The People Who Discovered Columbus
The Prehistory of the Bahamas
William F. Keegan
Hardcover: $59.95
"A valuable contribution to the aboriginal anthropology of the West Indies. It is intellectually enlivened, theoretically informed…and a stimulating perspective on the Lucayan Arawaks."--David D. Davis, University of Southern Maine
For the Lucayan Arawaks of the Caribbean, the year 1492 marked the beginning of the end: the first people contacted by Christopher Columbus were the first extinguished. Within thirty years, a population of perhaps 80,000 had declined to, at most, a few refugees. Clearing new ground in the study of prehistoric societies, Keegan argues that a different perspective on the past provides an accurate portrait of a culture that became extinct almost 500 years ago.
Keegan terms his approach paleoethnography, developing a portrait of the past by linking archaeological field data and historical documents. The result, the first overview of the prehistory of the Bahamas, explains how and why the Bahamas were colonized by the Tainos almost 1,400 years ago. The portrait includes characteristics of the islands themselves, descriptions of how the Lucayans made their settlements, what they ate, how they organized in social groups, and how their population spread throughout the archipelago.
Keegan reconstructs Columbus’s voyage through the West Indies, raising questions about the explorer’s motivations and presenting a controversial theory about where, exactly, Columbus landed. Offering new perspectives on Caribbean prehistory to both scholars and general readers, the book ends with the Spaniards’ arrival and the Lucayans’ demise.
William F. Keegan, associate curator of anthropology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, is the editor of Earliest Hispanic/Native American Interactions in the Caribbean: A Sourcebook. In 1989, he was co-recipient of the first Morton H. Fried Prize awarded by the American Anthropological Association, for outstanding interdisciplinary publication in American Anthropologist.
For the Lucayan Arawaks of the Caribbean, the year 1492 marked the beginning of the end: the first people contacted by Christopher Columbus were the first extinguished. Within thirty years, a population of perhaps 80,000 had declined to, at most, a few refugees. Clearing new ground in the study of prehistoric societies, Keegan argues that a different perspective on the past provides an accurate portrait of a culture that became extinct almost 500 years ago.
Keegan terms his approach paleoethnography, developing a portrait of the past by linking archaeological field data and historical documents. The result, the first overview of the prehistory of the Bahamas, explains how and why the Bahamas were colonized by the Tainos almost 1,400 years ago. The portrait includes characteristics of the islands themselves, descriptions of how the Lucayans made their settlements, what they ate, how they organized in social groups, and how their population spread throughout the archipelago.
Keegan reconstructs Columbus’s voyage through the West Indies, raising questions about the explorer’s motivations and presenting a controversial theory about where, exactly, Columbus landed. Offering new perspectives on Caribbean prehistory to both scholars and general readers, the book ends with the Spaniards’ arrival and the Lucayans’ demise.
William F. Keegan, associate curator of anthropology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida, is the editor of Earliest Hispanic/Native American Interactions in the Caribbean: A Sourcebook. In 1989, he was co-recipient of the first Morton H. Fried Prize awarded by the American Anthropological Association, for outstanding interdisciplinary publication in American Anthropologist.
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"a very fine job of updating information on the Bahamas and placing them within the perspective of the West Indies. Anyone interested in the archaeology of the West Indies, early Spanish colonial contacts in the New World, or Caribbean island ecology should include this book in their library."
--North American Anthropologist
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