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

Contributors / 289
chaeology, Leiden University. He is currently studying the physical anthropology
and paleopathology of the buried human remains excavated at Anse à la Gourde,
Guadeloupe. His research focuses on developments in health and demography in
the Caribbean before the arrival of Columbus.
Roberto Rodríguez Suárez is a Cuban anthropologist and a full- time researcherprofessor
of the Museo Antropológico Luis Montané, University of Havana. Some
of his main research areas are paleonutrition (trace elements of human bones),
chemistry and physics of archaeological soils and objects, chronometry, and museum
organization. He is now leading a multidisciplinary project at the important
Cuban archaeological site Canímar, Provincia de Matanzas.
Glenis Tavarez María is director of the Department of Physical Anthropology
of the Dominican Museo del Hombre. She has worked in different archaeological
projects in her country, in Martinique and Florida, and in Europe. Her studies
focus on the burial practices of the Santo Domingo aborigines and on the first colonial
manufactures of the sixteenth century.
Michael Turney is currently employed as a consulting archaeologist by Golder
Associates Ltd., in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. His master’s thesis was focused on
Saladoid period shell artifact assemblages from Antigua, West Indies. He has been
involved in archaeological research on both Antigua and St. Vincent, and he maintains
an interest in prehistoric artistic expression in the Caribbean.
Roberto Valcárcel Rojas is researcher at the Departamento Centro Oriental de
Arqueología del Ministerio de Ciencias, Tecnología y Medio Ambiente de Cuba.
He directs the investigations at the site of El Chorro de Maíta and other archaeological
sites in Cuba. He is specifically interested in social organization, esthetic expressions,
and contacts between the native population and the Europeans.
Annelou van Gijn is associate professor in Material Culture Studies at the Faculty
of Archaeology and head of the Laboratory for Artifact Studies at Leiden University,
the Netherlands. Her research of technological systems by means of technological
and use- wear studies of prehistoric implements focuses on the northwest
European late Mesolithic and Neolithic, but her interest also extends to understanding
technological choices in Caribbean context.
Rita Vargiu is professor at University of Naples “Federico II,” Italy. She has been
conducting paleobiological studies on Caribbean human samples dated to the precontact
and contact periods. At present, her research is focused on the development
of statistical methods useful in reconstructing migratory waves by means of
skeletal records.
Tamara Varney is assistant professor of bioanthropology in the Department of
Anthropology at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. For the
past nine years she has primarily conducted research on Antigua in conjunction
with the Antigua Archaeological Project, and has also worked on projects based on
Guadeloupe and Montserrat. In addition, she continues to codirect a field school
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