New Radiocarbon Dates for the Grenadine Islands (West Indies)

Abstract

ABSTRACT. Intensified archaeological research in the Caribbean over the past 2 decades has provided a wealth of new information on how and when these islands were settled prehistorically. However, there has been a paucity of research on islands in the southern Lesser Antilles, which would allow for more rigorous testing of migration models and various settlement pattern hypotheses. To address some of these chronological and geographical gaps, we present a corpus of 41 radiocarbon dates from several sites in the Grenadine Island chain. Results to date support a relatively late Ceramic Age settlement of these smaller islands (about AD 400) compared to other nearby, larger islands in the southern Lesser Antilles (about AD 200) as well as the Caribbean as a whole (about 400/500 BC). Intriguing questions also remain as to an apparent, but as yet inadequately tested, pattern where earlier colonization dates are correlated with larger island size.

Prehistoric migration in the Caribbean: past perspectives, new models and the ideal free distribution of West Indian colonization

“…Here, we provide a general overview of the timing and sequence of island colonization during the Ceramic Age drawing heavily on the vetted radiocarbon chronology of Fitzpatrick (2006), in addition to more recently published dates from the Grenadines (Fitzpatrick and Giovas 2011), Cuba (Cooper 2010), the Bahamas Archipelago (Berman et al 2013;Keegan et al 2008) and 570 Christina M. Giovas and Scott M. Fitzpatrick Puerto Rico (Rodríguez Ramos et al 2010). In doing this we acknowledge that there are various limitations in the data.…”

“…Around 2000 BP Ceramic Age occupation extended into the Windward Islands with the settlement of Grenada and St. Vincent. Many of the remaining islands in this region, including the small islands of the Grenadines Group, were subsequently colonized between 1700/1450 and 1000 BP (Fitzpatrick and Giovas 2011). Following a c. millennium-long migratory pause in the Greater Antilles, Ceramic Age people moved west and north into Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica and the Bahama Archipelago, beginning around 1350-550 BP.…”

Verification of an Archaic Age Occupation on Barbados, Southern Lesser Antilles

“…Continued research on the subject in the Grenadines has failed to locate any sites that date earlier than cal AD 380 (e.g. Fitzpatrick et al 2009;Fitzpatrick and Giovas 2011), and none in the southern Caribbean that date prior to around AD 1 with the possible exception of a handful of dates from Grenada at the Pearls site and Goddard on Barbados, both of which have issues with secure stratigraphic contexts. This reinforces the possibility that early Saladoid migrants reached the northern Antilles first and then ventured south, a process that has been termed the "Southward Route" hypothesis (Fitzpatrick et al 2010).…”

Drift voyages across the mid-Atlantic

“…A point to consider given the high number of landfalls in the Antilles is the date of human occupation there. The Windward Islands in the southern range of the Lesser Antilles do not appear to have been occupied until the first centuries AD (Callaghan 2010; Fitzpatrick & Giovas 2011). Some, but not all, of the Leeward Islands to the north, Antigua in particular, were occupied, perhaps as early as the third millennium BC (Fitzpatrick 2006: 397).…”