Roger H. Colten

Humans settled the Caribbean ~6,000 years ago, with intensified agriculture and ceramic use marking a shift from the Archaic Age to the Ceramic Age ~2,500 years ago. To shed new light on the history of Caribbean people, we report genome-wide data from 184 individuals predating European contact from The Bahamas, Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Curaçao, and northwestern Venezuela. A largely homogeneous ceramic-using population most likely originating in northeastern South America and related to present-day Arawak-speaking groups moved throughout the Caribbean at least 1,800 years ago, spreading ancestry that is still detected in parts of the region today. These people eventually almost entirely replaced Archaic-related lineages in Hispaniola but not in northwestern Cuba, where unadmixed Archaic-related ancestry persisted into the last millennium. We document high mobility and inter-island connectivity throughout the Ceramic Age as reflected in relatives buried ~75 kilometers apart in Hispaniola and low genetic differentiation across many Caribbean islands, albeit with subtle population structure distinguishing the Bahamian islands we studied from the rest of the Caribbean and from each other, and long-term population continuity in southeastern coastal Hispaniola differentiating this region from the rest of the island. Ceramic-associated people avoided close kin unions despite limited mate pools reflecting low effective population sizes (2N _e =1000-2000) even at sites on the large Caribbean islands. While census population sizes can be an order of magnitude larger than effective population sizes, pan-Caribbean population size estimates of hundreds of thousands are likely too large. Transitions in pottery styles show no evidence of being driven by waves of migration of new people from mainland South America; instead, they more likely reflect the spread of ideas and people within an interconnected Caribbean world.

Museum collections are an underutilised source of environmental archaeological data. Curated collections often contain faunal and floral remains that can be analysed using new methods and to address various research questions. For example, the broad patterns of Archaic or preceramic subsistence adaptations are not well known for the Caribbean region, and for Cuba in particular, due to the ecological variability among the islands and limited, quantified faunal data from radiocarbon-dated sites. To address these issues, we present quantified vertebrate faunal data and new radiocarbon dates from museum-curated collections from three Cuban sites. Las Obas, La Vega del Palmar, and Los Caracoles are Archaic, dating between roughly 350 BC to AD 630, although Vega del Palmar contains Pre-Arawak Pottery Horizon ceramics. The three assemblages include a diversity of taxa from several habitats, including various species of hutia (Capromyidae). The taxonomy of these rodents varies among the sites as do the proportions of other taxa. In addition to abundant hutia, the sites' occupants exploited an array of fish, birds, reptiles and other mammals, including manatee. We compare the sites faunal assemblages and discuss their ecological significance as well as their place in Cuban prehistory.

The analysis of a particular type of fauna, such as marine mammals, is best understood when all categories of fauna represented are studied. Detailed analysis of a portion of an assemblage, while interesting, can contribute to misleading interpretations of prehistoric human behaviour. Faunal assemblages from coastal shell middens in southern California and Oregon provide examples of the analysis of marine mammals and their relative importance in prehistoric subsistence, economy, and culture change. While marine mammals were important for subsistence and comprise a high proportion of the bones identifiable to the species level in these assemblages, these animals were less important than fish and shellfish in the diet and probably played a limited role in culture change in these regions. Previous studies that suggest a central role for marine mammals in cultural evolution in western North America provide minimal information on other fauna, and use limited analytical methods. Quantification methods that require species level identification (such as minimum number of individuals [MNI]) can exclude much of the faunal data available from dense coastal middens, and may over emphasize some portions of the assemblage, notably large mammals. Analysis at taxonomic levels higher than species and use of several quantification techniques, including meat weight estimates, may help alleviate some of these methodological problems and lead to a better understanding of the role of marine mammals in prehistoric economies. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.