Crossing the Borders: New Methods and Techniques in the Study of Archaeological Materials from the Caribbean

Epilogue / 227
cially apparent when new investigators enter the region and fail to acknowledge
the vast amount of work that has preceded them (e.g., Fitzpatrick 2004). For them,
everything is a “new” perspective. Nothing could be further from the truth. The
chapters in this volume demonstrate that Caribbean research is still on the cutting
edge; it has always been so and we should expect no less. In their History of
American Archaeology, Willey and Sabloff (1974) identified Irving Rouse as the
foundation, the base of the tree, for modern archaeology for his contributions to
the classificatory- historical period. In addition, Rouse’s (1939) model, although
Ben never liked the word model, of the cultural and behavioral patterning of artifacts
is as relevant today as it was 70 years ago. Elizabeth Wing was a pioneer in
the field of environmental archaeology (Wing and Reitz 1982), and many of her
early studies involved faunal remains from the West Indies. Lee Newsom (1993)
and Deborah Pearsall (2000), using Caribbean data, are pioneers in the field of
archaeobotany. David Watters (1982) was one of the early practitioners of the subfield
now called island archaeology. Marxist approaches were used to interpret developments
in the Caribbean long before these became popular in the United States
and Europe (Curet et al. 2005; Veloz Maggiolo et al. 1981). Kathleen Deagan (2004)
and Lourdes Domínguez (2005) were instrumental in the development of historical
archaeology, and became so based on research in the Caribbean. In Deagan’s
study of En Bas Saline, Haiti, she was one of the first to use electromagnetic conductivity
as a remote sensing device (Williams 1986); Mary Collins used ground
penetrating radar at the Coralie site on Grand Turk in the days when the readout
was generated by carbon scoring (Hardman et al. 1998); and a Caribbeanist
wrote the section on remote sensing for the Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology
(Keegan 1996b). Schoeninger and associates (1993) made the first study of stable
carbon isotopes for coastal human populations, which included samples from the
Bahamas; the very first study of nitrogen isotopes in an aquatic setting came from
samples collected in the Caribbean (Keegan and DeNiro 1988); and Anne Stokes
(1998) made one of the earliest studies of whole diet using stable isotopes extracted
from bone apatite. In the late 1970s, Shaun Sullivan (1981) did a metallurgical
analysis of a brass nose ornament from MC-6 on Middle Caicos; further, he
and Castellanos (1981) were among the first to investigate archaeoastronomy in the
Americas. Judith Fandrich (1991) did a trace element study of stone axes from Grenada;
samples from the Bahamas were used in Jim Burton’s initial study of barium
and strontium ratios; and human bones from the Caribbean were used in an early
effort to extract DNA from ancient bone as part of a study to identify the remains
of an Irish martyr (his skull was found in one place and his body in another). The
first application of optimal foraging theory to a horticultural society was made
using Caribbean data (Keegan 1985, 1986), and 20 years later we finally have an edited
book on the subject (Kennett and Winterhalder 2006). Luis Fortuna (1978) was
an early practitioner of pollen analysis; Sylvia Scudder (2001) is a founding practitioner
of soils analysis and investigated evidence for changes in eustatic sea level
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