Ancient DNA reveals an early African origin of cattle in the Americas
Cattle may seem like uniquely American animals, steeped in the lore of cowboys, cattle drives and sprawling ranches. But cattle…
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Oldest DNA from domesticated American horse lends credence to shipwreck folklore
An abandoned Caribbean colony unearthed centuries after it had been forgotten and a case of mistaken identity in the archaeological…
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Indigenous communities used the Caribbean Sea as an aquatic highway
With some 7,000 islands and cays and a 7,000-year history of human habitation, the Caribbean Sea is practically synonymous with…
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The persistent effects of colonialism in Caribbean science
Prior to the first world war, sprawling European empires collectively controlled roughly 80% of Earth’s landmass. Following WWII, that percentage…
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Crawling out of history: The Grand Turk tortoise
My Hero by Billy Collins Just as the hare is zipping across the finish line, the tortoise has stopped once…
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Clear as mud: The origins of early pottery in the Lucayan Islands
In our last “Talking Taino” we described a variety of ways that meals were prepared without clay pots. The invention…
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Not a pot to ‘cook’ in
Irving Rouse, the doyen of Caribbean archaeology, once estimated that pottery comprised 90% of all artifacts found in the region….
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After routing de Soto, Chickasaws repurposed Spanish objects for everyday use
Archaeologists have unearthed a rare trove of more than 80 metal objects in Mississippi thought to be from Hernando de…
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Human eye beats machine in archaeological color identification test
A ruler and scale can tell archaeologists the size and weight of a fragment of pottery – but identifying its…
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Ancient DNA retells story of Caribbean’s first people
The history of the Caribbean’s original islanders comes into sharper focus in a new Nature study that combines decades of…
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