Caribbean

Author(s):  
Magdalena Antczak ◽  
Andrzej Antczak

Pottery figurines made by the indigenous peoples in precolonial times have been a relatively rare finding in the Caribbean. A few dozen recovered across the Greater and Lesser Antilles cannot ‘compete’ with the thousands known from the neighbouring mainland. The lack of sound contextual and chronological data has severely limited the role of figurines in the pageant of the region’s past. Rarely addressed in the archaeological literature, figurines have been the focus of scant substantial research. This chapter examines what is currently known about precolonial figurines in the Greater and Lesser Antilles, and on the Southern Caribbean islands. It discusses the precolonial archaeology of the region in order to facilitate the overview of figurines which follows. The case studies are ordered diachronically and include Puerto Rico, Cuba, St Lucia, and the Los Roques Archipelago. Existing figurine interpretations are addressed and the chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. Renken ◽  
W. C. Ward ◽  
I.P. Gill ◽  
Fernando Gómez-Gómez ◽  
Jesús Rodríguez-Martínez ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Chaoqun Yao

Abstract The kinetoplastid protozoan Leishmania spp. cause leishmaniasis, which clinically exhibit mainly as a cutaneous, mucocutanous or visceral form depending upon the parasite species in humans. The disease is widespread geographically, leading to 20 000 annual deaths. Here, leishmaniases in both humans and animals, reservoirs and sand fly vectors on the Caribbean islands are reviewed. Autochthonous human infections by Leishmania spp. were found in the Dominican Republic, Guadeloupe and Martinique as well as Trinidad and Tobago; canine infections were found in St. Kitts and Grenada; and equine infections were found in Puerto Rico. Imported human cases have been reported in Cuba. The parasites included Leishmania amazonensis, Le. martiniquensis and Le. waltoni. Possible sand fly vectors included Lutzomyia christophei, Lu. atroclavatus, Lu. cayennensis and Lu. flaviscutellata as well as Phlebotomus guadeloupensis. Reservoirs included rats, rice rats and mouse opossum. An updated study is warranted for the control and elimination of leishmaniasis in the region because some of the data are four decades old.


2019 ◽  
pp. 67-85
Author(s):  
Kirwin R. Shaffer

This chapter shows how anarchists in Florida played important roles in the Caribbean, the Cuban War for Independence in the 1890s, the early years of anarchist organization in Cuba after the U.S. occupation had ended in 1902, and labor conflicts impacting the regional tobacco industry. Florida has to be seen beyond its geopolitical confines of a U.S. state and rather as part of a transnational network linked to anarchist political and labor struggles in Cuba and Puerto Rico. As a result, the chapter emphasizes the transnational dimensions of Hispanic anarchism in the Caribbean, especially the movement of people, and the role of anarchist media in transferring money and ideas across the Florida Straits.


2021 ◽  
pp. 182-197
Author(s):  
Robert N. Wiedenmann ◽  
J. Ray Fisher

This chapter reviews the role of expanding sugarcane plantations throughout the Caribbean in the movement of slaves, mosquitoes and disease, as world empires jockeyed for dominance in world sugar markets. It relates how increased sugarcane production and exports to Europe led to increased importation of slaves to work the fields. As the African embarkation point of slaves moved north to the Slave Coast, yellow fever and the mosquito Aedes aegypti came into play, though when England banned slaveholding, sugar production shifted to the Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico and Cuba. The brief Spanish-American War of 1898, over control of Cuba, cemented the fame of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt but resulted in more deaths from yellow fever than combat, with the outbreak continuing during the post-war occupation of Cuba. Serendipity played a significant role in the subsequent discovery of the cause of the disease, connecting the Yellow Fever Commission, led by Major Walter Reed, with Cuban physician, Dr. Carlos Finlay, whose early experiments pointed to mosquitos and others while a series of experiments by Reed's team showed Aedes aegypti was the vector.


