NEXUS 1492 and partners are organising three symposia at the SAA 2016 meeting in Orlando.
New Insights Into the Archaic of the Circum-Caribbean

With the development of new trends in long-term perspectives on human ecodynamics, multidimensional approaches to biocultural evolution, and synergies between modellers and palaeoecologists, research on the early peoples of the circumCaribbean became increasingly interdisciplinary and informed by the realization that humans are not passive adaptors to their environment but creatively shape and re-shape it as a landscape, while being simultaneously molded through dynamic biological, sociocultural, and environmental feedbacks. Concomitantly with these theoretical shifts, aided by increasingly sophisticated techniques, the approaches aimed at disclosing the origin of the Archaic Age populations, their mobility and exchange, modes of life, and transitions to horticulture have also been transformed. No longer are these phenomena perceived as caused by single ‘revolutionary’ events, but as multistranded trajectories depending on combinations of economic, social, and ideological processes, liberated from the dependency on propitious environmental conditions, and from the previously inseparable cophenomena of sedentarism, domestication, and pottery making. The approaches have also been changed by the denial of any clear-cut distinction between foragers and farmers’ modes of living and world viewing. We aim to discuss new theoretical, methodological, and analytical approaches that are used to understand the origins and dynamics of the Archaic Age in the Circum-Caribbean.

Date: 9 April 2016
Room: Southern Hemisphere Salon 4
Time: 8:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Chairs: Corinne Hofman and Andrzej Antczak

Below is an overview of the symposia organised by NEXUS 1492 and partners:
8 April: Caribbean Archaeological Collections: History, Museums, and Politics
9 April: New Insights Into the Archaic of the Circum-Caribbean
9 April: Caribbean Environmental Archaeology: New Perspectives on Human Ecodynamics and Social Relations

The official programme and an overview of the abstracts are now available on the website of the SAA.