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A deep history of indigenous Caribbean networks: Migration, mobility, and interaction

Lecture by Professor Corinne L. Hofman (Universiteit Leiden).

Info about event

Time

Tuesday 27 November 2018,  at 12:00 - 13:00

Location

Centre for Urban Network Evolutions (UrbNet) Aarhus University Moesgård Allé 20, DK-8270 Højbjerg Denmark, Building 4230-232.

Abstract

At the time of the European conquest of the New World, the insular Caribbean was settled by indigenous societies whose ancestors had entered the archipelago around 6000 BC  from different parts of South and Central America. By AD 1000  culturally diverse island societies had developed, and by 1492, a web of interlocking networks had spread across the Caribbean Sea, crossing local, regional, and pan-Caribbean boundaries. Pre-colonial indigenous Caribbean networks were flexible, robust, inclusive and outward-looking systems. The networks at the time of contact echo these overarching patterns of migration, mobility and interaction between island and mainland(s) communities. Being the center stage of the first encounters between the Old and the New World, the Caribbean was the initial space of intercultural Amerindian-European-African dynamics leading to the formation of new identities and social and material worlds. European colonisation and settlement of the Caribbean was not a single event but a series of processes with some islands resisting European control until the 1800s. This presentation, based on the results of the ERC-synergy NEXUS 1492 project,  examines the deep history and transformations of indigenous networks at multiple temporal and spatial scales using a trans-disciplinary approach.