‘The Mona Chronicle’: the archaeology of early religious encounter in the New World

Navigating Contact: Tradition and Innovation in Australian Contact Rock Art

“…Gosden (2004: 92), following White's (1991) delineation of post-Contact hybridity between Algonquian people and European trappers, refers to this shifting and in-between cultural space as a "Middle Ground," constantly open to negotiation and affecting and developed not just by the colonized but also by their colonizers. Thus, for example, recent work on Isla de Mona in the Caribbean has made clear that Creole Christian identities which intentionally blended native Caribbean and Christian iconography, practices, and beliefs emerged not just among Caribbean converts to Christianity, but alongside and in dialogue with European Christians (Cooper et al 2016).…”

European Material Culture in Indigenous Sites in Northeastern Cuba

“…In Puerto Rico, according to Anderson-Córdova (2005, 350-351), and Deagan (1988, 205), few sites with this peculiarity have been confirmed. The sites on Mona Island are notable for the variety of artifacts that have been found (from glass beads to coins), and because they suggest diverse forms of indigenous manipulation across a long period of time (from ad 1493 to 1590) (Cooper et al 2016;Samson and Cooper 2015). In Jamaica, there is mention of three indigenous sites with European materials, all of them close to the Spanish settlement of Sevilla la Nueva (Deagan 1988, 205).…”

On confluence and contestation in the Orinoco interaction sphere: the engraved rock art of the Atures Rapids

“…This directly parallels processes of spiritual exchange that have been documented through rock art elsewhere in the frontiers of early colonial America (see Recalde & González Navarro 2015; Cooper et al . 2016), to which the Orinoco may now be compared.…”