The Institute for Field Research is offering a program for Summer 2024 centering on archaeological / ethnographic research in Old Providence and the Santa Catalina Islands (Colombia) from May 25 to June 19, 2024. See the full description of the 8-credit program focusing on the Native Raizal community—“Pirates and Puritans: Historical Archaeology & Ethnography on Old Providence and Santa Catalina Islands, Colombia” (led by Dr. Tracie Mayfield, Department of Anthropology, University of Southern California)—at IFRG/Colombia Providence Island.
The islands of Old Providence and Santa Catalina—located 130 miles east of the coast of Nicaragua and around 8.5 square miles in size—have been a center of global trade and commerce since the establishment of an English colony in 1629 and are still occupied by the Native Raizal descendants of the original colonists, African slaves, and members of a co terminous Maroon village of self-emancipated peoples, to this day. The Puritan venture capitalists of the Providence Island Company, whose shareholders also held stakes in the Virginia Company, financed the primary colonization of Old Providence and Santa Catalina and sent the first settlers to the Islands via the Seaflower, sister ship to the Mayflower –one year after the Company founded of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Virginia Company was one of the first to enter the American slave market, starting in 1619, when their ship the Treasurer, commanded by Daniel Elfrith, docked in Virginia several days after the first slaves arrived on the White Lion.
The Old Providence and Santa Catalina Archaeological Project utilizes a variety of methods –archaeology, ethnography, geophysical survey, artifact and faunal analysis, and more— to better understand the Islands’ historical timeline and elucidate localized strategies utilized by Native Raizal, over time, to negotiate the intricate relationships between and among variable stakeholders embedded within the colonial- and modern-industrial complexes, including European colonists, venture-capitalists, and military; Indigenous groups; pre- and post-emancipated peoples of African descent; tenant farmers, agricultural workers, and indentured apprentices and servants; and more loosely affiliated, historically-connected groups such as Maroons, pirates, buccaneers, and privateers.
As both an archaeologically grounded and community-driven endeavor, the Project’s problem orientation and research questions are designed to supplement and complement culture-history work already being undertaken on the Islands, by adding material and spatial data to the existing body of documentary and oral records. In particular, Native Raizal are concerned with economic and environmental sustainability; educating the local public, especially young people who will inherit the Islands; increasing the visibility of the Islands within national and international communities; and with collecting ethnographic, material, and spatial data related to both past and current populations to preserve their heritage and to allow them to make decisions about how that heritage should be leveraged (e.g. sustainability, teaching, tourism, etc.) to best serve the community.
To this end, many people from the Native Raizal community on the Islands are directly engaged in the Project’s research, data collection, and teaching efforts. The Project has formerly engaged a number of Native community-based organizations and Native monitors are contracted to oversee field data collection and serve as advisors for the Project. Currently, the Project employs an Environmental Monitor, a Cultural Monitor, and an Ethnographic Monitor who are present, every day, during on-site research.
For full description, see https://ifrglobal.org/program/colombia-providence-island/
For syllabus and more information, see https://ifrglobal.org/program/colombia-providence-island/?portfolioCats=624%2C326
The Institute for Field Research is offering a program for Summer 2024 centering on archaeological / ethnographic research in Old Providence and the Santa Catalina Islands (Colombia) from May 25 to June 19, 2024. See the full description of the 8-credit program focusing on the Native Raizal community—“Pirates and Puritans: Historical Archaeology & Ethnography on
