Cleopatrice Daniel Andrew visited Leiden University for presentations on the La Poterie excavations that were conducted earlier this year. Cleopatrice, a trained fashion and textile designer with a teaching degree, is originally from Grenada and owns the land where a Kalinago settlement was found earlier this year. During her visit, she shared her thoughts on the NEXUS excavations that took place in her backyard last January.
Mariana Francozo (NEXUS 1492) and Paola Schiappacasse (University of Puerto Rico) organised a panel at the Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Orlando, Florida on 8 April 2016. The contributions dealt with the various dimensions (ethical, legal, historical) of Caribbean cultural objects housed in museums in the US and Europe.
The Ministry of Kalinago Affairs, in partnership with Dilianie Darroux and Eloise Stancioff of NEXUS 1492, hosted a presentation on landscape change, social-ecological resiliency and community mapping of the Kalinago Territory in Dominica. This event presented findings of collaborative research and activities that had occurred in the Territory throughout January and February. Held at the Ministry offices in Rousseau, the event provided background information, project results as well as possible ways forward. Through the combined efforts of local partners, the results included development of a GIS database of Kalinago Territory, land hazard mapping for both soil erosion and run off potential into water resources.
Fifteen years ago, a grave site was discovered during construction in a residential area of Santa Cruz, Aruba. NEXUS 1492 and the National Archaeological Museum Aruba (NAMA) partnered to analyse the remains. Last week Prof. Dr. Corinne Hofman and Prof. Dr. Menno Hoogland (NEXUS 1492) and Drs. Raymundo Dijkhoff (NAMA) presented the initial results of the investigation.
On Monday, 15 February 2016, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed by Professor Corinne Hofman of the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University and Professor Albert Feilzer from the Academic Centre for Dentistry (ACTA), University of Amsterdam and VU University, Amsterdam.
In 2010, the remnants of a 16th century indigenous village were discovered in St. Vincent, on the construction terrain of the new International Argyle Airport. The Amerindian village is now being reconstructed based on excavated floor plans and the detailed descriptions of 16th century travellers. The Cayo Village Reconstruction Project at Argyle is the first and only Kalinago-European site of encounter to be found and fully excavated. The site was initially excavated by NEXUS 1492 archaeologists Dr. Corinne Hofman and Dr. Menno Hoogland and revealed floor plans of eleven Amerindian houses. Two of these dwellings were larger, elongated structures, which, using the dictionaries of Reverend Raymond Breton, were interpreted as men’s houses. Breton’s dictionaries include detailed descriptions of the houses and building materials.
On 26 and 27 February, NEXUS1492 hosted a series of workshops on indigenous and pre-colonial Kalinago heritage with a group of teachers from Dominica at Salybia Primary School. The feedback from the teachers was great, and members of the community expressed their motivation to keep working in outreach and education based on the training.
A film by students participating in the 2016 Fieldwork campaign in the Dominican Republic (video edited by Emma de Mooij).
Archaeologists have discovered the skeleton of a pregnant woman from the mid-eighteenth century in Saba, in a collaboration between NEXUS1492 and SABARC. The skeleton was discovered in the upper layers of the soil near a construction site for Saba’s new power plant, where archaeologists were excavating in search of an ancient Amerindian layer of artefacts that dates back thousands of years.
As part of the International Association of Caribbean Archaeologists congress in 2015, trips were organised to visit the heritage of Sint Maarten, St. Martin and Aguila. This video was created during these trips, by Till Sonneman.
