 |
|
|
|
15th May 2002 |
| |
|
Visit the Current Events discussion forum
CLICK HERE |
| |
|
| |
|
|
| |
| |
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Archaeologists to dig for Amerindian remains
A team of world-renowned archaeologists from the universities of Leiden (the Netherlands) and Gainesville (USA) is visiting St Lucia to research the possibility of setting up a fieldschool. The team is interested in excavating sites for evidence of the earliest occupants of the island: Amerindian people. From around 1800 BC, Amerindians from the South-American mainland travelled in canoes up the chain of islands in the Lesser Antilles and started settlements. In St Lucia, such settlements existed all along the coast, particularly in the south and east of the island, near river mouths and on headlands. The Amerindian culture in St Lucia was eventually wiped out by the advent of Europeans in the 17th and 18th centuries and the story of their culture buried underground.
Realising the importance of this pre-historical period, the St Lucia Archaeological and Historical Society has, from time to time, invited teams of archaeologists to undertake excavations and study the remains found. In the course of the 1950s and '60s, teams from North American universities studied Amerindian sites around St Lucia, and much of the existing chronology of pre-Colombian occupation of the Lesser Antilles in general is based on this work. In the mid 1980s, it was the University of Vienna (Austria) that undertook a five-year-project on a headland in the south-east of the island, where it uncovered a number of Amerindian burial sites and some exceptionally fine clay figures and pottery.
After a period of relative dormancy, the Archaeological and Historical Society is now making a come-back in the field of pre-Colombian archaeology, with the invitation of this archaeological team from Leiden and Gainesville. If all goes well, a fieldschool may be set up as early as June 2003. With two decades of extensive experience in similar projects in the Bahamas, Guadeloupe and Saba, the team from Leiden and Gainesville may be expected to significantly advance the body of scientific knowledge of Amerindian occupation in the Lesser Antilles, using the results of digs in St Lucia.
Already, much new light has been shed on the colonial history of St Lucia by a team of archaeologists from Bristol University (UK), who have maintained a fieldschool at Balenbouche estate in Piaye for the past two years at the invitation of the St Lucia National Trust. With a second fieldschool focussing on pre-Colombian remains, an encompassing understanding of St Lucia's total history of human occupation may finally come within reach.
For more news read the St Lucia Star Online
Voted St Lucia's No 1 newspaper
|
|
|
