Not of African Descent: Dental Modification among Indigenous Caribbean People from Canímar Abajo, Cuba

Dental modifications in the Caribbean are considered to be an African practice introduced to the Caribbean archipelago by the influx of enslaved Africans during colonial times. Skeletal remains which exhibited dental modifications are by default considered to be Africans, African descendants, or post-contact indigenous people influenced by an African practice. Individual E-105 from the site of Canímar Abajo (Cuba), with a direct 14C AMS date of 990– 800 cal BC, provides the first unequivocal evidence of dental modifications in the Antilles prior to contact with Europeans in AD 1492. Central incisors showing evidence of significant crown reduction (loss of crown volume regardless of its etiology) were examined macroscopically and with a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to determine if the observed alterations were due to deliberate modification or other (unintentional) factors considered: postmortem breakage, violent accidental breakage, non-dietary use of teeth, and wear caused by habitual or repeated actions. The pattern of crown reduction is consistent with deliberate dental modification of the type commonly encountered among African and African descendent communities in post-contact Caribbean archaeological assemblages. Six additional individuals show similar pattern of crown reduction of maxillary incisors with no analogous wear in corresponding mandibular dentition.The research was funded under SSHRC Standard Research Grant SSHRC - 410-2011-1179 to MR and IR (http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/homeaccueil-eng.aspx).http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.015353

The Ouroboros seizes its tale : strategies of mythopoeia in narrative fiction from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies : six examples

The research presented here examines complex interrelations between myth and literature, focusing specifically on mythopoeia in some narrative fictions in the period from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies. After giving an overview of different theories of myth developed in the Western tradition since ancient Greek times, the thesis examines both their usefulness and the value of the concept of myth itself, and proposes a new way of defining it by delimiting its semantic field through four separate sets of features: in terms of its structure, content, function and social role. It then analyses six largely modernist novels representative of literary mythopoeia, namely Yacine Kateb's "Nedjma" (1956), Wilson Harris' "Palace of the Peacock" (1960), Wole Soyinka's "The Interpreters" (1965), Chingiz Aitmatov's "Белый пароход" [The White Steamship] (1970), Michel Tournier's "Le Roi des aulnes" (1970), and Darcy Ribeiro's "Maira" (1976). They were all written during the decades when the 'mythic method' spread worldwide, and when differences between various national literatures diminished as they got closer, influencing each other to a larger extent than ever before. The novels, which come from six different cultural backgrounds on four continents, reflect various mythopoeic stances, using myth not to rediscover some pristine immediacy, but as a tool for exploring and contesting both the socio-historic world and larger questions of human existence. Although widely dissimilar in regard to their narrative strategies, their novelistic form and content, they have a number of common characteristics: eclectic use of myth, the merging of mythic and realistic planes, interplay of space and time, preference for totemism, animism and shamanism to monotheistic religions, consideration of problems of roots, identity and hybridity, concern for nature, ambiguous ends. More importantly, they all have cyclical time as the main structural device, because uncertainty about the future and loss of belief in eternal progress are primary preoccupations of their authors. As the examined novels show, mythopoeia in narrative fiction is very much present and productive in the second half of the twentieth century, making up an important part of contemporary world literature, for the human propensity to create mythic stories is perennial.Arts, Faculty ofEnglish, Department ofGraduat

Location of the site of Canímar Abajo and the distribution of burials.

<p>The site of Canímar Abajo: a) location of the site at the Bay of Matanzas and on the map of Cuba (outlined in the lower left corner). Reprinted from [<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0153536#pone.0153536.ref018" target="_blank">18</a>] under a CC BY licence with permission from the University of Arizona, original copyright (2015); and uses the open source satellite map (<a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/imagepolicy/" target="_blank">http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/imagepolicy/</a>); b) horizontal distribution of burials on the excavation grid of the site and the location of individuals discussed in the text: black dots represent Older Cemetery (OC) burials; gray rhombs represent Younger Cemetery (YC) burials; c) schematic representation of the profile of Canímar Abajo with dated burials discussed in the text. Black dots indicate OC burials; gray rhombs indicate YC burials. ¹⁴C laboratory numbers are given with their corresponding dates.</p

Labial surface of the maxillary central incisors of E-105.

<p>Labial surface of the maxillary central incisors of E-105a) under 20x magnification captured by digital microscope; b) composite image captured by an SEM microscope at 80x magnification. White arrows indicate the site of conchoidal fractures; black arrows indicate the pits on the enamel above the conchoidal fractures.</p

Modified maxillary central incisors of the individual E-92.

<p>Modified maxillary central incisors of the individual E-92 from the YC component dated to cal AD 600–800: a) labial view; b) lingual view (Photo by W. Hiebert, University of Winnipeg); c) taphonomic changes observed on the labial surface of the modified right maxillary central incisors of the individual E-92 from the YC component dated to cal AD 600–800 (images captured by Keyance digital microscope (VHX-5000 series) at 30x and 100x magnification).</p

Individuals with identified deliberate dental reduction of central and lateral incisors.

<p>Individuals with identified deliberate dental reduction of central and lateral incisors.</p

Modified central incisors of the individual E-105.

<p>Modified central incisors of the individual E-105 from the OC component, dated to 990–800 cal BC: a) labial view; b) lingual view (Photo by W. Hiebert, University of Winnipeg).</p

Genomic insights into the early peopling of the Caribbean

The Caribbean was one of the last regions of the Americas to be settled by humans, but where they came from and how and when they reached the islands remain unclear. We generated genome-wide data for 93 ancient Caribbean islanders dating between 3200 and 400 calibrated years before the present and found evidence of at least three separate dispersals into the region, including two early dispersals into the Western Caribbean, one of which seems connected to radiation events in North America. This was followed by a later expansion from South America. We also detected genetic differences between the early settlers and the newcomers from South America, with almost no evidence of admixture. Our results add to our understanding of the initial peopling of the Caribbean and the movements of Archaic Age peoples in the Americas.The research was funded by the Max Planck Society and the European Research Council under the 7th Framework Program (grant agreement no. 319209, ERC Synergy Project NEXUS1492). H.S. was supported by the HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) Joint Research Program “Uses of the Past” (CitiGen) and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement no. 649307. W.J.P. and M.A.N.-C. were supported by the National Science Foundation (BCS-0612727 and BCS1622479). C.L.-F. was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PGC2018-0955931-B-100, AEI/FEDER, UE). M.R. was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (435-2016-0529). M.R., Y.C.d.A., U.M.G.H., and S.T.H.G. were supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (standard research grant SSHRC ‐ 410‐2011‐1179 and SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship ‐ 756‐2016‐0180) and several University of Winnipeg internal grants (Major grant 2017, 2018; Partnership Development grant 2017, 2018; and Discretionary grant 2017, 2018)