Dr Jose Julian Garay Vazquez

J. Julián Garay-Vázquez is an afro-indigenous archaeologist from Borikén (Puerto Rico) specialising in archaeobotanical research. Currently, they are a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. They use environmental archaeology to redress indigenous extinction in the Caribbean.  

Formerly, they were a Postdoc at the University of Exeter on the ERC-funded Last Journey project. The work focused on plant macrofossil analysis of Pleistocene/Holocene transition sites to understand the human-plant dynamics of Amazonian Forest colonists in Colombia. 
 

Doctoral thesis centred on creating a baseline of indigenous modes of agriculture and culinary traditions from the Antillean Caribbean. The research applied a multidisciplinary method that interwove Western scientific knowledge with Indigenous culinary knowledge to assess past culinary traditions.