ABSTRACT
As in many parts of the world, the abrupt transition from hunters-fishers-gatherers to horticulturalists, Mesolithic/Mesoindian to Neolithic/Neoindian or Archaic to Ceramic Ages, is being contested in the insular Caribbean. This has entailed the questioning of all traditional ideas about the advent of ‘neolithisation’ in the region, built upon a suite of related elements that include: unilineal population movements; diffusion or local developments; sudden economic and demographic changes; the advent of sedentary lifeways and plant domestication; changes in material culture, particularly the origins of pottery production; and shifts toward an asymmetrical socio-political organizsation. The idea of a sudden appearance in the islands of a normatively defined ‘Neolithic package’ is no longer adequate when considering the great diversity of human agency reflected in the archaeological record. We argue that this diversity is the result of complex fusions and mixtures of endogenous and exogenous traditions that converged and were negotiated among myriad groups of peoples of the so-called Archaic and Ceramic Ages.
