x000D_ 2.3 Socio-political organisation and trade_x000D_ _x000D_ 2.4 Life, death, afterlife_x000D_ _x000D_ ┬á_x000D_ _x000D_ 3. Collectors, Collections and the early years of Lucayan archaeology: a brief history (1780-1950)_x000D_ _x000D_ 3.1 Explorations 1850-1900: Frith, Murphy, Blake, Brooks_x000D_ _x000D_ 3.2 Investigations 1900-1959: de Booy, Rainey, Krieger, Goggin, Granberry_x000D_ _x000D_ 3.3 Archaeological investigations from the 1960s onwards: a brief introduction_x000D_ _x000D_ ┬á_x000D_ _x000D_ 4. Island archaeologies_x000D_ _x000D_ 4.1 The northern Islands_x000D_ _x000D_ 4.2 The central Islands_x000D_ _x000D_ 4.3 The southern Islands_x000D_ _x000D_ ┬á_x000D_ _x000D_ 5. Material culture_x000D_ _x000D_ 5.1 Lucayan ÔÇÿartÔÇÖ? Lucayan aesthetics_x000D_ _x000D_ 5.2 Bodies adorned_x000D_ _x000D_ 5.3 The ephemeral arts: fibres and textiles_x000D_ _x000D_ 5.4 A forest for wood carving_x000D_ _x000D_ 5.5 The emergence of Palmetto Ware_x000D_ _x000D_ 5.6 Stone tools: forms, functions and facilitators_x000D_ _x000D_ 5.7 Petroglyphs_x000D_ _x000D_ ┬á_x000D_ _x000D_ 6. Histories_x000D_ _x000D_ 6.1 Columbus in The Bahamas: 12 to 27 October 1492_x000D_ _x000D_ 6.2 European trade goods_x000D_ _x000D_ 6.3 The colonial period: charted islands, enslaved bodies_x000D_ _x000D_ 6.4 Lucayan adaption, resistance and persistence_x000D_ _x000D_ 6.4.3 Survivors of the slave raids: Catalinica, Beatrizica and the pearl divers (post-1538)_x000D_ _x000D_ 6.5 Lucayans in national identity_x000D_ _x000D_ ┬á_x000D_ _x000D_ References_x000D_ _x000D_ Appendix: Lucayan collections in international museums_x000D_ _x000D_ Index

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Author Information

Joanna Ostapkowicz is Research Associate in Caribbean Archaeology at the School of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on bringing a wide span of analytical techniques to better understand the chronological range, materials and provenance of Caribbean artefacts in museum collections. She has been Principal Investigator on several international, multi-disciplinary research projects that focus on Caribbean sculpture and bridge the arts and sciences, including Pre-Hispanic Caribbean Sculptural arts in Wood (supported by the Getty Foundation and British Academy), Black Pitch, Carved Histories: Prehistoric wood sculpture from Trinidad’s Pitch Lake (the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AHRC], UK) and SIBA: Stone Interchanges in the Bahama Archipelago (AHRC). More broadly, her interests span the indigenous arts of the Americas, from the Northwest Coast of North America to Florida and, most recently, to north-eastern South America with the jagWARS project (Jaguars, Raptors and the Patterns of War, the Gerda Henkel Stiftung). Her two recent volumes are Iconography and Wetsite Archaeology of Florida’s Watery Realms (co-edited with Ryan Wheeler) and Real, Recent or Replica: Precolumbian Caribbean Heritage as Art, Commodity, and Inspiration (co-edited with Jonathan A. Hanna).

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