The archaeology of the Spanish contact period in the Caribbean

The arrival of Spanish conquistadors and colonists to the Caribbean in the late fifteenth century set in motion the processes that produced the post-1500 New World. The sixteenth-century cultural and ecological exchanges among Europe, Africa, and the Americas that took place during the early contact period greatly affected the social and economic patterns of life in both the Old and the New Worlds. Nowhere was this change manifest as profoundly and dramatically as in the sixteenth-century Caribbean. This essay explores the archaeological insights into the processes of encounter between the Amerindian peoples of the Caribbean region and the first permanent Europeans in the Americas and the responses of each to contact with the other. Archaeological research has informed our understanding of this seminal era in New World cultural development in important ways. It had also allowed the documentation of both the cultural and demographic disintegration of the Caribbean Indians and the formation of Euro-American culture.     

Coastal Maya Obsidian Tool Use and Socio-Economy in the Late Postclassic-Early Spanish Colonial Period at San Pedro,Ambergris Caye,Belize

Microscopic use-wear analysis of the obsidian artifacts recovered from Late Postclassic-Early Spanish Colonial occupations at the site of San Pedro yields useful information for interpreting Maya socio-economic activities. Obsidian traded into the community was used for a variety of tasks with emphasis placed on subsistence and domestic manufacture associated with marine resources, including intermittent and contingent crafting. Trade in obsidian and marine resources likely provided San Pedro community members access to inland economic networks and enabled the acquisition of resources not found on the caye. Microwear on chert and obsidian tools indicates relative stability in the traditional lives of the San Pedro Maya in the 15th–17th centuries a.d. Although the San Pedranos likely suffered to some degree from coastal raiding and the introduction of epidemic diseases by the Spaniards, their off-shore location provided them some protection from the upheaval experienced by the Maya in mainland communities.