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The Caribbean was one of the last parts of the Americas to be settled by humans, but how and when the islands were first occupied remains a matter of debate. Ancient DNA can help answering these questions, but the work has been hampered by poor DNA preservation. We report the genome sequence of a 1,000-year-old Lucayan Taino individual recovered from the site of Preacher's Cave in the Bahamas. We sequenced her genome to 12.4-fold coverage and show that she is genetically most closely related to present-day Arawakan speakers from northern South America, suggesting that the ancestors of the Lucayans originated there. Further, we find no evidence for recent inbreeding or isolation in the ancient genome, suggesting that the Lucayans had a relatively large effective population size. Finally, we show that the native American components in some present-day Caribbean genomes are closely related to the ancient Taino, demonstrating an element of continuity between precontact populations and present-day Latino populations in the Caribbean.

The Caribbean Sea was a conduit for human mobility and the exchange of goods and ideas during the whole of its pre-colonial history. The period cal. AD 1000-1800, covering the Late Ceramic Age and early colonial era, represents an archaeologically understudied time during which the Lesser Antilles came under increasing influence from the Greater Antilles and coastal South America and participated in the last phase of indigenous resistance to colonial powers. This article summarizes the results of the Island Network project, supported by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in which a multi-disciplinary set of archaeological, archaeometric, geochemical, GIS, and network science methods and techniques have been employed to disentangle this turbulent era in regional and global history. These diverse approaches reveal and then explore multi-layered networks of objects and people and uncover how Lesser Antillean communities were created and transformed through teaching, trade, migration, movement, and exchange of goods and knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In precolumbian insular Caribbean archaeological sites, domestic dog (Canis familiaris) remains have been recovered from varied contexts, such as formal burials, in refuse deposits, and as modified artifacts, indicating their complex and multifaceted role within indigenous societies. In this study, isotopic and morphometric analyses provide biochemical and morphological correlations to assess this differential treatment. We examined collagen values (n = 21) of carbon (δ13Cco) and nitrogen (δ15N), and enamel values (n = 81) of carbon (δ13Cen), oxygen (δ18Oen), and strontium (87Sr/86Sr) of dog remains from 16 precolumbian sites. Five comparative parameters were used to assess dietary variations between different groups: buried versus nonburied, local versus nonlocal, Greater versus Lesser Antilles, chronology, and modified versus unmodified remains. The only statistically significant difference in diets was between local and nonlocal dogs. Sufficient data were available to conduct isotopic mixing models using the FRUITS statistical program on four individuals for which depositional and morphological data were available. Results of dietary modeling indicate an unexpectedly heavy reliance on plant foods consistent with intentional feeding. This approach highlights the utility of combining isotope analysis, dietary models, morphometrics, and depositional context to provide comprehensive biographic overviews of individual animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Substantial progress in the application of multiple isotope analyses has greatly improved the ability to identify nonlocal individuals amongst archaeological populations over the past decades. More recently the development of large scale models of spatial isotopic variation (isoscapes) has contributed to improved geographic assignments of human and animal origins. Persistent challenges remain, however, in the accurate identification of individual geographic origins from skeletal isotope data in studies of human (and animal) migration and provenance. In an attempt to develop and test more standardized and quantitative approaches to geographic assignment of individual origins using isotopic data two methods, combining 87Sr/86Sr and δ18O isoscapes, are examined for the Circum-Caribbean region: 1) an Interval approach using a defined range of fixed isotopic variation per location; and 2) a Likelihood assignment approach using univariate and bivariate probability density functions. These two methods are tested with enamel isotope data from a modern sample of known origin from Caracas, Venezuela and further explored with two archaeological samples of unknown origin recovered from Cuba and Trinidad. The results emphasize both the potential and limitation of the different approaches. Validation tests on the known origin sample exclude most areas of the Circum-Caribbean region and correctly highlight Caracas as a possible place of origin with both approaches. The positive validation results clearly demonstrate the overall efficacy of a dual-isotope approach to geoprovenance. The accuracy and precision of geographic assignments may be further improved by better understanding of the relationships between environmental and biological isotope variation; continued development and refinement of relevant isoscapes; and the eventual incorporation of a broader array of isotope proxy data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]