SIBA: Stone interchanges in the Bahama archipelago

Stone tools are the hallmark of prehistoric settlements around the world: in the Caribbean, as elsewhere, they were essential for basic tasks (e.g., food processing, wood carving) and also fulfilled roles as prestige objects. Being entirely limestone islands, the vast Bahama (Lucayan) archipelago-comprising over 720 islands-is unique in the Caribbean in entirely lacking hard stone (flint, basalt, jadeitite). Was this lack of such a critical resource a contributing factor in their late settlement post-AD 600, despite being surrounded by islands with occupation going back millennia? And once settled, how was access to hard stone achieved, and what does this tell us about people's abilities to adapt to challenging environments?

Project SIBA ('stone' in Classic Taino dialect) aims to answer these questions by bringing together a multi-disciplinary group of leading researchers in a comprehensive study of the largest corpus of Lucayan stone artefacts ever assembled: >300 'exotics' held in 8 international museums. Our aim is to characterise the regional social networks that bound the Lucayan archipelago to the wider Caribbean region, and potentially to the continental mainland, and so provide an understanding of the creation and maintenance of indigenous exchange networks, and their concomitant economic, cultural and socio-political impacts. One direct means of exploring these issues is through the study of the imported material culture itself, including identifying each artefact's provenance through its diagnostic chemical and isotope 'signature' via state-of-the-art geochemical techniques. Distinctive iconography is a complementary means of 'sourcing' artefacts; conversely, the absence of convincing stylistic and petrological comparanda from neighbouring regions would imply the local reworking of stone in the creation of a distinctive Lucayan cannon, expanding understanding of local carving styles, which are themselves poorly known. The project remit works both at the micro- and macro-scale to explore the connections between people and the stones they worked, traded and valued. It aims to better understand resilience and sustainability in resource-poor island contexts, and to question the core-periphery relations that have dominated discourse in Bahamian archaeology.

Often seen both geographically and culturally as peripheral to the large-scale cacicazgos (chiefdoms) of the Greater Antilles, the Bahamas/TCI were initially (~AD 600) used as seasonal outposts by groups from Hispaniola and Cuba, to harvest the rich marine and salt resources. Permanent villages were only established around AD 1000. Initially, access to igneous or metamorphic stone was not an issue, because seasonal groups must have transported such basic necessities with them. Once permanent settlements were established, settlers likely maintained contact with their homeland for a variety of reasons, access to stone materials among them. Later, when independent polities emerged, an exchange network must have been established, with stone exotics imported not solely as necessities, but as valuables and high status goods used to differentiate the emerging Lucayan cacical (chiefly) hierarchies. Would these exchanges have echoed the original sources of the migrating group, or would the Lucayans have sought more far flung connections to emphasise their growing independence?

Working in collaboration with 8 project partner institutions, including the National Museums of both the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos Islands, the project will provide the first comprehensive regional overview of stone interchanges within the Lucayan archipelago, integrating the region into Caribbean-wide discourse on exchange and interaction, and significantly augmenting artefact information, and so enhancing museums' abilities to display and interpret their collections to diverse audiences. The results will contribute directly to planned museum exhibits, workshops and educational outreach.

Project benefits and beneficiaries range across a wide range of areas and remits:

1/Harnessing the potential of underutilised museum collections
Stone artefacts, such as celts, are among the most common artefacts in museum collections, whether from the Caribbean or Europe. Often recovered as surface finds-hence with little stratigraphic or contextual information-they frequently languish in museum shelves, sometimes dozens to a box, with at best cursory information when displayed at all. Yet there is great potential for these collections to contribute invaluable data to debates of past interactions/exchanges and value systems, through an engagement with their materiality (manufacture, style, material properties, etc.). Now, with the emergence of non-invasive techniques that can inform on provenance histories, the data collected can enhance museum records and displays, directly benefitting visitors, curators and researchers, while ensuring the best care for the artefacts. The research highlights the benefit of long-term museum care and storage of cultural patrimony, most especially of objects whose value is not immediately apparent due to the paucity of associated information. Bringing these little known collections to wider attention by utilising their inherent research potential goes some way to justify the investment of care that continues to go into their safe keeping, underscoring collections management, and enhancing institutional documentation and interpretation.

2/Making museum collections accessible to diverse audiences
Web and museum-based exhibits are planned project outputs, with workshops and associated outreach activities aimed at a range of audiences-from school groups/college students to the general public. Institutions within both the Bahamas (Antiques, Monuments and Museums Corporation [AMMC], Gerace Research Centre, College of The Bahamas) and Turks and Caicos (Turks and Caicos National Museum [TCNM]) have expressed particular interest in making the results accessible to their diverse audiences-both local and international. This will have a variety of impacts-from exhibits in the 'out' islands and using local collections to enhance school curriculums to contributing to more informed tourism (economically critical to the Bahamas/TCI).

3/Building collaborative links (multi-institutional, cross-disciplinary)
The project develops collaborative networks between colleagues in diverse international venues, including eight museums (four of which are national museums: TCNM, AMMC, National Museum of the American Indian, and National Museum of Natural History), and two academic institutions (Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands; Universidad de Granada, Spain). The project partner museums and cultural organisations are the direct stakeholders in the project, and through them, their local, target audiences as well as the wider international community, including academic as well as public sector beneficiaries (e.g., Caribbeanists, archaeologists, Bahamian/TCI diaspora). Working in collaboration with these various stakeholders bridges different sectors and their remits, enhancing information across regional boundaries and disciplines.

4/The value of cultural heritage (policy and practice)
The project has the full support of the AMMC and TCNM (both project partners in the study), who advise their governments on archaeological and cultural heritage management and protection. Raising wider public awareness of these artefacts, and through them, of the Lucayan past, works to enforce the importance of local Bah/TCI heritage, which in turn, can impact on future public policy and legislation for cultural resource management. There is a need to do this, as indigenous heritage is not as prominent, and perhaps not as valued, as aspects of the historic, colonial past - and tourist industry development on the islands has had a history of destroying archaeological sites largely unimpeded.