2021 ◽  
pp. 213-244
Author(s):  
Leonardo R. Arriola ◽  
Martha C. Johnson ◽  
Melanie L. Phillips

The concluding chapter revisits the main hypotheses regarding women’s experiences as aspirants, candidates, and legislators. Complemented by tables summarizing key findings, the chapter identifies where and how the book’s studies of Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Uganda, and Zambia either uphold or contradict hypotheses from the existing literature. Building on this summary, the chapter presents an agenda for future research on women’s political participation in African countries focused on the importance of financial constraints for women’s candidacies, the role of violence in shaping women’s political options, and the impact women in power have on gendered institutions. The book ends on an optimistic note, arguing that despite these barriers, the case studies clearly demonstrate that women are adept at securing a place for themselves, and asserting their voice, in local and national politics.


2008 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reniel Rodríguez Ramos ◽  
Elvis Babilonia ◽  
L. Antonio Curet ◽  
Jorge Ulloa

Pottery in contexts that predate the entrance of Arawak societies to the Antilles (500 B.C.) by at least one millennium demand a reassessment of the introduction of this technology to the islands. We summarize the available evidence of what we term the Pre-Arawak Pottery horizon and address the social implications of the introduction of such technology to the insular Caribbean, based on the role of pots as tools. We show that this early pottery is more widespread than originally thought, extending from Cuba to Hispanola and perhaps to Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles as well. We argue that the paucity of early ceramic contexts discovered thus far could have resulted from the consideration of pottery as intrusive in Pre-Arawak contexts and because of its technological and stylistic overlap with wares associated to the Ostionoid series (A.D. 600-1500) of the Greater Antilles. Based on this evidence, we conclude by suggesting that some of the post-Saladoid manifestations that have been identified in the islands could have resulted from a multifocal development of these pre-Arawak cultures rather than simply from the divergent evolution of Saladoid societies as has been argued thus far.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-21
Author(s):  
Anouschka van Leeuwen ◽  
Carolien A. N. Knoop-van Campen ◽  
Inge Molenaar ◽  
Nikol Rummel

Teacher dashboards are a specific form of analytics in which visual displays provide teachers with information about their students; for example, concerning student progress and performance on tasks during lessons or lectures. In the present paper, we focus on the role of teacher dashboards in the context of teacher decision-making in K–12 education. There is large variation in teacher dashboard use in the classroom, which could be explained by teacher characteristics. Therefore, we investigate the role of teacher characteristics — such as experience, age, gender, and self-efficacy — in how teachers use dashboards. More specifically, we present two case studies to understand how diversity in teacher dashboard use is related to teacher characteristics. Surprisingly, in both case studies, teacher characteristics were not associated with dashboard use. Based on our findings, we propose an initial framework to understand what contributes to diversity of dashboard use. This framework might support future research to attribute diversity in dashboard use. This paper should be seen as a first step in examining the role of teacher characteristics in dashboard use in K–12 education.


2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 87-110
Author(s):  
Michele Hayward ◽  
Michael Cinquino ◽  
Frank Schieppati ◽  
Donald Smith

Espenshade (2014) has argued that pre-Columbian major ballcourts/plazas on Puerto Rico, particularly with rock art, could be considered special religious places. He proposes that these precincts were being transformed from locations of communal social and ceremonial activities integrating diverse population segments to increasingly restricted-to-religious functions as shrines or pilgrimage centers serving a greatly reduced local population by the end of the pre-colonial period. The extent of incorporation of pre-colonial late phase plazas into a formal pilgrimage round for the Puerto Rico island will be examined employing archaeological data from both the Greater and Lesser Antilles. We conclude that while Espenshade’s particular argument for enclosures-as-pilgrimage sites may or may not be appropriate, simply raising the issue prompts a wider consideration of the region’s ritual structure involving rock art and non-rock art sites.


Author(s):  
Candice Goucher

This essay follows the iguana, an indigenous genus of herbivorous lizards, to the Caribbean dinner table, from the fifteenth century to the present. Inspired by historian Jerry Bentley’s scholarly contributions to questions of cultural encounters, the essay argues for the importance of indigenous foods in complex, often ambiguous, and consistently nuanced processes of cultural interactions between indigenous peoples and transplanted Europeans, Asians, and Africans. The story of how and why the iguana consistently appeared in the region’s foodways provides a critical perspective on the history of globalization in the Atlantic world. Mapping the variety of these culinary experiences can also reveal insights into the Caribbean’s changing ecology and the role of indigenous beliefs and African interpretations in the eco-cultural encounters that reshaped the flavors and choices of the region.


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