Redressing Extinction: Using Environmental Archaeology to Trace the Mode and Tempo of Afro-Indigenous Creolization in the Caribbean

This project investigates when Afro-Indigenous societies emerged in the Caribbean and how the tempo and mode of Creolization varied across ecological and colonial contexts? This inquiry is grounded in environmental archaeology and focuses on the Caribbean—particularly Puerto Rico—as a space of Indigenous-African-European encounters and transformations. The project challenges prevailing narratives of Taíno extinction by investigating the material and ecological traces of Indigenous persistence and Afro-Indigenous ethnogenesis from 1450 to 1815 AD.

My approach integrates environmental archaeology, specifically archaeobotany, to examine cultural resilience through subsistence and culinary practices. Creolization is conceptualised not merely as cultural mixing but as a process shaped by colonial marginalisation, resistance, and environmental adaptation. The project also critically engages with the historiography of extinction, especially its role in erasing Black and Indigenous presences from archaeological discourse and public memory.