The closing meeting of the HERA-CARIB Project, entitled “Caribbean Connections: Cultural encounters in a New World setting” will take place at the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University.

The primary aim of this project was to understand the impacts of cultural encounters on Lesser Antillean indigenous Carib societies by studying transformations in settlement pattern and organisation, material culture, and network strategies across the historical divide. The transnational, multi-disciplinary team, combining archaeology, history, archaeometry, and social network studies is uniquely positioned to provide new insights into these transformations throughout the process of colonisation. The multidisciplinary approach will advance novel perspectives to the study of intercultural dynamics in colonial encounter situations worldwide and will contribute to discussions of indigenous resistance, cultural transformations, and cultural diversity in an ever globalizing world. On a local Caribbean level, the project has sought to contribute to the historical awareness and valorisation of cultural heritage in a geopolitically diverse islandscape, with an archaeological record that is under threat from natural disasters and infrastructural development.

You can find the complete program of this meeting here.